Two weeks ago I wrote about Fred Adelman's big VHS sale here and also mentioned he was going to sell DVD-R copies of this huge ad-mat collection. I've been a bit low on cash but I've finally placed an order for it so Whoo-hoo! I'm definitely looking forward to getting this collection that covers 1970-93 and spans over 18 big volumes of binders. That's 3200 pages!! Underneath are a couple of scans of ad-mat pages but just keep in mind the pic quality isn't as good as on the real DVD-Rs.
About a year ago I wrote about how I was watching my way thru the first season of the old fave cop/detective show Columbo which my mum got me into when I was 7 years old. I've been holding out on getting more seasons cos, well, everything has a price tag on it :-/ but last night I was lucky enough to scoop up a complete, brand new box set of Columbo seasons 1-8 for the "whooping" price of... £10!!! That's 15 dollars! With postage it came to around $17. My luck was a marketplace seller on Amazon UK selling a never used set as second hand. Wauw!! Big grinds all 'round!!! xD [EDIT: 13 years later I finally notice the bloody spelling mistake; it's GRINS, not "grinds" for fuck's sake!Argh!! /Jack in October 2022] About the box; I'm sticking to the UK DVDs as they're often better than their US counterparts when it comes to TV shows. And they're often cheaper than the locally released Danish versions (besides I just don't care much for the often badly written Danish cover text. It just annoys me! LOL). So far there's been two boxes I've been keeping an eye on price wise; A box containing seasons 1-7, and the one I've just bought which as I mentioned contains #1-8. I'm really only interested in seasons 1-7 as these are the original seasons from the 1970s. Don't get me wrong it's not that everything has to be old per se but I just don't think the "new" episodes (which by now are quite old too) are that good (if you're a Danish/scandinavian reader I suggest you read Henrik & Joachim Larsen's coverage of the series in Obskuriøst magazine #10. PDF-edition here). I've just noticed there's now a box set on Amazon that appears to be the fully complete series but I haven't checked out if it really is all complete or whatnot.
Brilliant!! I've just learnt that Fortune Star/Joy Sales are going to release TIGER CAGE (Jacky Cheung, Simon Yam, Donnie Yen, 1988), TIGER CAGE 2 (Cynthia Khan, Donnie Yen, Rosamund Kwan, Lo Lieh, 1990), and TIGER CAGE 3 (Michael Wong,1991) on DVD in June! And they're even going to be remastered editions!!! Awesome!! The only film in the series that I've got is #2 on a DVD from mainland China and, well, having that Chinese DVD is better that not having a DVD if you catch my drift.
But this is certainly great news. Now, if FS could please include the alternative ending for #2 that would be juuust spiffy!
About the alternative ending (from Asian Dvd Guide) [contains spoilers!]:
Tiger Cage 2 An alternate "censorship" ending was shot for certain restrictive markets so that it is now cop Cynthia Khan who delivers the fatal shot and not Rosamund Kwan - who in the original HK print bashes Robin Shou's gangster's head in - removing the notion of unacceptable vigilante justice. Additionally a coda was included on export prints. The now OOP WA DVD, as expected, features the Hong Kong take on this sequence.
According to the info at DDDHOUSE the DVDs will contain the Canto and Mandarin audio but not the English dubs. Personally I couldn't care less for the English track but I'm sure some of you out there would want it. A little while ago I stumbled over this rare Taiwan VCD of TIGER CAGE 3 which actually contains the English dubbed version. Acording to the seller it's very rare and it did indeed go for a very high price (I don't remember how much).
COS IT WENT FOR BLOODY 122.50 dollars!!! Fucking hell!!!
"Kill the Bastards" is most likely a title spawned by Miltos of Cinehound forum. The film's Turkish title is CAPKINIM HOVARDAYIM and it's directed by none other than Cetin Inanc! Yes, thee Cetin Inanc who also directed TURKISH STAR WARS, DEATH WARRIOR, TURKISH RAMBO, TURKISH ROCKY, TURKISH JAWS, and tons more.
Miltos had the Turkish VHS release of CAPKINIM HOVARDAYIM up for auction, I placed a fair amount on it but, uhh, after 12 bids it reached 122.50 bucks! Congrats to whoever won it. Sadly not me. :-(
This brutal film looks bloody awesome! (unless you don't like brutal films, obviously). And it's out on DVD-R (legit? Semi-legit? Boot?) from Ciko in Turkey. It's subtitled in English and when you order it you get both the original unsubbed Turkish VCD, a subbed DVD-R, and lobbycards. For the film on their eBay store go Go here. Edit: With most of the DVD-R's from Ciko you get a VCD along with the DVD-R but I've just been informed this isn't the case with this film. No VCD, only a subtitled DVD-R.
The book has arrived from the printers and is gonna go out as we speak. This is an actual picture of the boxes that the publisher-guy, John Overall, posted on "Kung Fu Cinema" forum earlier today! xD. The latest info I have is that everybody who pre-ordered and/or bought directly from John Overall is gonna get the colour version. And also, Amazon UK have finally lowered the price to the correct £20 (from 30). Now, who would've ever thunk we'd see a book on Bruce Lee clones!! Yay!
Amazing! I won Yilmaz Atadeniz' AFILLI DELIKANLI tonight on eBay! Yay! Spiffy! And I was the only bidder too! (maybe cos it's a Betamax but still!).
