Thanks to a tip from Kenneth M. of Cinehound forum I'm now the happy owner of this cute baby! OVER MY DEAD BODY from the Philippines, 1983. It's ultra rare! And gee gosh golly it was mega cheap too! (well, "cheap" in the land of the serious ex-rental video collectors, LOL).
Credits from the seller's page:
IN ENGLISH WITH GREEK SUBTITLES
Director: Arsenio Bautista
Cast (Cast overview, first billed only) Tony Ferrer Bembol Roco Efren Reyes Jr. Raul Aragon (as Raoul Aragon) Anna Marie Gutierrez Lolita Marquez Jing Abalos Dave Brodett Charlie Davao Romy Diaz Baldo Marro Bomber Moran Boy Padilla Robert Talabis (as Bobby Talabis) Vic Varrion
BRUTAL SORCERY is one of the old dark and nasty Hong Kong horror movies that seemed to have a curse of its own! For the longest time I just COULD NOT get hold of that damn Ocean Shores tape!! Every time (which isn't very often as it's a quite rare VHS) it turned up on eBay some schmuck with more money would always beat me on the finishing line. But not this time, not last night, no sir'ee! xD xD xD
I'm rather skint at the moment but just out of principle I put 50 bucks on the tape as I knew with myself that I'd truly and utterly HATE my own guts if some schmendrick (who might not even know what the movie is) won it for 25 dollars or something - simply because nobody else placed a bid.
I "knew" that I wasn't gonna win it with 50 dollars but at least I could feel comfort in knowing I'd done what I could. I was so sure that I wasn't gonna win this most treasured Ocean Shores tape that I didn't even care to follow the auction. Well, lo and behold, I opened my email account today and the first email that I see says... "You won this item on eBay: BRUTAL SORCERY - rare Horror, Ocean Shores-demonic gore". Arrrgh! Auto winning bid: 43 dollars!!!
But needless to say there's always something else to worry about and I wasn't even sure the seller would accept my winning bid and he was in his full right not to do so. The auction was listed as: "Ships to: United States" so if the seller hadn't been happy with a winning bid of $43 he could have said "Sorry, buddy, you don't live in the US" and cancelled the auction. Fortunately he didn't and cheers to him for that. Whoever he is.
Ahh, BRUTAL SORCERY. Just try and say it slowly... BRRUUUTTTAAALLL SOOOORCEERYYY. Ahhh. And yes, it's the one where a possessed family man has a chicken and he... no, you really need to watch it. :D
PS: Unfortunately, there's never been a DVD release of the film. There's an un-subbed Ocean Shores VCD in Cantonese/Mandarin, and a Cantonese language VHS from Japan but that's about it I'm afraid. And both are just as rare as the OS tape. Click the label for the title if you'd like to check the covers for the two other releases.
Readers who are able to spell their way thru the lingo of the old Vikings and who're also into the old Danish band Sort Sol (aka Sods) might wanna check out my new review of the documentary film OMKRING EN SORT SOL - ET PORTRÆT AF SODS over in the Danish section.
My friend Hans-Jørn found this rare and VERY obscure trailer for Bobby A. Suarez' film HITMAN (aka American Commandos / Philippines, 1986) on a Danish ex-rental video tape! It's obscure not least because it plays out as a music video instead of an actual film trailer!! And an even more obscure twist is that HITMAN was partly backed by Danish financing as it was produced by Danish producer Just Betzer. Betzer is also credited as executive producer on Suarez' SEACHERS OF THE VOODOO MOUNTAINS (aka Warriors of the Apocalypse / Philippines, 1985). The music is composed by Danish composer Ole Høyer and the female singer is Danish/American Debbie Cameron who was "world famous" in Denmark thru out the 1980s.
SEACHERS OF THE VOODOO MOUNTAINS on VHS from Denmark.
It would have been fun to interview Just Betzer about his collaboration with Suarez but unfortunately he passed away a few years back.
