Rani Mera Naam is finally coming home

Regular readers (!!!) will have noticed the red masked chick who has graced the right bar on this page for the past week or so. What was it all about? Who is she?? And... why??? Well, I can finally unweil the mystery (haha, yeah big mystery, you've probably been rolling in your sleep because you didn't know, right? LOL).

Almost two years ago Miltos of Cinehound forum posted a short description of a Hindi film entitled RANI MERA NAAM which led to Jared of Worldweird blog to review the film, and his description of it was, whoah!! Here's something you gotta get hold of I thought to myself so immediately I... waited two years... and then rushed out and bought a copy! Haha.

[click the scan for a bigger size]

Well, there are so many films on my want-list and time flies by so quickly (lemme tall ya mate once you get past that big THREE OH time just rushes past you like there's no tomorrow. It's fucking scary!!!). Also, this isn't exactly a VHS that pops up every week on eBay and unfortunately it's never been granted a DVD release. Or maybe it has?

DVDs in India come out by the bucket-load every day and disappear almost as quickly as they arrived. It's insane! And makes it almost impossible to get a good overview of what's actually released and what's not.

Anyway, enough ramblings. I won an ex-rental VHS of RANI MERA NAAM last night (incidentally the very same Greek release that Miltos posted about... and the eBay seller happened to be mr. Cinehound hisself, haha) and I can't wait for it to find its way to this forsaken hell-hole up north. :-) :-) :-)

Here's Miltos colourful description of the film:

Hindi violent "woman's revenge for rape" action thriller directed by K.S.R. Doss in 1982! Starring Vijayalalita, Anwar Hussain, Madanpuri, Ajit, Iftekar, Natarajan !!

They murdered her family, burned their house and raped her sister in front of her eyes. Now they must pay, so she rides a horse and kills them one by one by several brutal bloody ways using a whip, a sword, a gun and a huge knife. Wild action, a lot of blood and pure violence, bizarre ceremonies, a lot of exotic songs & dances and even some fantasy elements, make this one a pure Hindi gem !!

And I urge you to check out Jared's cool review at Worldweird. It's right here.

The first MINI-SKIRT GANG screen grabs!!

[click all scans for bigger size]

Thanks to Mads Jensen I can now present to you the very first screen grabs from MINI-SKIRT GANG. By the way, I have previously referred to the film as THE MINI-SKIRT GANG but the title card clearly doesn't have "the" in the title.



Nils Markvardsen (of eXtase magazine) tells me he has written the Danish booklet for SEXY GIRLS OF DENMARK while Mads took care of the remaining two, BAMBOO HOUSE OF DOLLS and MINI-SKIRT GANG. The three DVD's will probably hit the Dutch (LOL) streets of Denmark in a couple of months!





If you read one of the Scandinavian lingos you might wanna check out this Birte Tove interview that a Danish newspaper did with her shortly after Nils spoke to her for eXtase. Click here.

BAMBOO HOUSE OF DOLLS' Danish soft-porn star in lost Shaw Brothers film... soon to be released on dvd!!!

In 1973 Danish soft-porn actress BIRTE TOVE received an offer she couldn't refuse: To star in a handful of Shaw Brothers films in Hong Kong!

Three or four years ago my friend Nils Markvardsen interviewed Birte Tove for his film magazine eXtase but, uh, the little gnomes who live in the dark shadows of my house have obviously decided to borrow the mag just to piss me off now that I'm writing this piece (but who can blame them; All those nice pix of a young miss Tove!) . So unfortunately I can't check facts but if memory serves me right Birte Tove said she didn't really know what kind of movies she were to star in and she didn't know anything about Shaw Brothers.

[from The Mini-Skirt Gang]

Well, even so the Danish babe made three films while she was in Hong Kong; BAMBOO HOUSE OF DOLLS (1973), SEXY GIRLS OF DENMARK (1973), and THE MINI-SKIRT GANG (1974).