Yilmaz Atadeniz is the Turkish director who also did THE DEATHLESS DEVIL (aka Yilmayan seytan and on DVD from Mondo Macabro), SPY SMASHER (aka Casus Kiran, on DVD from Onar), KILING ISTANBUL'DA (also from Onar), and many more (Atadeniz is the guy in MM's docu who says "I wish we hadn't used a robot in DEATHLESS DEVIL that was so obviously a man in a robot suit", haha).
Usually I really have no interest in English dubs of old kung fu movies but all this talk about a rejected and basically lost dub of Bruce Lee's BIG BOSS is intriguing I must admit!
I've just noticed AWE are going to release the restored version of SAVAGE STREETS in June! The reg. 1 DVD from BCI (aka the old Brentwood label) came and went and has been OOP for quite a while now. On Amazon new copies are around 110 dollars at the moment!!! Great news indeed!!! And FOR ONCE it seems AWE are actually giving us a bit of extra stuff: I did a 7 sec. comparison and I believe all the extras from the reg. 1 disc are included!
[L-R] Bill Barounis & Tom "Shootgringoshoot" (Athens, 2010)
From what Bill is stating on his blog today he's not completely well, and the last two weeks have been very tough, but he's getting better. So glad to hear that! You can check Bill's blog post here.
The guy on the right grinning like an undertaker is Dutch/Swiss Cinehound member Tom aka "Shootgringoshoot" who went to hook up with Bill when Tom and his gf were on holiday in Greece earlier this year.
Jun Gallardo's RARE Filipino kung fu film THE GAME OF DEATH from 1974 (starring Ramon Zamora, "Philippines' Bruce Lee") has never been released to home-cinema before so it's pretty exciting that Global in South Africa are putting it out on DVD soon! And if you're into Filipino films I suggest you order a copy right away, the print run is ridiculously low. 82 copies to be exact!!! And yes, among Global's received orders are orders from people with such names as J. Jensen and A. Leavold. LOL.
At the same time as releasing THE GAME OF DEATH Global are also going to release MARTIAL MATES and SUPERGIRL OF KUNG FU. However, in contraction to THE GAME OF DEATH those two sound terrible dubbing wise (if you ask me anyway) as they're dubbed into typical old-skool kung fu film English (the global guy has posted clips on YouTube from those two as well). I'm not sure if GAME was actually shot in English but it certainly sounds much more natural.
By the way, this GAME OF DEATH is not to be confused with the Bruce Lee film of the same title, obviously. The Filipino film was actually made a full 4 yrs before the Robert Clouse film.
Yes, yes, I know, don't tell me; that's SCREEN GRAB OVERKILL!! But it's just that Cesar J. Amigo's THE HUNTED from the Philippines, 1970, is sooo extremely rare that I thought it was justified! So kill me.
Just a word on the picture quality; If you think the screen grabs look slightly blurry you got that right! It's just my (our) luck that the only release of this film is a crappy Greek VHS! Not that all Greek video tapes are crappy, of course, but this one sure is! The picture looks like it's overmodulated like in the old days when you'd attempt to make a vhs-to-vhs dupe and the frequencies were too close. Actually, it's so bad I thought someone had switched the original tape with a dupe but that's not the case. Not that it would make much of a difference cos I may never find another copy anyway. Maybe it's possible to make a dvdr copy and remove the distorted image but if it is I have no idea of how to. I grew up in the jungle. Among apes. Anyway, having watched my way thru many a pan & scan-un-dubbed-un-subbed-pixelating-taped off a VHS Malay video-cd I can say with confidence it's not that bad sitting thru this film. Okay, so it's fairly bad but the film makes up for it!
About a year ago I wrote about how I was watching my way thru the first season of the old fave cop/detective show Columbo which my mum got me into when I was 7 years old. I've been holding out on getting more seasons cos, well, everything has a price tag on it :-/ but last night I was lucky enough to scoop up a complete, brand new box set of Columbo seasons 1-8 for the "whooping" price of... £10!!! That's 15 dollars! With postage it came to around $17. My luck was a marketplace seller on Amazon UK selling a never used set as second hand. Wauw!! Big grinds all 'round!!! xD [EDIT: 13 years later I finally notice the bloody spelling mistake; it's GRINS, not "grinds" for fuck's sake!Argh!! /Jack in October 2022] About the box; I'm sticking to the UK DVDs as they're often better than their US counterparts when it comes to TV shows. And they're often cheaper than the locally released Danish versions (besides I just don't care much for the often badly written Danish cover text. It just annoys me! LOL). So far there's been two boxes I've been keeping an eye on price wise; A box containing seasons 1-7, and the one I've just bought which as I mentioned contains #1-8. I'm really only interested in seasons 1-7 as these are the original seasons from the 1970s. Don't get me wrong it's not that everything has to be old per se but I just don't think the "new" episodes (which by now are quite old too) are that good (if you're a Danish/scandinavian reader I suggest you read Henrik & Joachim Larsen's coverage of the series in Obskuriøst magazine #10. PDF-edition here). I've just noticed there's now a box set on Amazon that appears to be the fully complete series but I haven't checked out if it really is all complete or whatnot.
About the alternative ending (from Asian Dvd Guide) [contains spoilers!]:
[click the scans twice to see them in full size]
[L-R] Bill Barounis & Tom "Shootgringoshoot" (Athens, 2010)
