A pile of steaming... entertainment.

I remember the very first issue I ever read of Métal Hurlant (Heavy Metal in English and Total Metal in Denmark) and there was a story about this guy who discovers a living, breathing pile of garbage in his basement. It's just lying there not moving but when the unfortunate sap flicks a booger into the pile of shit that last added bit is enough to create enough energy for the pile to kill the man and proceed to take over the world. Or something. (I read it bloody 30 yrs ago, my memory is faint here!). Anyway, I wonder how much more trash it's gonna take before the garbage blob that is yours truly will start killing random pedestrians and attack the world! If that's the intentions I'm certainly doing something right here cos I just ordered Bruno Mattei's LIBIDO MANIA and the Shaw Brothers' VIRGINS OF THE SEVEN SEAS!!! And, uh, they weren't cheap either. :-(
60 euros!! Mein gott, I could have bought a new car in the Czech Republic for that kinda money!!

Both films are uncut and they're released (for the first anywhere on DVD) by the German label Camera Obscura and I'm getting them from OMG Entertainment in Holland. The German title for VIRGINS OF THE SEVEN SEAS is Karate, Küsse, blonde Katzen and some international sites omit the German umlaut (i.e. dots over the U), thus making it "Karate, Kusse, blonde Katzen" which is somewhat funny... well, if you're Danish anyway. LOL.

The movie itself is one scene of depravity after another. There's rampant misogyny, beatings, degradation, lesbianism (If Helen Ko's character counts), rape and other scenes of moral debasement. With the frequent pratfall humor, you'd think this air of buffoonery would override the roughhouse nature of the proceedings, but it only adds to the overall tastelessness.

From Cool Ass Cinema, read the full review here.

[click scan to read the text]

About LIBIDO MANIA:

[...]...it's still perverse enough that you'd never want any family members to see this lying around on a coffee table.

Read the full review on Mondo Digital here.

I'm not sure anybody would actually call this music but...

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Boiled... hard.

True bliss probably comes in many shapes and forms but this morning it comes with the knowledge that I've spent the last couple of hours choosing which re-released OOP pulp fiction novels I should order from the Book Depository shop in the UK. I ended up with the 6 titles you see in the cover scans here. All are from the awesome HARDCASE CRIME BOOKS publishing label (located in the US).



For a while last year and during the early months of 2011 I feared HARDCASE CRIME BOOKS were calling it quits; I feared bankruptcy as so many other companies have closed down due to the recent recession. Most of their early books were going out of print and, actually, yes the label were in trouble as their publisher Dorchester publishing house folded 18 months ago.



Luckily HARDCASE CRIME BOOKS have recently (well, 6 months ago but the update pace here is slooow - as I'm sure you've realised by now) managed to strike a deal with Titan Books in the UK so from now on the books are gonna be UK editions (I have no idea if the coming releases are going to be published in the US simultaneously by Titan or if they're going to export the UK editions to the US or whatever and quite frankly I don't give a rat's ass. What is of major fucken importance here is that the old books are going to stay IN print and new ones are going to be printed (from November of this year). Which country they're going to be published in is not really important. New HARDCASE CRIME books! Yay!! Spiffy!!!



The books I've ordered from Book Depo are new editions but whether they are newly printed or from Dorchester's old stock I don't know. I guess I'll find out when they're here. If you're interested in old-skool hard-boiled crime fiction I can only recommend that you check out some of the releases from HARDCASE CRIME BOOKS. Out of the 60+ books they've released so far I have only got 11 of them so I can't really comment on how good they all are but if nothing else the covers are truly awesome!



Fortunately HARDCASE are gong-ho on old crime pulp mags and the covers certainly show!! Getting a book from HCCB is like stepping into a book store in 1957 and picking up a cool pulp mag. Hmm, it's 8:34 in the morning here but I already feel like giving one of my "Back From the Grave" or "Teenage Shut-down" records a spin to set the tone. You should do the same! xD xD xD
(and do check out my old entries labelled "pulp"!)



PS: most of the HARDCASE CRIME BOOKS are 30-50% off at Book Depository at the moment so there's a great deal to save + free postage anywhere in the world (and they take PayPal)!! :D

Could you just shut that door please. The draft is getting annoying.

One thing that drives me nuts is drama queens on message boards who keep threatening to slam the door over the years. Sometimes they'll even slam the door. Sometimes they'll disappear for a while without a sound. And sometimes they'll just stop talking about it for a while. BUT THEY ALWAYS COME BACK ... AND THEY ALWAYS START THREATENING TO LEAVE AGAIN!!

If I had a dime for every time *someone* on Dvdmaniacs has said they were gonna leave I would have a whole pile of damn dimes! Whether they stay or leave is fine by me but it's becoming tiresome to listen to over and over again. I feel like that episode of BOTTOM where Eddie Hitler says to Richard "Green slime in one ear, gren slime out the other ear, over and over again!" (or something to that effect). Stop, just, please, stop! >_<

The original HEADBANGERS BALL - revisited!!!