Obviously I don't have to tell you anything about BAMBOO HOUSE OF DOLLS (in which she plays opposite none other than the guy with the baddest and meanest face on celluloid ever if you ask me: Lo Lieh!). BAMBOO HOUSE is heralded as one of the (if not thee) best WIP films.

SEXY GIRLS OF DENMARK is a kung fu sex comedy and was actually shot partly in Copenhagen (again, thanks to those damn gnomes I can't check my issue of eXtase to see how much of the film was actually shot in Denmark but I believe most of it was). The last film Birte Tove shot in HK, THE MINI-SKIRT GANG was... well, actually I don't really know!

[Mini-Skirt Gang]

In contradiction to BAMBOO HOUSE the other two films have been impossible to watch for many years. MINI-SKIRT has never had any form of home-cinema release on neither video, VCD or laserdisc. And I don't believe SEXY GIRLS has been out either in any format. If it has it would have been a long time ago maybe on laserdisc. And to the best of my knowledge, none of them have been shown at the cinema since their initial cinema run either, nor have they been screened on any TV channels.

About three or four years ago Celestial in Hong Kong put out both BAMBOO HOUSE and SEXY GIRLS but until now MINI-SKIRT has remained completely unreleased and thus a big mystery; What's the film even about? Is it a kung fu movie, a crime movie, a comedy, a sex comedy, a mix of it all, what??? All we've had was a few lobby cards and one short review on Hong Kong Movie Data Base from someone who watched it when it ran at his local cinema in early '75 (you can read it here)



Well, dear reader, you don't have to wonder much longer because... finally... after having remained in the dark for almost 35 years... it seems THE MINI-SKIRT GANG is finally going to get it long overdue re-release!!!

In an interview in the recently publish second issue of the Swedish fanzine Gory-Glory magazine Jan Schmidt of Another World Entertainment (AWE) reveals that AWE are going to release all three Birte Tove films on the Scandinavian market INCLUDING THE MINI-SKIRT GANG!!! How utterly fantastic is that!!!

I for one am very exited about this. And so should you be! The interview doesn't state when exactly they will be released other than it'll be in 2009.



If it hasn't sunk in yet let me just repeat: This Shaw Brothers film has never before been released to the home market! It hasn't been shown anywhere since it ran in the cinemas back in around 1974-75!!! I know there were other SB's films that were left in the dark for many years and some are still down there (Curse of Evil is one!!!) but this isn't just any SB film... it's a Birte Tove SB film for crying out loud!! Haha.

Maybe this is a lost masterpiece whose rebirth we are going to witness and treasure for years to come! Or maybe it'll turn out to be utter crap - but no matter what it's pretty exiting. Hell yeah!!



As so often before, a tip o'the hat to Jan Schmidt and Kenneth Eriksen of AWE for putting out some rare shit that most people didn't even think of. Good on ya mates!!!

PS: And hey AWE gents; now that you're doing Hong Kong/Danish stuff anyway; how about getting hold of ADVENTURE IN DENMARK and release that one as well??? Jack Stevenson & Nils regularly show an English print at a local cinema so it wouldn't be that difficult!




If you would like to read more about the three films you can follow the links there to Hong Kong Movie Data Base where you can read review, check credits, and see stills and shit. And in contradiction to the other movie data base the info at HKMDb is pretty accurate. LOL.

BAMBOO HOUSE OF DOLLS

SEXY GIRLS OF DENMARK

THE MINI-SKIRT GANG

[you can click all scans for bigger size]

A coupla old faves

Just brilliant! I found trailers for two old personal favourites! First up is a rare trailer for the Danish movie DVÆRGEN (aka The Sinful Dwarf / The Dwarf) which (as y'all know for sure) is out from AWE in its original uncut Danish version now. Actually, the trailer isn't even included on the Danish DVD. I believe it was Ian F. who dug it up somewhere and notified the American company about it so they could put it on their reg.1 disk (which btw contains the CENSORED international version!).



