Definitely amongst the ten

A Hero Never Dies asked me to take part in his upcoming TOP 10 of favourite Hong Kong films (and thanks for the offer!). I first encountered the Hong kong film via the old UK fanzine IN THE FLESH when I lived in London in the late 80s. Editor Steve C. was among the very first to dig up those unknown treasures via tape-trading (and you still owe me for a full subscription, Steve C.!!!). And later on Jonathan Ross did an edition of his The Incredibly Strange Film Show devoted to HK cinema. I watched and re-watched that episode over and over again. Shortly after a number of the films started turning up on Channel 4. I think I still have some of those tapes with ad snippets in them. LOL.

So, almost 25 years as a HK movie fan, what do you choose as your favourites??? I thought it would be a piece of cake, just take the 10 most loved ones from the early days! But, usch, 10 quickly turned into 20 and there's more popping up like there's no stopping them. Too many faves!!

But one film that sits firmly placed in the back of my mind and has done so ever since that first viewing via a 3rd generation video dupe from UK TV is ROUGE. This is ANITA MUI's film. And Leslie Cheung's. It's a ghost movie about loss but in contradiction to, for instance, A CHINESE GHOST STORY it's not full-on ghost fighting at breakneck speed. And there's no scenes set in the realm of death. It's a quiet and sad love story about a woman who should have died but didn't and thus have to go from one eternity to the next in search for the love she lost.

It's a gripping, sad, wonderful, and awesome film. And the main actors' reality isn't any less sad; A few years after the film was finished Leslie Cheung killed himself (he couldn't stand getting older) and soon after Anita Mui died from Cancer. She was just over 40. Both were big film and pop stars in HK and in the Chinese markets. Anita Mui had a big audience in Canada (many Chinese live in Canada).

So that's ONE down. Now I just gotta settle on the remaining 9. @_@


I posted the cover for my VHS here. Unfortunately, it's been reported (on ADG) that the most recent HK DVD has the top and bottom chopped off. The old HK DVD and the VHS uses the original picture format.

Looking smug

Gee whiz!! Today this place reached 100 subscribers! Who shoudda thunk that!!! For the longest time the count number has been steady at 98 but then yesterday Brian Harris of Wildside Cinema subbed and today one Onkel Tydefar (lol) turned the dial to 100. Cheers mate. I ought to give him a prize but on his blog I see he's just been on a fantastic trip to the US so that'll do. LOL.

Sure, one hundred isn't all that much in Cyberspace but for an underground blog it's pretty cool. Hmm, can you even be "underground" in Cyberspace or is it just "unknown", haha. And needless to say, I might have 5 subscribers cancelling their sub tomorrow but, hey, it's 100 right now!


Not surprisingly, the Dell cover comes courtesy of Member-X in Finland.

When the milk goes off in the morning evil is lurking near by

Hmm, but then again I'm not Amish and maybe my milk is off cos my good friend The Fridge died today. So sad. He was here ever since I moved in. And I probably won't get a replacement until next week. Argh! I can already hear the maggots eating their way thru my now rotting food in the 25 degrees (Celsius) hot fridge. How long does it take for meat to go off?? Or cheese?? Or my frikadeller from Fakta?? The Milk is probably already chunky (and I'm still not Amish, maybe I should see if a flame can't burn in this house or if a horse would perspire - but where would I get a horse!? Or even get it to the third floor?). I guess I'll have to eat dry food from now on. Fun week ahead. But then again that would give me an excuse to order a take-away pizza every day.

KARATECILER INSTANDBUL'DA - trailer (international edit)

The trailer for the English dubbed version of KARATECILER INSTANDBUL'DA!! This is the international version which has about 15 minutes of new scenes from Hong Kong. I don't know if they are from another film or were shot especially for the international version. The English title is NINJA KILLER. This version is released on a UK DVD which is available from Amazon UK (it's very cheap, I paid 1 penny for mine!). There are VHS versions all over the place (it's on VHS in Denmark). The German version is the same edit as the Turkish one, i.e. no extra scenes. The entire Turkish version is on YouTube (not subbed). The film stars CUNEYT ARKIN and BOLO YEUNG is also in it (but only in the new footage).

Thanks to Hans-Jørn for uploading the trailer.

THE TROLL HUNTER (André Øvredal, Norway, 2010)

I watched the Norwegian TROLDJÆGEREN (or "Trolljegeren" - why do they have to misspell everything in Norway!) and I thought it was really good. The first 15 minutes or so reminded me of a bad ripoff of THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT but as soon as they're in those woods we're off to a wild ride. Highly recommended. The Scandinavian DVD has quite of bit of cool behind the scenes footage but oddly enough there's no trailer. The UK DVD seems to have the same extras and a trailer. I got the DVD from the Fona2000 webshop where it's 50 kr.

NB: the drunk monkeys at IMDb just don't seem to get much right; No, the English title for the movie isn't "Trollhunter" but The Troll Hunter.

Oh Nina

My cousin and I were big NINA HAGEN fans in 1980 and all thru the 80s. She was the queen of punk. She came from East Germany but she was too wild for the authorities so THEY KICKED HER OUT OF EAST GERMANY!!! How's that! Haha. Everybody else had the roughest time trying to climb that wall. Nina was shown the door. O_O

Check this live recording from ROCKPALAST (from West German TV, 1978), it's pretty fucken awesome!

