Hong Kong Godfather finally here. Almost.

The violent triad HK movie HONG KONG GODFATHER is fanally being released on DVD (April 27th). Yay! Spiffy!! Ian F. has done an incisive rundown of the new disc here (including comparisons with the old Pan Media bootleg as to what was cut from that disc). And read my old post about the film here.





PS: the YouTube clips are from the old bootleg or an old video tape.

"No Blood No Surrender" star Palito passes away

Unfortunate news on the star from the Filipino RAMBO remake on my Filipino blog.

Jumping Ash (Hong Kong, 1976)

I've just watched Josephine Siao & Leung Po-Chi's entry to the Hong Kong new wave genre JUMPING ASH from 1976! And what a gritty and awesome movie it is. The copy I watched is the Greek VHS which is sourced from an old and very scratched print but actually it seems right that it's so worn! Brings it down on the gritty street level you'll find in the movie. I don't know which release this YouTube clip is from but it actually looks too good. It looks too much like a film! No kidding.

By the way, when I use the term "Hong Kong new wave" it's not a reference to what kung fu message boards and most other Western film sites about Asian films refer to as "Hong Kong new wave" which is basically just any film made after John Woo's A BETTER TOMORROW and EVERY film from the 1980s and thru to 1997. The term New Wave was used by film scholars/reviewers in Hong Kong to describe a bunch of films made by first time directors in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Directors who made gritty films about HK and life in the then crown colony. You can read about it on Wiki - just remember Wiki is by no means perfect and you'll find that some yoyo simply haaad to add John Woo to the list of new wave directors probably because they thought it inconceivable that something as important as the NW genre would exist without the director who "saved" the HK film (at least in the eyes of action fans in the West). Anyway, if you wanna expand your HK film knowledge to more than just Shaw Brothers and heroic bloodshed then get hold of some of these films. And you could certainly start off with a much worse choice than JUMPING ASH.


Knetan's review from "Oh So Good..." site:

Headed by directorial rookies Josephine Siao (award winning actress in Summer Snow) and Leung Po-Chi (Hong Kong 1941), this gritty, documentary-esque Hong Kong cop thriller has the marks of stuff seen before and since. But thanks to a keen eye for placing the narrative amongst the Hong Kong people and the world they would be familiar with, Jumping Ash immerses well. Ga Lun is Callan Leong, whose cop life and straight line of administrating the law gets a bit blurred at times. Working in the Kowloon Walled City for instance, a little corruption, immoral attitude and bribes solves crimes in a society that's heading downhill. The big fish in the pond is drug king Tung (Nick Lam) however and the two killers from Amsterdam (Michael Chan and Chen Sing). The former protects Tung, the other wants him dead and the closer Callan gets to Tung, the closer he gets to co-operation with the opposite side....

Placing their camera quite effectively in the midst of environments alive with activity, the realism of Jumping Ash isn't a fashion statement at all. It adds to a sense of doom, grit, danger and the obvious social commentary about the struggles of the outnumbered cops. There are equally important moments of lightheartedness such as one scene with a stakeout at a brothel and Callan is both the clichéd movie cop and suitably struck out of a mold the filmmakers have witnessed on their beloved Hong Kong street. That mold contains some quite grave stupidity in terms of decision-making which leads to a questionable scene towards the end but no doubt, Jumping Ash remains important today. As a statement and view, even though it probably rightly won't be looked at as an edge of your seat work. Crude isn't bad in this case either and the worse print quality you can find of the film, probably serves of it. Josephine Siao also appears as Callan's wife.

Review by nameless person on Hong Kong Movie Data Base:

Po-Chih Leong's debut film was a trendsetter in Hong Kong cinema. Shot from the shoulder, the fast-moving world of cops, informers, drug dealers and other crooks are evoked in a very lively and realistic way. The action all takes place in carefully selected locations, among them the walled city of Kowloon and Yuen Long. The film looks like a documentary and evokes the kind of excitement usually seen in news programmes. The story focuses on the battle between two gangs and starts in Amsterdam, where one of the gang leaders is murdered. The male protagonists Jia Lun and Chen Huimin provide memorable acting achievements as the just cop and the cold-blooded killer."

