Njuta Films in Sweden have announced they're releasing Sergio Martino's post-apocalypse HANDS OF STEEL (aka Queruak) and Umberto Lenzi's IRONMASTER on DVD within the next 6 months! Very exceiting news there! Neither of the two have been released on DVD before*.
The announcement comes from Njuta Films' own homepage so there's no speculation on my part. However, I will speculate in their also being release by Njuta Films' sister label in Denmark/Norway, Another World Entertainment. Also, Njuta Films are also releaseing Bruno Mattei's SS GIRLS, Sergio Martino's 2019: AFTER THE FALL OF NEW YORK, and Joe D'Amato's PORNO HOLOCAUST. I'm confident we'll see them all from AWE also. Check more upcoming titles from Njuta Films here (Release inom ett halvår = Upcoming releases within the next 6 months).
*I really do not count reg. 1 public domain bootlegs sourced from video tapes as "releases"! .\_/.
Here's a fun scene from KILINK: STRIP AND KILL. Kilink was a diabolical bad guy who did what diabolical bad guys usually do: Evil deeds and other bad things. LOL. I must admit I quite like these old films and the cool thing about Kilink is that altho he is bad (like in eeevil baaaad) he was never too bad to not truly love his girlfriend. I guess it's a Turkish thing, his girlfriend was his girlfriend fullstop. However, that didn't mean he couldn't fool around like in this scene (in which, after he's fooled around, he has no further use for the girl and thus chucks her out of the window, haha). The film is on official DVD from Onar.
PS: The English title on the YT video is obviously wrong; it's Kilink, not "Klink".
When I stumbled over this video (posted on ebay actually) at first I thought it was some weirdo guy in some hell hole in Eastern Europe and that he was gonna present some verboten true-life "torture porn" snuff film. He does kinda give that impression, haha (and dude if you ever read this lemme apologise right away, I'm sure you're very nice and all, LOL). Anyway, he's actually in Finland (homeland of this happy fella that I posted about a while back). Check his review, it's kinda fun in a weird way (who needs deadpan reviews anyway) but also good fun. I laughed out aloud a few times ("hairy triangle", LMAO). The title for the film he talks about is Cannibal Curse on the YouTube video but in reality it's Patrick Kong Yeung's CURSE from 1988 (not to be confused with any other film by that title from Hong Kong! LOL). The DVD he reviews is one of the terribly crappy bootlegs from VideoAsia in the US, haha (but I'll admit it's a easy was to get these rare films). You can get them on Amazon, there's a handful of volumes and they're about the price of a hamburger (WITHOUT a soft drink! Haha).
Don't ask me why I landed on a fashion blog but I did; Some girl's fashion blog and she was celebrating her 3 yrs in Cyberspace the other day (like I did). So I'm thinking "ahh, how cute she's also got a li'l blog" and then I notice the number of followers she's got: 10,000+!!!!!! O_O And the 3 yrs as a blogger has brought her big features in magazines around the world (check the covers in the bar) and invites from Paris' fashion week. Jesus fucking christ!!! Alright, that's it, up your bum with you guys! No more posts about retarded crappy crummy nicotine smelly video tapes, from now on I write about skirts and blouses!!!
- Or maybe it's the bloopers that did it. Hmm, I should get some bloopers.
Check this out! I'm getting the legendary low budget splatter flick SICK-O-PATHICS from 1996! It's directed by Massimo Lavagnini and among other fine actors it stars Antonio Margheriti, Luigi Cozzi, Renato Polselli, Lucio Fulci, Antonella Fulci, David Warbeck, Linnea Quigley, Sergio Stivaletti, Dardano Sacchetti, Joe D'Amato, Sergio Bergonzelli!!! The tape I'm getting is an English language release on the German Manic Entertainment label. There's no DVD release.
Argh!!! Quite a few years ago I remember reading about Studio S and the Swedish video nasty scare in an issue of the old (and sadly long gone) fanzine Video Ferox and now... it's coming to DVD with lots of... but I know dick about this so why don't you jump over to me mate Jason's blog and read his cool write-up on this new release. Go here. Now!