PSYCHO - poster

Check this cool poster for Hitchcock's PSYCHO. It's from a Yugoslavian re-release in the 80s. I can't figure out if that really is Janet Leigh or a lookalike model they used for the poster. But a very cool poster never the less.

New edition of MUCHAS GRACIAS SEÑOR LOBO finally on its way

The new re-print and expanded volume of the book "MUCHAS GRACIAS SEÑOR LOBO" is finally on its way!! This is certainly great news. I discovered the old edition years ago but at the time it was already way out of print and I never found a second-hand copy. Well, lo and behold, a newsletter dropped thru my digital letterbox this morning; The new book is up for pre-order from the editor/publisher. He's also behind the cool fanzine CREEPY IMAGES which I've written about before. He's located in Deutschland but no need to worry, the book will be English friendly! (i.e. it'll have dual German and English text).

Here's some scans and info text that were posted on the CREEPY IMAGES site. I've already pre-ordered a copy as I so do not want to lose out on it again (and there's a discount). You can also pre-order from Diabolik.com in the US but they have listed the book at 57 euros ($70) whereas the German publisher charges 35 euros. Even with the added postage it'll be cheaper for Americans to order from Europe!

Go to the website here and for more and bigger scans go here (it's a pdf file). The book isn't printed yet and the info text mentions they haven't proof read it yet which is probably a good thing (in "contents" I noticed it says, "The coloful world...", haha).

From CREEPY IMAGES website:

MUCHAS GRACIAS SEÑOR LOBO deals with the advertising material from the movie of one of the true icons of (European) horror movies: Paul Naschy and contains the largest collection of posters, lobby cards and other promotional items from his movies ever published.


MUCHAS GRACIAS SEÑOR LOBO focuses on Paul Naschy‘s horror movies of the late 1960s until the 1980s. 30 movies of this period will be featured in form of seperated chapters in the main part of the book while advertising material from his non-horror-movies and his newer films will be compiled in an additional chapter.


Besides high quality reproduction of movie posters, lobby cards and other memorabilia items, the book contains details insight into the distribution history of the movies and we are sure that some facts will even surprise the most dedicated fans of the Spanish Lon Chaney.


Important facts:

Limited hardcover edition
approx. 370 pages, completely in color, measuring 21 x 29,7 cm
(approx. 8.3 x 11.7 inches)
more than 1.200 pictures, including more than 160 movie posters, almost 750 lobby cards, over 100 press stills, a large part of which have never been published yet, more than 100 reproductions of admats, rare sales material that was only handed out to distribution companies and much more from more than 20 different countries.
Introduction by Paul Naschy‘s son
Sergio Molina
Complete Text in German and English
Besides the countless images the book also contains detailed information about distribution history of the movies
It took more than 18 years to put together the collection that serves as a basis for this book


Pre-order now!

The official streetprice will be 39,50 Euro, but until September 25th 2012 you can pre-order the book for only 34,50 Euros.

Everybody who pre-orders the book will get a small, but nice gift that is only available during the pre-order period.

I now own a VIDEO-CD player and you don't. ^_^

- and there's really no reason why you should own a VCD player, haha. Now that you can play VCD's (i.e. video-cd's) on most new DVD players it kinda renders the VCD player void. There's no reason to own one, at least not in the West. In some territories in Asia and Turkey it may still be an option for low income people. Films on VCD are definitely much cheaper but the picture quality is also equally crappy (unfortunately, a lot of HK films are only released on VCD, not DVD).

So why did I buy one? Because of the novelty of it! I've bought VCD's for years on end but I've never actually seen a real video-cd player before. I was a VCD virgin! And so when I found this player second-hand at an indoor market I knew I had to have it - if the price was right. I offered the man the equivalent of 8 bucks US and he went for it.

The player seems to be in working order (it turns on and I've tested it with a CD but I haven't had it collected to a TV set yet). The brand name is Sunny and I'm told it's a Turkish brand. There are many Turks in the area where I bought it and I would assume it probably came from an immigrant family. They still use the VCD format in Turkey.

A couple of days earlier I also bought two second-hand Panasonic Superdrive VCR's but they're certainly not just for the novelty but for BACK-UP! LOL. They were also $8 each and both have perfect playback.

The postie was here...

In today's mail:
FLÆNSET (Danish splatter movie), EEN GANG STRØMER (TV series sequel to the movie SKYTTEN aka The Marksman), FEARMAKERS Vol. 2 & 3 (these vhs boxes contain the complete 13 part series. The dvd release is omits 3 episodes and is edited. Vol. 1 hasn't arrived yet), SALVAGE (second hand but mint condition. It was $1.50), THE SAINT (awesome complete box sets of the colour series from the 60s. Vol. 3 contains the two films), THE SEVERED ARM/SO SAD ABOUT GLORIA (the dvd from Code Red that was pulled back right after release!!). And finally, THE TELEVISION FRIGHT FILMS OF THE 1970S book!! ($64 from Bookdepository in London incl. pp).

If you're in Denmark and you're into cool British TV series from the 60s you might wanna pick up the SAINT sets from Fona2000 in Copenhagen. They're only 50 kr. ($8) each, and Vol. 1 & 2 contain the complete Colour series from the 60s. I bought them thru mail order and the postage fee is only 30 kr. I also got EEN GANG STRØMER (40 kr.) and FLÆNSET (50 kr.) in the same order.