Old-skool Ironmaster

I posted the new DVD cover for IRONMASTER the other day and I thought I'd just post the old Danish ex-rental VHS cover as well. Needless to say I have mr Diabolik to thank for the scan. Cheers, mate.

Cover for the new Scandinavian DVD release of "2019 After the Fall of New York"

The other day I mentioned some very exiting upcoming AWE and Njuta Films releases, and here's finally the cover for 2019 AFTER THE FALL OF NEW YORK (Njuta edition) that I didn't have the other day! Very cool! Well, very cool that I have it that is. The cover on the other hand completely blows ass if you ask me!! What the hell is wrong with the back of that cover!? What is that???

But then again the back of the old Danish/Swedish VHS also looks like it was done by a blind dude on crack so maybe it's out of nostalgic reasons the new one sucks ass too, haha.



The Njuta release is set for February 9. I have no info on the AWE version. I also have the release dates for a couple of the other titles:

HANDS OF STEEL - February 15 (AWE) / February 2 (Njuta)
BLASTFIGHTER - March ??? (AWE) / February 23 (Njuta)

I wrote to AWE a couple of days ago and asked about the cropping issues that the German DVD release of BLASTFIGHTER has and whether the Scandinavian version will be void of this nonsense but so far no reply. I'm crossing my fingers we're gonna get a proper version this time.

THE CRAMPS - interview (1990)

"Night After Night" talkshow, 1990

It was very strange to be in a coffee shop and there are a 100 people and they are all looking at you... *in Texas*.

Gee whiz!! Check out this muy great interview with Poison Ivy & Lux Interior from THE CRAMPS! It starts a little abrupt but most of it is there; According to the uploader there's 30 seconds missing at the beginning. It's from American TV in 1990 and at first you might think the interviewer looks fairly square but actually... and in contradiction to so many other interviewers... he takes his time with the band and asks them direct no bullshit questions. No fake baloney here. He's probably not a fan but he genuinely seems to be honest about wanting to know about the band. Notice how he doesn't try and pull a stupid joke when Lux talks about masturbating fans! xD
Great interview. So sad Lux isn't here anymore. :(

Last Warrior / Son Savasci (Turkey, 1982)

I've just finished watching the legendary Turkish action/ninja movie LAST WARRIOR (aka Son Savasci) starring the main pride of Turkish cinema, Cüneyt Arkin. The film was directed by another legend in Turkish cult cinema Cetin Inanc. I'm not gonna bore you with a list of his films, if you're into world-weird cinema you already know and treasure them, but the one title Inanc sure is gonna be remembered for is TURKISH STAR WARS (aka The Man Who Saves the World/Dünyayi Kurtaran Adam) which also stars Arkin and sexy Füsun Ucar who plays his love interest in both films (she's also in the follow up DEATH WARRIOR/Ölüm Savascisi).




This time Arkin is a Turkish cop with a past; He was in the Korean war (which ended in 1953 and LAST WARRIOR is set in the early 80s!!!) where he learnt the skills of a ninja. When the movie begins Arkin gets a phone call from his police chief asking him to go to Germany to help the German polizei who are having trouble with people being bumped off by... a ninja!! (I wonder how Danish or Aussie police would handle such a case?) and Arkin would obviously be the right man to fight the ninja as he knows "the way of the ninja" so to speak. xD




When Arkin gets the call he's on holiday with sexy (very sexy) Füsun Ucar but even tho she looks at him with those sexy (very sexy) Turkish eyes he's adamant, "A cop never be owner of ownself" as he puts it in the crappy subtitles. Once he's arrived over in Deutschland he experiences the carnage left behind by the brutal ninja and with the local police he sets out to put an end to this masterless criminal's reign of terror.




LAST WARRIOR is totally entertaining! There's not ONE dull moment in the entire film and you really don't want to blink because you'll just miss something. I referred to TURKISH STAR WARS earlier in this review and once again Cetin Inanc saves money by stealing left and right from an American film! This time obviously not from the original STAR WARS but from some film with lots of car chases in it! You'll see Cüneyt Arkin throw himself from side to side, frantically turn the steering wheel, and work that gear rod like there's no tomorrow - and then the camera angle jumps to an outside view of the car - or rather how the car looks in the American film, haha. I have no idea which films the scenes are from but, regardless, it adds to the awesomeness of the film that's for sure! :D

EDIT: The stolen scenes are from Paul Bartel's CANNONBALL (1976)!! Thanks to Jayson of "Basement of Ghoulish Decadence" blog for this info.




The DVD I got is from my friends at Ciko in Turkey; They actually asked Cetin Inanc if it were all right to release his films on DVD-R and they got his okay. However, that doesn't change the fact that this has the look and feel of a bootleg; The print is sourced from an old VHS and there's no cover or disc art (apart from the handwritten title, LOL). But in contradiction to earlier bootleg releases this DVD-R is actually subtitled in English (or something that resembles English anyway) and big kudos to Ciko for this! The quality of the print used for the original VHS is alright, I have certainly seen VHS prints that were far worse. There's also a trailer but in contradiction to the film print the trailer looks like it was downloaded from YouTube, in other words it's pretty crappy (and for some reason not subtitled!) but it's cool it's included.