Cool trailer for old favourite #2: Andy Sidaris' STACEY! starring Anne Randall and Anitra Ford. I remember a long gone buddy of mine once described it (in an issue of Moshable magazine in the mid-90s) as a blaxploitation flick just with white people, LOL. Sure, I'll subscribe to that. Unfortunately, it's never been released on DVD.




I liked STACEY! so much I even used the video cover art for an issue of Stay Sick! more than five years ago.

The North Shall Rise Again

Trailer for Nicolas Winding Refn's new movie VALHALLA RISING.



There's an interview with Refn here.

Fhanks, Lars!!!

Thanks to Lars Jacobsson I will soon be the very happy owner of this SUBTITLED Hong Kong PAL VHS release of the greatest film ever made. Yes, obviously I'm talking about WOLF DEVIL WOMAN!!! But you knew that didn't you. Obviously, nothing comes free in this world (except hatred and agony) so Lars is getting something very nice in return but that's fine. As long as I get this!!!


I don't know how many times I've watched WOLF DEVIL WOMAN through out the years, I lost count long ago. If there's ever been a film to which the term "no-holds-barred over-the-top wild & crazy batshit cinema" applied then this is it!! The version I've had in my collection for the last few years is the HK released VCD which comes with two audio tracks; dubbed into English (!!!) and Mandarin. I have never before or after come across a HK VCD that carried the English dub track. Anyway, it'll be fantastic to own a proper (legit) subtitled release (I may already have a bootleg from Trash Palace, LOL).

The very first time I learnt about the existence of WOLF DEVIL WOMAN was when the premiere issue of "Asian Trash Cinema" came out in 1992, and Thomas Weisser wrote in his foreword:


"I remember the happy day when I first discovered joys of Chang Ling's Wolf Devil Woman. It was a cold December afternoon in 1985, during a Saturday afternoon blitz of video stores, that I came face-to-face with the unusual Ocean Shores package. Even though the video tape was stickered as Martial Arts, it had been misfiled in the "Horror section" (obviously, the store didn't know what to do with this genre hybrid). And I decided to take a chance. I mean, "What the hell..." Right?
That night, as I watched the movie, dumbfounded, with a group of friends, I kept raving: "I'm seeing it, but I don't believe it!" Wolf Devil Woman was frenzied cinema. Its vivacious attitude hooked me. I became possessed."
[from ATC #1]


I must admit Weisser's description is spot-on! "Frenzied cinema"; too right!!! That scene where the wolf woman cuts herself in order to kill a fire with her gushing spraying blood... is just INsane!!! And I would have a big smiling smiley here if Blogger provided one.

Worldweird cinema is a many-splendoured thing... here be TURKISH RAMBO!

Alright, I'm bending old poetic prose here but, hey, with the upcoming release of TURKISH RAMBO ... IT'S IN PLACE!!!



TURKISH RAMBO (original title: Korkusuz, directed by Cetin Inanc) is being released by DarkMaze this month. DarkMaze is a one-man video company in the US run by a guy called Ed. He's also a member over at Cinehound and quite understandably Ed doesn't wanna get hassled by the copyright owners of the "real" RAMBO films so TURKISH RAMBO has been retitled to RAMPAGE (LOL).

Unfortunately, also due to avoiding a hefty lawsuit, Ed has had to change the original soundtrack which again means he won't be able to release the film in its original Turkish with subtitles but has had to dub it into English. Oh well, I'm just happy that we're finally going to see this exciting piece of Turkish celluloid.

Obviously it's not like some of us don't already have TURKISH RAMBO (on boot from Trash-online, check them out they've got heaps of cool stuff!!) but it'll be nice to actually know what the fuck they're saying for a change, haha. Oh, and apparently Ed got hold of a good print.

