Back in 2009 (almost to the date!) well known HK film aficionado Spannick mentioned on Cinehound forum that the German label he's working for, CINECLUB, was planning a DVD release of the rare VIRGIN APOCALYPSE. Now, 4 years later, it seems it's finally on its way! Yay! Spiffy!!
Spannick's info from today says the upcoming DVD is from a 35mm print and the film is presented in 2.35 anamorphic!! That's very good news indeed. It's well known that Joseph Lai's IFD company can't provide proper prints for most of their films. In fact, according to Spannick the print for VIRGIN APOCALYPSE was, "the IFD Master delivered was in Fullscreen and horribly framecut".
And Spannick adds the IFD master was also 4 (four!) minutes shorter than the uncut print. Although not quite as butchered as IFD's fullscreen master the 35mm is missing about a minute's worth of footage. On the DVD the missing footage has been replaced by a few inserts from a German VHS (also presented in widescreen). Fortunately there's no need to worry about English friendliness! The DVD will contain both a German and an English dub!
In the extras department we find the English language trailer and an entire extra movie: COMMANDO FURY! This film is included (in the extras) as it's sourced from a Japanese video tape (2.35 widescreen). Spannick's label wanted to release the film on its own but the master from Joseph Lai was "unwatchable Fullscreen".
This is certainly great news! VIRGIN APOCALYPSE is very difficult to find. The cover scan here is from the UK label 4-BIDDEN ASIA who released it in Holland (most likely cos they weren't allowed to release it uncut in the UK due to harsh censorshit regulations there at the time) many years ago. I don't know how many different VHS releases that exist but they are indeed all very rare.
The web isn't exactly spilling over with reviews. The one I did manage to find says about the plot: "Sound's pretty simple right? Well, it took me two sober viewings to figure this thing out."
No final release date has been published yet.