Did you check the trailer I posted yesterday? If not I recommend you do so right away at least if you love gory flicks!! I posted the trailer because Diabolik mentioned the film to me but I hadn't actually read anything about it. I have now and, whoah, it made me order it right away! Check Fred's review here. I ordered it from one of my fave DVD/VCD stores in Thailand, eThaiCD.com and it came to $11.50 in total (they have free postage to anywhere). Check the disc here. If for some obscure reason you want the VCD instead they have that too at half the price. The DVD has English subs, the VCD doesn't.
EDIT: SATAN OG HELVEDE!!! Diabolik just mentioned to me that the DVD I'm linking to doesn't have English subs (or at least the store page only mentions Thai subs). Bummer! Who could've known they've put out different DVD versions in Thailand of the same film already!! I'll let you know if it's got subs or not when I get it. Argh, for fuck's sake!!!
I first saw Ingrid Pitt in THE VAMPIRE LOVERS on a double bill at the old Scala Cinema Club in London sometime in the late '80s. Right after I went out and bought COUNTESS DRACULA on video. And now she's gone. :(
The headline is of course wrong as this is neither a magazine nor are there any other people here than yours truly and thus no "our". But my initial headline "Three years down the line" reads too generic. LOLZ.
ANYWAY... Gee, has it really been THREE YRS since this debut post!!! I figured this blog would get me fortune, famous, laid, and more popular amongst my peers... and what's happened. No, don't answer that. Kurt's pic from Cinehound from today says it all. Pffft!
Has anybody been here since the first post apart from Nicolai? Some of you are truly "unknown readers in Cyberspace" and some are people I know either from real life or the blog world. But in any case thanks to everyone who's followed this crappy blog and either continue to do so or got pissed off (or bored) and left. Well, anyhoo, catch ya on the flipside, mates. :D
More old crappy posts from November 3 yrs ago here.
How cool is this!! Our friend in Filipino fandom Andrew Leavold just came back from the Philippines where he spent time with about everyone who was ever working in Filipino films! I'm not jealous. Not at all. Not AT all (yeah right).
Gee! Five or six yrs ago I found the Indo war flick DAREDEVIL COMMANDOS on very old Danish VHS (carton case release from Westcon Home Video). Only, the tape inside the case was another release from the same label: The Korean war flick MISSION INFERNO! Fortunately, I managed to find another copy of DAREDEVIL COMMANDOS after a couple of years but still no case for MISSION INFERNO! Then skip to five years later (today) and I finally find another copy of MISSION INFERNO in an op-shop, this time WITH the original cardboard case and including the correct tape!!! Sometimes you NEED to be patient to be a collector!
Is it a good movie I hear you ask. Hell no. But it's RARE. Haha. Check my old post about it here.
I wanted to check if Baby Woodrose's cover version of "Baby the World Ain't Round it's Square" (from their cover version album "Dropout!") might be on YouTube but instead I found this awesome version by the original band, The Savages. According to the Baby Woodrose booklet The Savages hailed from Bermuda. The uploader mentions that the (interesting) footage is from the Columbia university riots in '68 over the school's support of the Government's war in Vietnam.
I received my new TIGER CAGE 1-3 DVDs from HK this week. They're brand new releases and have been mucho wanted for years by me and every other 1980s HK film fan on the block! A couple of weeks back I tried to watch my mainland China Zoke DVD of TIGER CAGE 2 but it kept freezing, stuttering and in the end it just gave up (or I did).
The Mandarin only audio was kinda annoying too. The audio was less than perfect, and also, due to mainland Chinese not being familiar with all the HK English expressions those are usually gone from Mandarin dubs (you know Hongkongese usually use a lot of English expressions in Cantonese, "Yes/no, madam/sir", "this is an order", "bye-bye", etc). And it kinda sounds unfamiliar not to have all those standard, English terms. To me it does anyway.