For a while there it seemed he could only get a video master where the picture had been altered to fake letterbox. He was told by the owners that that was ALL they had! So Ed actually asked at Cinehound if we would rather have a dvd release with fake letterbox or a dvd taken from an old Turkish fullscreen video tape!

Well, luckily the people in Turky managed to dig up a proper print after all!! If this sells well Ed's considering to put out more obscure stuff outta Turkey. Good on ya, Ed! And I for one really look forward to this. I can only urge everyone to get this!



This EXITING dvd release is set to hit the streets at end of April (there's an actual date but I don't remember and I couldn't be arsed to check). It'll be released in two different version whereas the "old video cassette" retro look is purely for those who order thru DarkMaze's website.

Here's the old TURKISH RAMBO bootleg from Trash-online in Greece.


I really also OUGHT to point out that Çetin Inanç, the director of TURKISH RAMBO, is also the popular director behind some other Turkish fan favourites! A number of them belong in that much loved sub genre called remake rip-offs (i.e. remakes of American films remade in faraway exotic lands). The probably most well known of these movies that he did (most well known to fans outside of Turkey anyway) are: TURKISH STAR WARS (aka The Man Who Saves the World/Dünyayi kurtaran adam), DEATH WARRIOR (Ölüm savasçisi), and TURKISH ROCKY (Kara simsek). I haven't watched TURKISH ROCKY but the other two are great and very entertaining!! Check them out if you get the chance.

Hey lemme just force feed ya with some more JUST HEROES!

A wee bit more coverage on JUST HEROES; I found the trailer for the film on YouTube. It's also on the MIA tape and now it's also right here for your enjoyment and pleasure!!



And here's a Cinema flyer I borrowed from Phantom of Pulp's blog (I hope you don't mind, Phantom). It's half past 2 in the morning here so I'm too tired to explain about the flyers again but if you check out the comments for the last couple of posts with HK movies you'll know what it's all about.

The flyer here is from Russell Cinema where JUST HEROES was shown and as you can see it's from 1990. I didn't arrived in Melbourne till '91 so unfortunately I never got to see the film at the cinema (I'm sure it ran again but, uh, so many films!! And besides, I kinda tried to also have a life outside of the cinema, haha). But of the John Woo flicks I do remember going to see were HARD-BOILED and the A BETTER TOMORROW films (several times). The first HK movie I saw in Australia was A BETTER TOMORROW at the 40th Melbourne Film Festival in '91. What a kick off, eh!

(Click the scan for a bigger size)

Phantom of Pulp also wrote a piece on JUST HEROES right here.

John Woo's forgotten bloodshed

Here's about five minutes from the beginning...





























According to "Asian Dvd Guide" there are no English friendly DVD releases of JUST HEROES. This UK VHS from MIA is the best release there is as it features new subtitles (i.e. not the wonkey cinema subs), it's letterboxed, and not least; this is the fully uncut version!! The version that ran in the Hong Kong cinemas was a shorter censored version.

I re-watched this film last night for the first time since the 90s. I wasn't too sure if I wanted to watch it at all as I remembered not liking it in particular back then. Actually, my perception of the film pretty much followed what most of the genre reviewers thought of it back then; JUST HEROES usually received lukewarm reviews saying it was a half-baked masterpiece compared to John Woo's true masterpieces, THE KILLER and his A BETTER TOMORROW series.

However, I must admit I was quite breath-taken last night cos, lo and behold, this film rules!! It turned out to be really good! I think most reviewers back then (including myself) wanted JUST HEROES to be a new THE KILLER or ABT. We all loved Chow Yun Fat as an über cool gunman and that was what was EXPECTED of John Woo: another film with a HERO! A loner. A Death Wish-Exterminator-Man-with-no-name character. But instead John Woo delivered a heroic bloodshed film without one masterful samurai-pistolero in the lead. Instead we got a film with multiple characters. Different layers. John Woo actually makes you have to remember multiple main characters. How dare he!! LOL.

