My new friend Nataliya. In Russia. Who would like $700. But it's alright cos she says she's gonna pay it back.

Hello friend,
My name is Nataliya and I am writing you this letter from Russia.
I would be very happy if you could reply my letter.
It's really brief!
Write to my email: [deleted]@rambler.ru



I received this e-mail today from a potential new friend, possibly gf. She was so considerate as to enclose a very nice photo of herself. I though: "Finally! The love of my life has finally turned up. Now I can get married, have kids, and enjoy the good life". Haha, yeah right. I'm sure some sad people (guys) are gonna fall for this but obviously it REEKS of scam a mile away. In the words of Mike Muir (of Suicidal Tendencies) from some old interview on Danish television: "I may be ugly but I ain't stoopid".

I did a Google and 31 pages of posts came up; posts from people who had received similar nice & friendly e-mails from "Nataliya". Of course it may not even be the chick in the photos (there were tons of other photos of her on that site for scam e-mails) but some ex-boyfriend who's using old photos. How do these people even get your address?? Anyway, after a couple of emails she would tell the whoever gullible sap she was writing to that she hates living in Russia and if he could lend her 700 dollars for a ticket out. Sad and terrible. And hilarious, haha.

A ray of hope in the dying world of CUT-UP POETS

You thought CUT UP poetry died with whatshisface??!! Well think again. here's KENNETH M and his CUT-UP masterpiece!!! If you don't understand what it's all about then... SORRY BRO!! Oh, and Patrick. Sorry mate but I couldn't help it!!! :-) :-) ;-)


Yesterday I was cruising.
The Danish laughed at me. Which wasn't very nice.

My interest was awakened.
The Danish laughed at me. Which wasn't very nice.

I almost had a stroke.
The Danish laughed at me. Which wasn't very nice.

This started a journey that would make a new man!
The Danish laughed at me. Which wasn't very nice.

My beard grew a little thicker.
The Danish laughed at me. Which wasn't very nice.

My voice got deeper
The Danish laughed at me. Which wasn't very nice.

Oh yes. It's true.
The Danish laughed at me. Which wasn't very nice.

I went and grabbed a beer.
The Danish laughed at me. Which wasn't very nice.

This is overload for my brain.
The Danish laughed at me. Which wasn't very nice.

After 5 more beers down the hatch.
The Danish laughed at me. Which wasn't very nice.

I couldn't believe it!
The Danish laughed at me. Which wasn't very nice.

It was ... it was... unbelievable.
The Danish laughed at me. Which wasn't very nice.

I'll leave the last word to Jack J.
The Danish laughed at me. Which wasn't very nice.

Mini-Skirt Gang chicks

Here's a cool picture of Birte Tove and the cast from MINI-SKIRT GANG . It was originally printed in Southern Screen, may 1974.

[click scan for proper size!]

If you haven't already, do check out my posts from last week about the release of MINI-SKIRT GANG. And if you have too much time on your hands you might also wanna check out a slightly different version of those posts that are now posted over at HK And Cult Film News here.

Thanks to teako170 for posting the scan at KungFuCinema forum.

Turkish Rambo - interview

I'm sure you already know that Cinehound member Gokay and two of his mates are running the Turkish Sinematik blog which deals with the fantastic genres, or as we say in Turkish the fantastik türk sinemasi. Well, guess what, Gokay has just posted an interview with Ed Glaser the guy behind DarkMaze who's releasing TURKISH RAMBO (aka Rampage/Korkusuz) on DVD in the US soon. Good on ya, Gokay! Check it out in English here or in Turkish here.

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.