Anyway, so it was cool to finally be able to watch TIGER CAGE 2 all thru to the end. And since I'd already watched half of the Zoke DVD I started with #2 of the Fortune Star/Joy Sales DVDs. And that was a good thing too!! TIGER CAGE 2 is a great film, highly entertaining, violent, and funny. And it's got cute Rosamund Kwan in it too. But then I watched TIGER CAGE 1!!!
Before I watched #2 I thought it would probably become my favourite simply cos it has Cynthia Khan in it but, firstly, she's not in the movie very much, her part is nothing more than a meaty cameo, and secondly, I... watched #1 yesterday!! Whoah!! TIGER CAGE 2 is good but TIGER CAGE 1 is TWICE as good! Really!
TC2 is violent and it's full-on all the way but it's also light in tone thru out. The scenes of Donnie Yen and Romasund Kwan's characters trying to escape while handcuffed to each other are great fun. And the slapstick scenes of Rosamund spitting noodless in Donnie's face and Donnie-pissing-himself scenes are great fun but stuff like that is just absent from the first film. TIGER CAGE has a more serious tone and deeper character characterisations which the sequel just doesn't get near of.
When I watched TC1 I kept thinking "this is very good", and it really is! Very violent, gory, people die left and right (including characters who you think are gonna last to the end) and Simon Yam delivers (once again) a great performance as the bad guy. Arrrh, Simon Yam! "Look, I'm not gay but if I had to fuck a guy, I mean if I haaaad to fuck a guy, if my life depended on it... I'd fuck Simon Yam" [Clarence in TRUE ROMANCE, altho about Elvis]. I haven't watched part three and most reports are that it sucks but most reporters suck these days anyway so I'm gonna keep an open mind for that one too. It stars American Chinese actor Michael Wong.
I looked up the films in the Asian Trash Cinema book and good ol'e Thomas Weisser states these films are popular with chop socky fans (!!) but that "more demanding critics have complained over the simplistic story lines". Huh? Like, huh?? Did he even watch the films?? You never know what's gonna happen in the first film and the character and story development is far from being simple. Sure we're talking a violent crime/action film here but the alternative would be to not make a violent crime/action film. Weisser seemed to think films that had people fighting in them were automatically "chop socky". Well, they aren't.
To the best of my knowledge chop socky is a term used to describe old-skool kung fu films from the 60s and 70s. Not present day action films made in the 1980s! The fact that he states "Cynthia [Khan] was made for these kinds of roles" makes me think he really didn't watch TC2 or sat at the table and had his dinner while it was on cos this really isn't Cynthia Khan's film. At all!! She's in the movie for something like 6-7 minutes! The ATC book is cool as it includes most of the 80s films but plot descriptions and shit is just so off the mark that, well, it's off the mark.
About the DVD specs (as mentioned I haven't watched part 3 but I assume it's the same): The DVDs are kinda barebone releases but the remastered prints look great and that's what's important here! And one thing that has surprised everyone is they actually include the original Cantonese mono audio tracks as well as the bastard 5.1 mixes.
It would have been nice if TC2 had included the alternative end scene in the extras but I'm not surprised Fortune Star didn't. They're just not the people to bother with "nonsense" like that. We got two trailers on each disc (the original trailer and a new one made for this release) and some picture galleries. The subtitles are the old wonky ones but I can live with that, new ones would have been nice though. Someone who worked as a translator for Joy Sales said this on Asia Dvd Guide forum about Fortune Star's attitude: "Fortune Star actually laughed at the idea of a reworking on the English subs."
And lastly (and totally unrelated), check out this cool Tee!! I want one!! xD xD xD
Thanks to a tip from Kenneth M. of Cinehound forum I'm now the happy owner of this cute baby! OVER MY DEAD BODY from the Philippines, 1983. It's ultra rare! And gee gosh golly it was mega cheap too! (well, "cheap" in the land of the serious ex-rental video collectors, LOL).
