Dark and Nasty HK: 降頭恐佈片紅鬼仔潘麗賢

Check this awesome clip out. Completely inspired by THE EVIL DEAD but also completely its own! The clip looks like it came (via a worn VHS) from a real film print.

Arr man, movies were so much better in the old days! xD

COMIC FACE (1897)

Oh Anna

Whatever you think of Anna Nicole Smith is fine but in my book she was pure psychotronic!! And if nothing else she did do two movies that are, well, pure psychotronic awesomeness! TO THE LIMIT (1995) and SKYSCRAPER (1996).

Anna Nicole's acting abilities were so terrible in both films it almost defies physical possibility but that's not really important here; What is of major importance is they both deliver in the entertainment department. Well, I take it you understand I mean: on a highly trashy level.

Check out these two trailers and you'll see what I mean, and also be SURE to check out the video at the bottom of this post. It's a (probably rare) video tape from the shooting of SKYSCRAPER; if you thought her acting abilities were bad when you watched the films or trailers then... watch this tape. It goes where no crappy actor or actress has gone before, LOL. (btw, it's timecoded and was most likely never meant to be made public, LOL). Both films are on video tape and DVD.

Crazy Indonesia: Rambu.net gone!

It seems Rambu.net the only fan site dedicated to everyone's favourite Indo flick, RAMBU aka The Intruder, is gone. I can't say I'll miss them (sorry guys!) but still; sad to see someone disappear. If I don't seem too bummed out about it it's simply due to the fact that they never seemed interested in actually providing any kind of info on neither the film, the actors in the film (other than Peter O'Brian) nor the alternative version that was released in Indonesia (the Intruder version is the international edit). They didn't offer any info on Peter O'Brian's other films, nor did they have the slightest interest in wild Indo cinema as such. They did do that cool interview with Peter O'Brian but that was about it. I sincerely wish they would have done a better, more hardcore and anal fan job out of it than what they did. I'm not trying to be mean here, just honest. :-(

Anyway, the cover scan is from my video tape from Belgium. It is without a doubt thee best release of RAMBU picture-wise!! It's fully letterboxed (the Greek tape is only half lbx) and has a picture so crisp that you'll cut your fingers if you put them on the screen while the film is playing (the Greek tape has the usual soft picture that we've come to expect from Greek VHS). The only "flaw" is the French dubbing. If someone added the English dub to this tape it would be perfect and beat all other releases!

Crazy Indonesia: Five Deadly Angels - clip

This awesome scene is from the rare Indo film FIVE DEADLY ANGELS. The film is originally entitled 5 Cewek Jagoan and there was even a sequel, DEADLY ANGELS STRIKE BACK/Cewek Jagoan beraski Kembali (which I've watched on Malay VCD, it never came out in English). The film stars Debby Cynthia Dewi, Yati Octavia, Dana Christina and Lydia Kandou who are no strangers to fans of Indo cinema! Btw, this scene is missing from the German VHS.

Read Fred Adelman's cool review here.

VCD/Malaysia/fullscreen/Indonesian audio/no subs

Thanks to Peter aka Petcor80 of Cinehound for the DVD-R and for uploading this clip.

Bruno Mattei's THE JAIL

Here's the trailer, finally! Bruno Mattei's THE JAIL: A WOMAN'S HELL!! So you thought CASABLANCA was the best film ever made, ay?? xD

When all other Italian film makers had stopped making zombie, cannibal, and WIP movies Mattei kept at it! A full decade after everyone else chucked in the towel he trodded on with one 80s style genre-movie after another! I admit it, his later movies may not have been the top of the crop but you gotta give him kudos for his complete disregard for all other film makers having given up on genre-movies. Cheers, Bruno!

PS: This trailer is not even on YouTube!

20 second grudge

Pretty good!

Thanks to Julia for posting this on her blog.

The Crazies remake

I went to a big indoor second hand market in Melbourne around... well, early 1990s anyway, and some guy was selling all his video tapes. I had a look and picked one; Romero's original THE CRAZIES (aka Code Name Trixie). I asked the guy why he was selling his cool tapes to which he replied that he and his brother had way too many tapes, they simply haaad to get rid of some of them. "We have a big bookshelf with tapes like that one at home " he said and pointed to a bookshelf that was about half the size of any of my bookshelves, haha. Oh well, I got THE CRAZIES and I still have that ol'e Aussie tape in perfect condition. I always liked the film, it's not Romero's best but I definitely like it more than what many other fans do. So is this remake gonna be a bastard from Hell? No idea but in contradiction to quite a few of my fellow posters on Dvdmaniacs I quite like the trailer. So should you. xD

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(

First Vampire in China (1986)

aka FIRST VAMPIRE OF CHINA



I just won this poster on eBay. It wasn't that expensive and no you're right the poster isn't all that good either, HOWEVER it is for the extremely rare HK horror movie FIRST VAMPIRE IN CHINA from 1986. I have the movie on a fullscreen Japanese tape (Cantonese dialogue, Japanese subs). There's also a letterboxed and English subtitled laserdisc somewhere but it's very rare and I've never even seen it once. FIRST VAMPIRE IN CHINA isn't in the same style as the dark & nasty 1980s HK horror flicks I usually write about. This is more in the same vein as the MR VAMPIRE films, i.e. whacked out no-holds-barred craziness galore!!!



Here's a review Knetan (aka Kenneth Brorssan) posted on his Soo Good... review site:

Return Of The Demon director Wong Ying dabbles in vampire territory, with an amusing opening talking of indeed the first vampire in China. Threatening to take over the country along with his hordes of other vampires, luckily there was an earthquake to bury them all. Cut to the early 20th century and the new mayor Alexander Tso (Charlie Cho) arrives with his dopey assistant played by To Siu-Ming to inspect the town, the countryside and to generally wreak havoc with their greed and ignorance. Trying to extract what they think is a jade treasure (but is in fact the jade clothed first vampire), they blow up the burial site where other vampires are laid to rest and it's chaos from there. Master Kent (Sek Kin in the Lam Ching-Ying role) may be able up this mess. By no means a yet to be discovered classic, Wong Ying provides energetic pace throughout, with Charlie Cho and To Siu-Ming being cocks and literally being transformed into ones after being attacked by an re-animated one! Further energy comes via a scene where Shing Fui-On as a hopping vampire is caught in a skipping rope contraption while Hwang Jang-Lee turns up and threatens to marry off the daughter of Kent, in the afterlife. Also with Anthony Tang, Robert Mak, Chor Yuen and Sai Gwa-Paau.

VHS/Japan/fullscreen/in Cantonese/Japanese subs

And here's another (way cooler) poster I also just bought; MAGIC COP (1989) starring Mr. Vampire himself, Lam Ching-Ying (this on is easy to get on HK DVD).