Everything is awesome

It's Saturday and I received a bunch of films today from a fellow Filipino friend in the US. Not that any of us are Filipinos mind you but that we're into Filipino films. Not that it has anything to do with these films tho. Haha.
I got the Turkish crime/eurospy flicks CEHENNEMDE STENIK VAR (1970) and AKREPLER (1983), plus a couple of Bollywood westerns whose titles escape me ("Johnny Gun in Bombay" or something) and JAMES BOND 777, and not least the Shaw Bros flick TEMPTRESS OF A THOUSAND FACES. Woo-hoo!! Read a cool review of the latter here. And if all that wasn't enough Danish super horror film director Insane Blake sent me a DVD of his films. I'm definitely looking forward to those.

"No Blood No Surrender" star Palito in hospital

Reynaldo Alfredo Hipolito aka Palito who starred in the obscure Filipino "remake" of RAMBO, NO BLOOD NO SURRENDER, is unfortunately in hospital. If you're into Filipino films but don't read my other blog you might wanna check out this piece of news here.

Opstandelsen - new Danish zombie movie

I posted a teaser for the Danish zombie flick OPSTANDELSEN a little while back and now there's a full trailer and an interview with the director of the movie, Casper Haugegaard. Check it out. It's all got English subs (which interestingly enough are pretty good, not something we're used to from professional Danish labels who release DVDs that carry English subs. They usually suck major ass).

The new trailer:



The interview:



The old teaser:

Where does she hide it?

Arr you gotta check this video out. I'm not at all big on magicians' shows but this one is pretty cool (and only runs a couple minuets). And, uh, the magician is an office dressed chick. Well, at the beginning anyway.



The show is from Montréal btw.

Brave new worlds

Who wouldda thunk that! I have stuff on YouToobe now. Go here. xD

Yet another lost psychotronic movie!! ... or: DEAD WOMEN RULE MY WORLD

The latter half of the headline is a James Ellroy quotation. But, hey, you knew that didn't you. Well, at least if you know anything about hardboiled crime fiction you probably would have. Anyway, check out this cool clip, it's something you haven't watched before:


Watch CBS News Videos Online
This awesome clip is from Christa Helm's second movie LET'S GO FOR BROKE. The film premiered in 1974. It was directed by Ron Walsh and its cinema run lasted exactly four days! Then it got yanked back to obscurity and that's where it's been ever since. And it's still there. It doesn't even exist on bootleg VHS. This clip is all we've got.

The actress who played the lead was Christa Helm who was also in one other movie, LEGACY OF SATAN, which is familiar to you if you've been with me for a while. I quite like that film. It was directed by Gerard Damiano who also did DEEP THROAT and THE DEVIL IN MISS JONES. LEGACY OF SATAN is Damiano's sole non porn movie.

It's rumoured LEGACY OF SATAN was actually made as a porn flick but the film company cut out all the porn stuff and released it as an "ordinary" horror movie. Well, good for us (not that I don't like porn but just not to slow down a cool horror movie. You kinda lose the horror movie tone if you're kept being interrupted by scenes of rock & roll!). It's a very cool vampire/devil worship horror film. It's like if David Lynch dropped a lot of bad acid and directed a devil cult film while listening to loud avantgarde jazz music, or something. But that's another story another time.

But one part you do need to know about the plot is a scene towards the end of the film. Christa Helm's character is brutally murdered by someone slashing her throat with a big knife. If the story were that miss Helm quit acting and the film was never pulled out of whatever dark and dank cupboard it was hidden in it would have been sufficient enough for creating a myth about this lost psychotronic obscurity. But that's not what happened, Christa Helm didn't withdraw from acting; only three years after being killed with a knife onscreen she was brutally stabbed to death on the street. Her murder was never solved. She's almost like a Black Dahlia of the disco era.

But back to the film; it's both a lost film ... and it's not. Somebody owns a copy, the only known copy, but they're not letting go of it. I almost wish I hadn't watched that little bit there cos now I crave more. You always do. I have no idea if the rest of the movie is as cool but those two to three minutes worth of footage looks just as entertaining as any of the exploitation films from that era that we CAN enjoy today.

Nobody would thrash you for thinking it were a Jack Hill movie! I should write more about this but I'm running on overtime here, been awake for, uh, lemme count... 29 hours. Time to hit the sack. Watch the clip again and write an angry letter to whoever holds the copyrights/owns the print. Demand we get this film on DVD now!

Lost Shaw Bros film on DVD soon!

Virgin of the Seven Seas.

I don't really know much about this release but Spannick posted info on Cinehound about this upcoming German DVD release of this lost Shaw Bros film. The film is a German co-production and will only carry the German audio but according to Spannick's info it'll have English subtitles. There's no release date other than "soon".

The German title is: KARATE, KÜSSE, BLONDE KATZEN and it's coming out from Camera Obscura.

There's more screen grabs here.