Credits from the seller's page:
IN ENGLISH WITH GREEK SUBTITLES
Director: Arsenio Bautista
Cast (Cast overview, first billed only) Tony Ferrer Bembol Roco Efren Reyes Jr. Raul Aragon (as Raoul Aragon) Anna Marie Gutierrez Lolita Marquez Jing Abalos Dave Brodett Charlie Davao Romy Diaz Baldo Marro Bomber Moran Boy Padilla Robert Talabis (as Bobby Talabis) Vic Varrion
BRUTAL SORCERY is one of the old dark and nasty Hong Kong horror movies that seemed to have a curse of its own! For the longest time I just COULD NOT get hold of that damn Ocean Shores tape!! Every time (which isn't very often as it's a quite rare VHS) it turned up on eBay some schmuck with more money would always beat me on the finishing line. But not this time, not last night, no sir'ee! xD xD xD
I'm rather skint at the moment but just out of principle I put 50 bucks on the tape as I knew with myself that I'd truly and utterly HATE my own guts if some schmendrick (who might not even know what the movie is) won it for 25 dollars or something - simply because nobody else placed a bid.
I "knew" that I wasn't gonna win it with 50 dollars but at least I could feel comfort in knowing I'd done what I could. I was so sure that I wasn't gonna win this most treasured Ocean Shores tape that I didn't even care to follow the auction. Well, lo and behold, I opened my email account today and the first email that I see says... "You won this item on eBay: BRUTAL SORCERY - rare Horror, Ocean Shores-demonic gore". Arrrgh! Auto winning bid: 43 dollars!!!
But needless to say there's always something else to worry about and I wasn't even sure the seller would accept my winning bid and he was in his full right not to do so. The auction was listed as: "Ships to: United States" so if the seller hadn't been happy with a winning bid of $43 he could have said "Sorry, buddy, you don't live in the US" and cancelled the auction. Fortunately he didn't and cheers to him for that. Whoever he is.
Ahh, BRUTAL SORCERY. Just try and say it slowly... BRRUUUTTTAAALLL SOOOORCEERYYY. Ahhh. And yes, it's the one where a possessed family man has a chicken and he... no, you really need to watch it. :D
PS: Unfortunately, there's never been a DVD release of the film. There's an un-subbed Ocean Shores VCD in Cantonese/Mandarin, and a Cantonese language VHS from Japan but that's about it I'm afraid. And both are just as rare as the OS tape. Click the label for the title if you'd like to check the covers for the two other releases.
Readers who are able to spell their way thru the lingo of the old Vikings and who're also into the old Danish band Sort Sol (aka Sods) might wanna check out my new review of the documentary film OMKRING EN SORT SOL - ET PORTRÆT AF SODS over in the Danish section.
My friend Hans-Jørn found this rare and VERY obscure trailer for Bobby A. Suarez' film HITMAN (aka American Commandos / Philippines, 1986) on a Danish ex-rental video tape! It's obscure not least because it plays out as a music video instead of an actual film trailer!! And an even more obscure twist is that HITMAN was partly backed by Danish financing as it was produced by Danish producer Just Betzer. Betzer is also credited as executive producer on Suarez' SEACHERS OF THE VOODOO MOUNTAINS (aka Warriors of the Apocalypse / Philippines, 1985). The music is composed by Danish composer Ole Høyer and the female singer is Danish/American Debbie Cameron who was "world famous" in Denmark thru out the 1980s.
SEACHERS OF THE VOODOO MOUNTAINS on VHS from Denmark.
It would have been fun to interview Just Betzer about his collaboration with Suarez but unfortunately he passed away a few years back.
It's interesting to see that these films aren't even listed in his credits on the Danish Film Institute site. Danes who get famous for work overseas don't necessarily get any love for it on home-soil. The same goes for Anders Hove; Every little vampire movie fan in the US knows and loves him for his awesome vampire character Radu in the SUBSPECIES films. Nobody in Denmark gives a fuck about that and these films are usually not even mentioned when his films are listed on Danish film sites. Instead people talk about his work in TV Christmas calender shows for kids, etc. How very sad!