I must admit my perception of JUST HEROES changed for the opposite: this is really good and you ought to check it out. Even if you (like me) saw it a long time ago and didn't care too much for it.

So is it on par with THE KILLER etc.??? Well, is it really necessary that I tell you, eh? Check it out yrself and make up yer own mind, paesano. The UK tape is available from Amazon UK.

CRUEL JAWS on dvd soon!!!

Hey, I've just learnt that Bruno Mattei's CRUEL JAWS (aka Jaws 5: Cruel Jaws) is being released on DVD in Italy on May 21st!!! Wauw, great news for all fans of Mattei's trashy (and crappy) rip-off movies!!

Obviously, a few of us already have this on Japanese video (or bootlegs from that vhs) but now, finally, everyone can get hold of it legit. Well, if you live in Italy or import it that is, LOL. I got this piece of exiting news from Søren Jacobsen's Danish horror movie blog "Skræk og rædsel" and thanks indeed for that update there, Søren! Oh, and not least important: the DVD WILL contain both the Italian and English audio tracks. Woo-hoo!!!

I'm sure this is preaching to the already converted but let me just briefly explain what CRUEL JAWS is (I'm 100% sure this in completely unnecessary, I mean who in their right mind would read this blog if they werent't into trashy movies anyway, haha).



CRUEL JAWS is Bruno Mattei's sequel (remake?) to Spielberg's JAWS. And he did an excellent job of it as CRUEL JAWS is almost just as good as JAWS.
I said CRUEL JAWS is almost as g... hahaha. No, I'm not convincing anyone and why should I. CRUEL JAWS is a piece of crappy, trashy, cheaply made, pure, 300 percent EXPLOITATION.

And the film is a rip-off in all meanings of the word. It's obviously ripping JAWS off, and it's ripping the viewer off for trying to be something it's so clearly not. And not least, it is even fucking ripping off OTHER Italian JAWS rip-off films!!! Hahaha. However, if you're new to all this you may expect me to put down CRUEL JAWS and ridicule it. No way, José! Fuck no. I may laugh WITH my Italian (and Indian, Turkish, Filipino, etc) rip-off and trash films, but I most certainly DON'T laugh AT them! I love them too much to do that. I let crappy online reviews do that. Reviewers who know practically nothing about the movies they review. Or the genres they belong to. Unfortunately the local online review sites are FULL of that kind of reviewers. I keep thinking where the fuck do they come from?? It's like they're fucking breeding, haha. Well, this here blog be the alternative!! LOL.

[VHS/Japan/letterbox/English dub/Japanese subs]

Go and get CRUEL JAWS right away when it comes out! I'm your cult leader and that's a direct order! And get me some lemonade. It's trashy cinema but that's not saying it isn't entertaining... because it is!! 100% No, 200%!!! Is it a good film? No. Not by anybody's standards. But is it entertaining? Does it deliver? HELL YES!! I really do hope this isn't a wild goose or that it'll get cancelled before it hits the streets because this is indeed a film trash film fans (myself included) have waited for a long time.

All hail that video company in Italy! And don't hold your breath while you're waiting for a Reg. 1 release. Read my lips, paesano: It's ain't gonna happen!!! Steven Spielberg had them ban THE LAST SHARK (aka The Last Jaws) forever in the US and there's no chance in Hell CRUEL JAWS is ever gonna come out on legit dvd in the US.


NB: If you look up CRUEL JAWS on various crappy sites (including IMDb) it'll tell you that the film was made for TV. This is SO NOT TRUE! It was made for cinema distribution and was shot on real film! The problem was that when the producers tried to sell it for distribution back in the day nobody wanted to buy it and so it only had a very limited cinema run. I guess it later turned up on late night tv in some areas and as I mentioned earlier it was released on vhs in Japan.

[DVD-R/Greece/bootleg off the Japanese vhs]