It's interesting to see that these films aren't even listed in his credits on the Danish Film Institute site. Danes who get famous for work overseas don't necessarily get any love for it on home-soil. The same goes for Anders Hove; Every little vampire movie fan in the US knows and loves him for his awesome vampire character Radu in the SUBSPECIES films. Nobody in Denmark gives a fuck about that and these films are usually not even mentioned when his films are listed on Danish film sites. Instead people talk about his work in TV Christmas calender shows for kids, etc. How very sad!
And one more thing in regards to Just Benzer; Yesterday, I received DarkSky's new (very cool!) DVD release of Suarez ONE ARMED EXECUTIONER and CLEOPATRA WONG and in Andrew Leavold's interview with Bobby Suarez he talks about a Scandinavian film director who came over to visit him in the Philippines and who wanted to buy Bobby's camera (he didn't sell it tho). I wonder if that might have been Betzer?
(VHS, Denmark)Thanks to Diabolik for uploading (and re-uploading) the trailer to YT for me! Cheers mate!!This is a re-post that was originally posted on WHEN THE VIETNAM WAR RAGED... IN THE PHILIPPINES blog in November, 2010.
PS: I have no idea if Moon Lee does her own singing here. I was about to say "probably not" but then again every film star in HK seems to have a singing career so why not Moon Lee. I mean Ricky Hui ("the human Droopy") has a singing career for Christ's sakes!! (Ricky Hui is the goofy and hapless helper in MR VAMPIRE and he's the guy in HAUNTED COP SHOP II who gets to utter the best line of all lines in all movies ever made from any country: "I'll always think of him when I urinate" [after a friend has been killed by electrocution]).
Check this full-on trailer for the HK "Girls with guns" movie KILLER ANGELS! It's completely on level with ANGEL 1 & 2. It stars cute Moon Lee and it's completely no-holds-barred entertaining! For years the only copy I could get hold of was the HK VCD which is in Cantonese/Mandarin but doesn't have any subtitles (didn't keep me from watching it at least 10 times tho!).
I watched the HK "Girls with guns" movie DEVIL HUNTERS last night (and again tonight, LOL). It stars Moon Lee and Sibelle Hu. It's not exactly in league with neither A BETTER TOMORROW nor ANGEL 1 & 2 but, uh, it stars Moon Lee... and Sibelle Hu... and they shoot guns and kick ass and look cute while they do it. That's good enough for me. :D
It's also quite gory and nasty in places as well. Plus it has thee most insane ending of all Hong Kong films ever!!! The three main characters get blown up... FOR REAL!!!!!!! In the last scene [SPOILER obviously] the bad guy shoots his gun into a gas container to commit suicide and take everyone with him. Well, the special effects people used way too much explosives and Moon Lee, Sibelle Hu and the male lead, Ray Lui, all caught fire and Sibelle Hu and Moon Lee got injured seriously and spent time in hospital.
Remember how Jackie Chan films always end with outtakes from the film? Well, it's kinda the same here but instead of OUTTAKES you see real Hong Kong NEWSPAPER CLIPPINGS from the incident and from the hospital. Insane! Only in Hong Kong!!! You can check that last scene in the YouTube clip in the above. Oh, and notice how the producers PAUSE the film and post a text on the screen to explain the incident (or to EXPLOIT THE INCIDENT, whichever way you see it!).
Unfortunately, the onscreen text is almost unreadable on the VCD and I'm not gonna spend three hours to try and depict what it says so here's the text from the guy who uploaded the clip on YouTube:
"The most precious and exciting shots ever on movie. At 7 pm on 19 May, 1989, Hu Wai Chung (Sibelle Hu), Li Sai Fung (Moon Lee) and Lu Liang Wai (Ray Lui) acted the explosion shots in person. They were challenging death with their lives. Unluckily, the gunpowder - -(illegilble) - - and the flames wrapped around them. Hu Wai Chung and Li Sai Fung were seriously injured. On behalf of our company, we are sending our best regards to Wu Wai Chung, Li Sai Fung and Lu Liang Wai"
Terrible news, my friends. Heartbreaking in fact. It seems fans of Filipino cinema won't have anything to look forward to for this year's Christmas. It's gonna be a cold, cold Christmas without... GAMES OF DEATH! Boo-hoo.