I must admit I've seen enough Turkish and HK Chinese films that weren't English friendly to last me a lifetime and I'm happy to just get ANY kind of English subs. However, having said that, I should point out the subs are not very good TO SAY THE LEAST. They'll give you a fairly good impression of what's being said but to tell you the truth the subs kinda blow in a major way! And trust me, this isn't a question of me making a note of the few times there's a slight spelling error or some bad grammar; This is a question of making a note every time there's a correct sentence!!




Some of my film friends, especially in the US, have commented that the subs are alright but I disagree on this and I think it's partly due to a cultural difference; In the English speaking world films were rarely subtitled in the old days and so native English speakers weren't used to subtitles. But what they were used to was foreigners who spoke broken English. So somehow they just see subtitles in broken English as an extension of this.




In northern Europe on the other hand, all foreign movies have always been subtitled into the local lingo. And the way I see it, the characters in these Turkish films speak perfect Turkish so why would it be okay to have them translated into broken English? They don't speak broken Turkish so OBVIOUSLY the English subs ought to be correct too.




Anyway, forget about the less than perfect subs and get hold of LAST WARRIOR anyway! The DVD is available from Ciko's eBay store "Turkish Cult". Just trust me on this one! Hands down, it is a totally enjoyable piece of trashy Turko celluloid and the film shits all over 99% of EVERYTHING ever made in Denmark!!! Inanc made a sequel two years later, DEATH WARRIOR (aka Ölüm Savascisi), which also stars Cuneyt Arkin and Füsun Ucar.

For Ciko's Turkish Cult shop on eBay go here.

NB.
In regards to the English subtitles: in all fairness I should point out this DVD-R is one of their earlier releases and (reportedly) they put more effort into their translations now as the subs are being checked by a native English speaker.













And finally a girl... and a sniper... and a car... of which none of them knew they were one day going to take part in a Turkish film, LOL:

Cüneyt Arkan and true friendship

Cüneyt Arkan and the women

Most awesome Filipino trailers on a Tuesday

Richard Harrison in Teddy Page's (aka Teddy Chiu) BLOOD DEBTS. Jim Gaines, Mike Monty, and Bert Spoor are also in there. :D




Don Gordon Bell and Nick Nicholson in Cirio H. Santiago's NAKED VENGEANCE.

Some highly welcome upcoming DVD releases from AWE

... and Njuta Films.



I've mentioned these titles before as they were announced for release from Njuta Films in Sweden quite a while ago. I speculated whether they were gonna be released from Another World Entertainment (AWE) in Denmark as well (as AWE are uber slow at revealing their new stuff!) but we've finally got word that HANDS OF STEEL, IRONMASTER, BLASTFIGHTER, and 2019: AFTER THE FALL OF NEW YORK are also being released from AWE in the coming months. And also, AWE have just announced they're putting out Franco Prosperi's WILD BEASTS in March! The film is already out on DVD in the Czech Republic but that DVD only carries a French (and Czech) dub. Hopefully the new AWE disc is gonna carry the English dub. And lastly, I'm 99% convinced AWE are also going to release Joe D'Amato's PORNO HOLOCAUST as the Njuta Films release carries Danish subtitles along with the Swedish ones.

AWE and Njuta release many films but these are especially exciting as they're films that either aren't released on DVD at all or they don't exist in English friendly or uncut versions.



The back of the cover sports a spiffy quotation from our good buddy Fred Anderson: "One of thee best action flicks of the 80s"

The Paper Bag Killer

Thanks to Member-X for the link. At first I thought he'd done the video himself in his eternal quest for trying to embarrass me... but he didn't.

"Viva Django" vs "Joe, der Galgenvogel"

I spent time writing this in a post on FB so I might as well re-post it here as well:


This is a trailer for Ferdinando Baldi's brutal spaghetti western PREPARATI LA BARA! from 1968, in English known as Viva Django and in German Joe, der Galgenvogel. It stars Terence Hill before he bacame a "funny" guy.

The weirdest example of German censorshit I've seen is their version of VIVA DJANGO. The film is very cynical and brutal. Django's wife is killed. He is also shot and the bad guys believe he is dead. He digs his own fake grave and puts his ...own name on the tombstone. He shoots people in the back. He shoots one guy in the face. He kills the main bad guy from the back while he's trying to escape. In other words, Django doesn't follow the normal "good guy" code.

The Germans didn't like this! Haha. So they cut out all the violence and changed the story in the German dub. Now the woman who dies isn't his wife but just some woman. His grave is some other guy's. Somebody else shoots the bad guys in the back (off screen). And the most ridiculous scene is where he shoots the guy in the face. They couldn't cut out the scene so in the German version Django narrates the scene and says "I pulled an old trick: I blew powder in his face" (the "powder" is the smoke from the gun, for fuck's sake, hahaha).

And the Germans loved the Trinity brothers and they actually made it into a Trinity bros film, the other "brother" is just on holiday somewhere. At the end of the film he narrates again: "I'm tired of being alone, I'm gonna find the fat guy now". Hahaha. It's the weirdes and most insane cut version I've ever seen. I taped it off TV.

PS: Hmm, it occurs to me that the German version must have left quite an impression on me: I reviewed the two versions in great detail in the first issue of my zine BANNED IN BRITAIN in 1994 and here I am STILL talking about the Germans' abuse!! Haha.