Killer Angels - trailer

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!).

Gee, that's not how they do it in Hollywood

Video-CD/HK/fullscreen/Cantonese & Mandarin/English subs



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"

Greek VHS release of DEVIL HUNTERS.

No "Games of Death" after all!

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.

Moon Lee double bill: Devil Hunters & Kickboxer's Tears

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).

ANGEL 3 fully letterboxed & longest version finally released!

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

Party at casa Nicholson

Annie Nicholson just posted an update on Nick Nicholson's blog. If you follow the Filipino section on Dvdmaniacs you'll know that Andrew Leavold is once again back in the Philippines to do what it is he does in regards to Filipino cinema (basically everything to scoop up more info!). And over on Annie & Nick's blog you can read an account of their meeting, party and check the pix. It's been about thee months since Nick Nicholson passed away and it's definitely weird not to see any more of his blog updates, sometimes on films, sometimes on life in general, and sometimes wild posts about stuff that pissed him off. Good to see Jim Gaines was there too (I'm sure you're aware he was in tons of trashy Filipino Vietnam War movies and action movies like THE LAST HUNTER, STRIKE COMMANDO 2, ONE ARMED EXECUTIONER, and he's kept doing films when everyone else had chucked in the towel; He was in Mattei's ZOMBIE THE BEGINNING from 2007). For the update and photos go here. Thanks to Annie for keeping us updated.

I'm not sure if I should post this on my Lejemorder blog or the Filipino blog, so sod it I'll post it on both!

Please come back... I didn't mean what I said!!! Honestly!!!

I just checked Google Analytics and yesterday I had ZERO visitors! Not just on this blog but on all my blogs!!! Gee, what happened. O_O
Obviously a malfunction with Google but still an obscure reading, LOL.

Screw Xmas, here's Halloween (part 2)

Do yourself a favour and check out this mighty cool Halloween tune!

New Swamp of the Ravens dvd

VCI in the States have just released Manuel Cano's SWAMP OF THE RAVENS on DVD sourced from a spiffy 35mm uncut print. The DVD also includes an equally uncut version of I EAT YOUR SKIN (aka Zombie) taken from a widescreen print. This certainly sounds good. SWAMP was released a few years back from Something Weird Video but apparently that DVD was missing some footage at the end. I should point out I have no idea of how much is missing from the SWV print as I haven't seen that print. I look forward to this new DVD though and have just ordered it today (well, yesterday I guess as this is 3 in the morning, LOL). I do own the other film, I EAT YOUR SKIN, which was also released on a SWV DVD (in their DVD-R line actually) and that version certainly needs an improved release.

Here's some info from DVDManiacs by poster Ethan Christian Seiler, I sincerely hope he doesn't mind my reprint here. You'll find the thread here.

Odd the talk gets diverted to Bava's BLOOD AND BLACK LACE as there is a solid connection unto SWAMP OF THE RAVENS. Manuel Cano produced Mario's very personal HATCHET FOR THE HONEYMOON as well as SWAMP writer Santiago Moncada co-writing that film as well! SWAMP is grossly underrated, a highly unusual, evocative, very enigmatic film with a singularly unique atmosphere....Hands down it possesses the most abstract and unorthodox "zombies" I can recall in any film. The Ecuadorean locales, particularly the swamp wherein Dr. Frosta's abode and ramshackle laboratory are located is a masterpiece of a natural location, so rich in depth of ambient dimension, the film is quite morbid within its fetishism, contains one of the best necrophilia sequences I have ever seen, but the necro-medical fetishism exuding throughout the film is, as well, quite unparalleled and of much power, including the very effective utilization of an actual human post mortem dissection (as effective and jarring in its smaller scale manner as anything in MEN BEHIND THE SUN, particularly since it just comes at you very fast, like a rock pelted directly into your head, from left field, you do not expect it, there is no ceremony culminating within it, it just cuts to it and it starts!). The English dubbing could be better, but Moncada's dialogue is full of caustic wit, character idiosyncratic dimension, even a type of brilliance to its narrative structure, he is in top form here. I think the recently deceased Aldo Sambrell referred to director Cano as, (to paraphrase) "..completely insane...".......haha......

Great new for fans of this film, I contacted VCI to ask specifics, firstly, I got them to correct their mistake for citing co-feature on the disc, Del Tenney's ZOMBIES, as running 148 minutes (!!!!)....Though I am disappointed that there will not be a two and a half hour ZOMBIES/I EAT YOUR SKIN....lol.....The print is still longer than many at 93 minutes.......

Anyway, here's what they wrote, it sounds very promising for both films!:

SWAMP OF THE RAVENS - was mastered from a 35mm negative. The video transfer was done 16x9 anamorphic widescreen with an aspect ratio of 2.35:1 (the original aspect ratio of the film) and is enhanced for 16x9 monitors. The film was produced in Spain but the version we are releasing has an English soundtrack.

ZOMBIE - the running time is really 93 minutes. The video transfer was also also done 16x9 anamorphic widescreen with an aspect ratio of 1.77:1 with enhancement for 16x9 monitors.

Screw Xmas, Halloween is here!

Check out this way kool Halloween toon by Bill Buchanan from 1962. It's pretty awesome and I wish that were my 7"! Check out this cat's YouTube channel, he's uploaded tons of cool tracks. Thanks to Armando for making me aware of this channel.