And one more thing in regards to Just Benzer; Yesterday, I received DarkSky's new (very cool!) DVD release of Suarez ONE ARMED EXECUTIONER and CLEOPATRA WONG and in Andrew Leavold's interview with Bobby Suarez he talks about a Scandinavian film director who came over to visit him in the Philippines and who wanted to buy Bobby's camera (he didn't sell it tho). I wonder if that might have been Betzer?
(VHS, Denmark)Thanks to Diabolik for uploading (and re-uploading) the trailer to YT for me! Cheers mate!!This is a re-post that was originally posted on WHEN THE VIETNAM WAR RAGED... IN THE PHILIPPINES blog in November, 2010.
PS: I have no idea if Moon Lee does her own singing here. I was about to say "probably not" but then again every film star in HK seems to have a singing career so why not Moon Lee. I mean Ricky Hui ("the human Droopy") has a singing career for Christ's sakes!! (Ricky Hui is the goofy and hapless helper in MR VAMPIRE and he's the guy in HAUNTED COP SHOP II who gets to utter the best line of all lines in all movies ever made from any country: "I'll always think of him when I urinate" [after a friend has been killed by electrocution]).
Check this full-on trailer for the HK "Girls with guns" movie KILLER ANGELS! It's completely on level with ANGEL 1 & 2. It stars cute Moon Lee and it's completely no-holds-barred entertaining! For years the only copy I could get hold of was the HK VCD which is in Cantonese/Mandarin but doesn't have any subtitles (didn't keep me from watching it at least 10 times tho!).
I watched the HK "Girls with guns" movie DEVIL HUNTERS last night (and again tonight, LOL). It stars Moon Lee and Sibelle Hu. It's not exactly in league with neither A BETTER TOMORROW nor ANGEL 1 & 2 but, uh, it stars Moon Lee... and Sibelle Hu... and they shoot guns and kick ass and look cute while they do it. That's good enough for me. :D
It's also quite gory and nasty in places as well. Plus it has thee most insane ending of all Hong Kong films ever!!! The three main characters get blown up... FOR REAL!!!!!!! In the last scene [SPOILER obviously] the bad guy shoots his gun into a gas container to commit suicide and take everyone with him. Well, the special effects people used way too much explosives and Moon Lee, Sibelle Hu and the male lead, Ray Lui, all caught fire and Sibelle Hu and Moon Lee got injured seriously and spent time in hospital.
Remember how Jackie Chan films always end with outtakes from the film? Well, it's kinda the same here but instead of OUTTAKES you see real Hong Kong NEWSPAPER CLIPPINGS from the incident and from the hospital. Insane! Only in Hong Kong!!! You can check that last scene in the YouTube clip in the above. Oh, and notice how the producers PAUSE the film and post a text on the screen to explain the incident (or to EXPLOIT THE INCIDENT, whichever way you see it!).
Unfortunately, the onscreen text is almost unreadable on the VCD and I'm not gonna spend three hours to try and depict what it says so here's the text from the guy who uploaded the clip on YouTube:
"The most precious and exciting shots ever on movie. At 7 pm on 19 May, 1989, Hu Wai Chung (Sibelle Hu), Li Sai Fung (Moon Lee) and Lu Liang Wai (Ray Lui) acted the explosion shots in person. They were challenging death with their lives. Unluckily, the gunpowder - -(illegilble) - - and the flames wrapped around them. Hu Wai Chung and Li Sai Fung were seriously injured. On behalf of our company, we are sending our best regards to Wu Wai Chung, Li Sai Fung and Lu Liang Wai"
Terrible news, my friends. Heartbreaking in fact. It seems fans of Filipino cinema won't have anything to look forward to for this year's Christmas. It's gonna be a cold, cold Christmas without... GAMES OF DEATH! Boo-hoo.
Over on Kung Fu Cinema Forum one of the members suggested to Global that he could buy the Ramon Zamora film GAMES OF DEATH (aka Dragon's Mission) (plus two other rare HK kung fu films) off Global and sell them on DVD-R. He received the three films and here's what he posted the other day:
[...] I received the movies all 3 2 widescreen and 1 fullscreen ...