Ahh, happy days! I miss the old Headbangers Ball! (from UK/Euro MTV*). Back in the day I don't think I watched one single episode without thinking Vanessa Warwick was embarrassing but in retrospect she was actually pretty cool (and she was on MTV and I wasn't so who's the real douche here, eh. LOL). This clip contains two segments with SLAYER. I actually remember watching the first one but I have no memory of the second one. I wish someone had full episodes and would upload them somewhere.

- an old intro fra '93:





*from before MTV decided that every little shit country should have their own version. What the fuck do we need a Danish MTV for!? Gimme back the original UK/Euro version!

Gritty Hong Kong

Way over a year after I wrote about the gritty Hong Kong crime film series THE CRIMINALS I've finally managed to track down an original copy of part 2, HOMICIDES. It never ceases to amaze me how quickly ordinary releases can vanish from the face of the Earth! These video-cd's were sitting on the shelves at dddhouse for a very long time and I had them bookmarked for months on end because I knew I was gonna order them at some stage - and then when I finally decided to get them... they were gone... from every store... everywhere. O_O

At dddhouse they were selling them for HKD 40 (US$5) apiece and I just spent 30 dollars US for a second hand copy from a seller on eBay France! And that's before postage. >.<

Now I just need another 18 months to track down part #5.
[insert smiley of cartoon character hitting himself with large mallet]

BRUKA - no longer so lost!!!

It's time to celebrate. BRUKA, QUEEN OF EVIL just arrived at the door! Not my door mind you but at least at the door of another Filipino/worldweird collector, Andrew Leavold. This is truly amazing! We never thought this would materialise, this was considered lost. Truly and purely awesome. If you haven't already then check this bat crazy trailer (or check it again!).

Danish HEAVY METAL in the early days

Sacre bleu!!! I've just discovered someone uploaded the old (and veeeeery rare) LP "Halloween... the night of" by the early Danish heavy metal band WASTED. WASTED belong to that handful of the early heavy metal bands that existed just before HM developed into thrash metal (well, in Denmark anyway). Most of these bands came and went and hardly anybody remembers them today. I don't think I've actually listened to this record since the mid or late 1980s!! Unfortunately the album belongs to those (luckily very few) albums that I sold off sometime in the early 90s. And the reason? Well, quite frankly I never thought it was very good. But now, 25+ years after it came out, it's kinda fun (in a cheesy way) to listen to. Heavy metal was so different to all other music at the time. To listen to Heavy metal was really smacking society (and your parents) right in the dick! LOL. Check the other tracks on YouTube.

Alan Tang R.I.P.

Unfortunately Alan Tang has died. :-(



I first saw him as one of the two "brothers" in FLAMING BROTHERS opposite Chow Yun Fat many years ago on a shoddy VHS dupe without subtitles. It was one of the first HK films to be reviewed in "In the Flesh" fanzine (from the UK). He was in tons of films and produced even more. He made films already back in the 60s but the ones I'm most familiar with are the later ones from the 80s. Last year I bought the MADE IN HK video tape of FLAMING and the re-released HK dvd too. Not so much just because of him but simply because this is a cool heroic bloodshed film - but at the same time he was someone who made an impression! And now he's gone at the way too young age of 64. RIP, Alan.

SCORPION THUNDERBOLT - rare LETTERBOXED trailer

Check out this uber cool trailer that someone sent me (and which I just uploaded); It's for the highly entertaining Richard Harrison HK movie SCORPION THUNDERBOLT which is one of my two personal favourites among the many Richard Harrison cut & paste films there were made in HK in the 80s. The other one is MAJESTIC THUNDERBOLT.

The trailer is cool on it's own - but in addition to this it is also awesome because this is the fully letterboxed trailer! It's very rare to see a letterboxed trailer for these films, just as rare as it is to actually find the films in the letterboxed format! The only release of SCORPION that I'm aware of that is lbx is an old video tape from France. All other video tapes are fullscreen and there are NO dvd releases anywhere! And get this, the owners don't have a lbx print either! Anybody who buys the film for distribution would get a fullscreen print!!! In other words, you need to overlook the less than perfect quality of the video tape the trailer origins from. This is the only way to watch this!

About these films in general:
If you've only watched some of the lesser (in my opinion anyway) ninja films then you may feel a little let down by them. I admit not all of these films are great - or even very good for that matter. But if you're into wild and weird worldweird cinema then you really need to give at least SCORPION THUNDERBOLT a shot. It's head and shoulders better than the rest of the pack (well, except for MAJESTIC which is pretty cool too like I said)! And by the way, this isn't a ninja film! It's a mix of revenge, monsters, sex, and horror!!!

And if you'd like to know more about these films and which films the original prints came from I urge you to check out Jesus Manuel's blog Golden Ninja Warrior Chronicles. He's just finished a six part series called "Curse of the IFD THUNDERBOLT series".

VHS / Greece / fullscreen / English dub / Greek subs

VHS / Japan / fullscreen / English dub / Japanese subs

Thanks to my friend who sent me the trailer. I'm not sure if I should mention him by name as he's with a video company so I'll play it safe and leave it out, but thanks mate!