Over on Kung Fu Cinema Forum one of the members suggested to Global that he could buy the Ramon Zamora film GAMES OF DEATH (aka Dragon's Mission) (plus two other rare HK kung fu films) off Global and sell them on DVD-R. He received the three films and here's what he posted the other day:
[...] I received the movies all 3 2 widescreen and 1 fullscreen ...
The [problem] is that what he send to me the material lacks scenes it's as if you would go and buy yourself a book and when opening the book there are torn (chapters) pages missing ... That's the case with these 3 movies ...
For ex Martial Mates 59 min of the movie and the last 16-17 min are added to after THE END. Taken from the middle somewhere so it's a total mess ... My guess is that he misses 35mm material either it's lost or it's damaged.
This is the case with all 3 movies so I told him that I would not go along with this and have incomplete movies sold. I don't want to have a bunch of angry [kung fu] fans on my neck ... It's not my cup of tea ... He said ok no matter... Whatever ...
He has found another guy now whom he has known for some time and he will get into this and have them sold after Dec month ...
I asked him will you enhance re-edit the movies with full material? He said I don't have any more material what's there is there!!!!! Well, then I told him good luck with the selling ... And that's about it.
So apparently the RAMON ZAMORA film is not complete!!! :-( What a bummer. Boo-hoo.
I bought these two on eBay UK today: DEVIL HUNTERS and KICKBOXER'S TEARS. Both films are Hong Kong flicks and they star the lovely (and ass kicking) Moon Lee (who was of course also in ANGEL 3 which I posted about yesterday) and she's joined by the equally lovely (and mucho ass kicking) Sibelle Hu (in DEVIL) and Yukari Oshima (in KICKBOXER'S). Both tapes are US releases and quite hard to get hold of these days. DEVIL HUNTERS is even a brand new, never opened copy! The seller had only listed them for sale within the UK but I wrote and asked him to sell them to me (apparently I'm his first non UK buyer, LOL).
aka IRON ANGELS 3 / RETURN OF THE IRON ANGELS / MIDNITE ANGELS 3
Check this scene from ANGEL 3! Argh, awesome. I have two versions of this (reg. 1 DVD and Japanese VHS) and they both suffer from being dubbed into English and fullscreen (and apparently missing scenes). Wauw, this Cantonese language, 2.35 anamorphic print looks just awesome! And fortunately for you and me it's been released without any English subs what-so-ever over in the Czech Republic. No, wait, haaay! Haha. No, not good at all. No subs and difficult to get hold of but AT LEAST IT'S FINALLY OUT THERE! I'm sure it's only a matter of time before someone puts fan subs on it.
Japanese VHS
Oh, and talking 'about Angel ripoffs that followed in the footsteps of the original series, I've just got hold of this COOL Greek VHS which sports an English dubbed print of the TRULY AWESOME film KILLER ANGELS (which also stars Moon Lee). I must have watched that un-subbed Hong Kong VCD (in Cantonese/Mandarin) at least 15 times!
KILLER ANGELS was retitled Ultra Force for some of the European markets. Very confusing as the same title was also used in some other Euroland territories (like Denmark and Germany) for another "girls with guns" flick called ROYAL WARRIORS (aka In the Line of Duty). The sequel to Ultra Force (in the "Greek" series) was not surprisingly Ultra Force 2 which was actually a retitle of DEVIL HUNTERS. The Danish/German Ultra Force 2 was YES, MADAM! (aka In the Line of Duty 2). At least all movies star Moon Lee!! :D