The [problem] is that what he send to me the material lacks scenes it's as if you would go and buy yourself a book and when opening the book there are torn (chapters) pages missing ... That's the case with these 3 movies ...
For ex Martial Mates 59 min of the movie and the last 16-17 min are added to after THE END. Taken from the middle somewhere so it's a total mess ... My guess is that he misses 35mm material either it's lost or it's damaged.
This is the case with all 3 movies so I told him that I would not go along with this and have incomplete movies sold. I don't want to have a bunch of angry [kung fu] fans on my neck ... It's not my cup of tea ... He said ok no matter... Whatever ...
He has found another guy now whom he has known for some time and he will get into this and have them sold after Dec month ...
I asked him will you enhance re-edit the movies with full material? He said I don't have any more material what's there is there!!!!! Well, then I told him good luck with the selling ... And that's about it.
So apparently the RAMON ZAMORA film is not complete!!! :-( What a bummer. Boo-hoo.
I bought these two on eBay UK today: DEVIL HUNTERS and KICKBOXER'S TEARS. Both films are Hong Kong flicks and they star the lovely (and ass kicking) Moon Lee (who was of course also in ANGEL 3 which I posted about yesterday) and she's joined by the equally lovely (and mucho ass kicking) Sibelle Hu (in DEVIL) and Yukari Oshima (in KICKBOXER'S). Both tapes are US releases and quite hard to get hold of these days. DEVIL HUNTERS is even a brand new, never opened copy! The seller had only listed them for sale within the UK but I wrote and asked him to sell them to me (apparently I'm his first non UK buyer, LOL).
aka IRON ANGELS 3 / RETURN OF THE IRON ANGELS / MIDNITE ANGELS 3
Check this scene from ANGEL 3! Argh, awesome. I have two versions of this (reg. 1 DVD and Japanese VHS) and they both suffer from being dubbed into English and fullscreen (and apparently missing scenes). Wauw, this Cantonese language, 2.35 anamorphic print looks just awesome! And fortunately for you and me it's been released without any English subs what-so-ever over in the Czech Republic. No, wait, haaay! Haha. No, not good at all. No subs and difficult to get hold of but AT LEAST IT'S FINALLY OUT THERE! I'm sure it's only a matter of time before someone puts fan subs on it.
Japanese VHS
Oh, and talking 'about Angel ripoffs that followed in the footsteps of the original series, I've just got hold of this COOL Greek VHS which sports an English dubbed print of the TRULY AWESOME film KILLER ANGELS (which also stars Moon Lee). I must have watched that un-subbed Hong Kong VCD (in Cantonese/Mandarin) at least 15 times!
KILLER ANGELS was retitled Ultra Force for some of the European markets. Very confusing as the same title was also used in some other Euroland territories (like Denmark and Germany) for another "girls with guns" flick called ROYAL WARRIORS (aka In the Line of Duty). The sequel to Ultra Force (in the "Greek" series) was not surprisingly Ultra Force 2 which was actually a retitle of DEVIL HUNTERS. The Danish/German Ultra Force 2 was YES, MADAM! (aka In the Line of Duty 2). At least all movies star Moon Lee!! :D
Annie Nicholson just posted an update on Nick Nicholson's blog. If you follow the Filipino section on Dvdmaniacs you'll know that Andrew Leavold is once again back in the Philippines to do what it is he does in regards to Filipino cinema (basically everything to scoop up more info!). And over on Annie & Nick's blog you can read an account of their meeting, party and check the pix. It's been about thee months since Nick Nicholson passed away and it's definitely weird not to see any more of his blog updates, sometimes on films, sometimes on life in general, and sometimes wild posts about stuff that pissed him off. Good to see Jim Gaines was there too (I'm sure you're aware he was in tons of trashy Filipino Vietnam War movies and action movies like THE LAST HUNTER, STRIKE COMMANDO 2, ONE ARMED EXECUTIONER, and he's kept doing films when everyone else had chucked in the towel; He was in Mattei's ZOMBIE THE BEGINNING from 2007). For the update and photos go here. Thanks to Annie for keeping us updated.
