VHS/Taiwan/fullscreen/Mandarin dub/English & Chinese subsThe other day I wrote about one of Yukari Oshima's most recent movies LETHAL COMBAT (from 1999) which is also released on DVD in Australia as Lethal Combat: Techno Warriors 2.
What I... in a deliberate and most cunning way... left out was that the original title of the film is... DIGITAL WARRIORS!!! I know what you're thinking. Why would my friend Jack J leave out vital info of the utmost high importance like this? O_O Doesn't he love me anymore?? O_O
Well, dry your tears little ones, I do love you (please send more free money and lollies) but everything has a reason. As I wrote in my first post the Thai DVD that I ordered from Thailand is dubbed into English (more on that later) and I simply didn't want you to try and find a copy of it on eBay cos you would undoubtedly discover that a seller in the UK was running an auction for A MANDARIN DUBBED VHS VERSION OF THE FILM FROM TAIWAN!!!!! Who wouldn't want to own such a tape!!! Who wouldn't want to rip off their own arms if it could help them get such a fabulous and fantastic VHS!!!
The irony is of course that some schmuck beat me on the finishing line so I didn't even get the fucker!!! .>_<.
However, like so many other things in life it all panned out in the end, haha. I received my DVD from Thailand today and, lo and behold, it turns out the seller misread the info on the cover! It doesn't say dubbed in English but SUBTITLED in English. The DVD carries BOTH the Mandarin AND the Cantones dub!!! In other words, this print is (most likely) the exact same print as on the Taiwan video tape and I got to save a big pile of cash! Awesome!!
It would have been nice to own the VHS but, hey, there's more to life than Yukari Oshima films (he says with quivering lips). Of course, the question is whether the film has an original audio track or not. Hmm, they could actually have shot it in English but knowing how cheap the films Phillip Ko did with Yukari Oshima (aka Cynthia Luster down 'Pino way) in the Philippines I would say they most likely didn't record sound on stage but made all dubs in the studio afterwards.
As I mentioned there's also a DVD release in OZ and it probably carries the English dub. If you can get it cheap then go for it. This isn't a HK film and neither Cantonese nor Mandarin is any more of a "real" dub than English would be. It all comes down to preference. Personally, I can't stand watching Hong Kong films dubbed into English (there are a few exceptions) but when it comes to Filipino films I have no problem with it (and if I did I would REALLY have a problem as I don't think I have one single old film from the Philippines that isn't dubbed into English!).
Screen grabs from the DVD:
