Bionic Boy and Dynamite Johnson finally on dvd!

Well, I ought to say they are finally on DVD again as they are already on DVD in South Africa but those two DVDs are long out of print and are very hard to get by now.

However, I've just been informed that the Bobby A. Suaerz produced BIONIC BOY and DYNAMITE JOHNSON (aka Bionic Boy 2) have been released on a single DVD in Germany (under the title Superboy 1 & 2) and (according to Amazon.de) luckily both films carry the English dub! And they are letterboxed!

I have no info on picture quality but seeing as the South African DVDs were pretty rough looking (direct off film prints and no care taken in regards to make the transfers look their best) chances are this DVD is gonna make the films look better than what they have before on home cinema format. If and when I get more info on the quality I'll be sure to post it here.

The Amazon Germany price is 21 euros + postage but some of the marketplace sellers sell them at around 10 euros. Amazon Germany do ship outside of Germany, some of the marketplace sellers do and some don't (like with all Amazon branches). Check the DVD here.


Thanks to Marc C. of dvdmaniacs forum for the info!!!

The Bionic Boy + Cleopatra Wong DVDs (Starlite Video)

I re-watched Bobby A. Suarez's Filipino movie DYNAMITE JOHNSON: Bionic Boy part 2 on DVD last night. The film is out from from Starlite Video (aka Global Video) in South Africa which also put out the first BIONIC BOY film and the related THEY CALL HER CLEOPATRA WONG.

All three films are quite enjoyable and all are unfortunately quite difficult to get hold of. CLEOPATRA WONG plus yet another Suarez film, ONE-ARMED EXECUTIONER, are going to get a reg. 1 release (probably) at the end of the year so that's pretty good. Brilliant actually. But it still leaves the two BIONIC BOY films hanging somewhere in the void, unfortunately.

Anyway, what I really wanted to address is some complete nonsense which is mentioned in regards to all three films on the German film data base OFDb, where it says:

Bemerkungen:
Hier diente wohl ein VHS als Vorlage, dementsprechend dürftig sind Bild und Ton.

What they're basically saying is that all three DVDs were sourced from video tapes and that the picture and sound is crap! Well, it appears that whoever wrote the comments (someone calling himself "Zeiram") obviously couldn't distinguish between a less than perfect transfer from film print to DVD, and a worn video tape!! And that's exactly what this is; The three DVDs are so not sourced from VHS but from real film elements! I have no idea of whether they're from 35mm or from 16mm but all three films are presented in the fullscreen format which could indicate they're from 16mm (but don't run with that as solid proof as I really have no idea!!).

The reason the picture is less than perfect in parts (only in parts! Most of the films look fine!!) is that these DVDs weren't released by some big-ass company who had enough money for proper transfers and restoration. Starlite Video is actually just one guy who's sitting on a bunch of rare film prints which he inherited years ago from a family member who owned an old cinema.


In my opinion the prints are alright. No, they're not perfect and if you need everything to be HD then I'd advise you stay clear of these DVDs. But if you're into worldweird films and excitement found outside of Blockbuster then I would suggest you pick up these releases when you find them. Or rather... "would have picked them up" as they're actually out of print and are already rare. According to the guy behind Starlite/Global they only sold around 300 copies each so there won't be a any reprints and the handful of other Filipino films he has in his possession and which were planned for release won't be released now. Boo-hoo. One of them was even COSA NOSTRA ASIA which has never been released anywhere to the home cinema market in English! :o(