I'm not sure if I should post this on my Lejemorder blog or the Filipino blog, so sod it I'll post it on both!
I just checked Google Analytics and yesterday I had ZERO visitors! Not just on this blog but on all my blogs!!! Gee, what happened. O_O Obviously a malfunction with Google but still an obscure reading, LOL.
VCI in the States have just released Manuel Cano's SWAMP OF THE RAVENS on DVD sourced from a spiffy 35mm uncut print. The DVD also includes an equally uncut version of I EAT YOUR SKIN (aka Zombie) taken from a widescreen print. This certainly sounds good. SWAMP was released a few years back from Something Weird Video but apparently that DVD was missing some footage at the end. I should point out I have no idea of how much is missing from the SWV print as I haven't seen that print. I look forward to this new DVD though and have just ordered it today (well, yesterday I guess as this is 3 in the morning, LOL). I do own the other film, I EAT YOUR SKIN, which was also released on a SWV DVD (in their DVD-R line actually) and that version certainly needs an improved release.
Here's some info from DVDManiacs by poster Ethan Christian Seiler, I sincerely hope he doesn't mind my reprint here. You'll find the thread here.
Odd the talk gets diverted to Bava's BLOOD AND BLACK LACE as there is a solid connection unto SWAMP OF THE RAVENS. Manuel Cano produced Mario's very personal HATCHET FOR THE HONEYMOON as well as SWAMP writer Santiago Moncada co-writing that film as well! SWAMP is grossly underrated, a highly unusual, evocative, very enigmatic film with a singularly unique atmosphere....Hands down it possesses the most abstract and unorthodox "zombies" I can recall in any film. The Ecuadorean locales, particularly the swamp wherein Dr. Frosta's abode and ramshackle laboratory are located is a masterpiece of a natural location, so rich in depth of ambient dimension, the film is quite morbid within its fetishism, contains one of the best necrophilia sequences I have ever seen, but the necro-medical fetishism exuding throughout the film is, as well, quite unparalleled and of much power, including the very effective utilization of an actual human post mortem dissection (as effective and jarring in its smaller scale manner as anything in MEN BEHIND THE SUN, particularly since it just comes at you very fast, like a rock pelted directly into your head, from left field, you do not expect it, there is no ceremony culminating within it, it just cuts to it and it starts!). The English dubbing could be better, but Moncada's dialogue is full of caustic wit, character idiosyncratic dimension, even a type of brilliance to its narrative structure, he is in top form here. I think the recently deceased Aldo Sambrell referred to director Cano as, (to paraphrase) "..completely insane...".......haha......
Great new for fans of this film, I contacted VCI to ask specifics, firstly, I got them to correct their mistake for citing co-feature on the disc, Del Tenney's ZOMBIES, as running 148 minutes (!!!!)....Though I am disappointed that there will not be a two and a half hour ZOMBIES/I EAT YOUR SKIN....lol.....The print is still longer than many at 93 minutes.......
Anyway, here's what they wrote, it sounds very promising for both films!:
SWAMP OF THE RAVENS - was mastered from a 35mm negative. The video transfer was done 16x9 anamorphic widescreen with an aspect ratio of 2.35:1 (the original aspect ratio of the film) and is enhanced for 16x9 monitors. The film was produced in Spain but the version we are releasing has an English soundtrack.
ZOMBIE - the running time is really 93 minutes. The video transfer was also also done 16x9 anamorphic widescreen with an aspect ratio of 1.77:1 with enhancement for 16x9 monitors.
Njuta Films in Sweden have announced they're releasing Sergio Martino's post-apocalypse HANDS OF STEEL (aka Queruak) and Umberto Lenzi's IRONMASTER on DVD within the next 6 months! Very exceiting news there! Neither of the two have been released on DVD before*. 
The VHS scans are courtesy of Diabolik.
