Firefist of Incredible Dragon - update

Korean poster


I wrote about the wild and crazy movie FIREFIST OF INCREDIBLE DRAGON the other day and here's a bit of new info from two nice gents; Knudsford of ASIAN CULT CINEMA SHOWCASE blog in Japan has provided highly interesting info on the film's origin and Peter "Kothar" from Cinehound has sent me cover scans for the French VHS and DVD releases.


THE DIFFERENT RELEASES:

Peter, along with my buddy David Z in the US, confirms that the French print is a good-looking letterboxed print and that it runs a whooping 11 minutes longer than the UK DVD!!!

Unfortunately, the French DVD isn't English friendly. :o(

Whether the French VHS and DVD contain the original uncut Korean print instead of the Tomas Tang version remains to be seen. One rather unfortunate piece of info I learnt via the British Board of Film Classification's (BBFC) homepage is that they cut out no less than 51 seconds of the UK DVD!!! As I wrote in my first post the film is also out on VHS in the US and I would assume that version is the uncut print (of the shorter Tomas Tang version).


ABOUT THE FILM:

Firstly, FIREFIST OF INCREDIBLE DRAGON isn't a Hong Kong movie at all as it says on the IMDb!

Whaaat? Surely you jest, Jack!?!? O_O
Incorrect info on the highly trustworthy IMDb??? Nooo!!! @_@

Obviously, I'm laughing my ass off here. xD
As soon as I saw that Tomas Tang moniker I suspected foul play but with info as difficult to come by in regards to an ultra obscure and rare movie like FIREFIST you sometimes got to run with what you're being given. Even shitty info provided by drunken IMDb monkeys.

However, here's the correct info which Tommy translated from Korean:

소림사 주천귀동 Juchon-Gwidong in Shaolin Temple (1982)
Chinese title: 少林寺酒天鬼童
Production Company Shin Han Art Films Co., Ltd
Producer Kim Gi-Yeong
Release Day 1982-06-19
Running Time 82 min.
Director Kim Jong-Seong
Cast: Lee Jae-Yeong, Im Poong, Han Hee, Joo Yong-Jong

I'm a bit curious as to the 82 minute running time info. Peter tells me the French tape runs 88 minutes!!! Did the Koreans have a censored print or is it simply a misprint?




None of these two French covers are particularly good I'm afraid! Actually they're terrible at conveying what kind of film is inside the box! You would think this is an ordinary - and kinda boring looking - martial arts movie. Well, like I said (i.e. rambled about frantically) in my first post this isn't an ordinary kung fu film by anybody's standards! I would loooove to see this being given a proper release by Mondo Macabro!! Are you listening Peter Tombs!!!



Big thank-you's fly out to Knudsford, Peter, and David!

Best ever PRIMUS on a Wednesday

Anything good behind the stove?

Money wise I'm scraping the barrel now. No more tapes, no dvds, no nothing for the rest of the month. I'm stuck with tinned food and crumbs off the floor. Fortunately I've stacked up on coffee and old paperbacks. I intend to read the latter tho.

Oy vey!

The ridicule I've had to endure from Member-X thru out the past few years is more than any man should have to bear! >_<

HK chicks so bad ass they even spit - and speak foul language in Turkish (part two)

For part one go here.

The people at Customs finally sent me the tapes after I had to send them my invoice. I'm allowed to import goods into Denmark for a measly US$12 and these tapes were $10 each. I would have had to pay both the extra vat PLUS their fee (a whooping 30 dollars!!!). And all for some crappy Turkish tapes which I didn't even need in the first place! I just thought they would be fun to have because I'm a fan of those films. Well, FORTUNATELY the seller had sent me an invoice only for the ONE tape and he hadn't bothered to make a new one for both tapes but instead included the price for tape #2 IN THE POSTAGE FEE, hahahaha. Well, THAT WAS MY LUCK!!! This meant the invoice for the one tape was for $10 (and $21 for the postage!!!) and I got the tapes without problems. LMAO!!!

Oh, and when I opened the parcel I discovered one of the tapes was even a bloody Betamax tape, haha.


PS: And don't ask me why the Customs people didn't go: "Hang on, there's TWO farken tapes here! Where's the bloody payment for the second one!!" I have no idea. But then again they wrote they had a parcel that contained *DVDs*. o_O

...

There's one point in Anders Østergaard's documentary film TROLLKARLEN about the Swedish jazz musician Jan Johansson in which one of Johansson's friends talks about a dream he had after Jan died; In the dream he had just stepped out of a tube train in the Stockholm underground when he saw his friend at a distance, he followed him and when he finally caught up he asked: "Jan, where have you been? We thought you passed away" to which Jan coyly responded that he'd been away to help set up a music piece in Russia. Then the friend woke up and in the documentary movie you can see how his face changes when he continues "...but then everything was of course back to normal". It's weird how the mind works. A couple of nights ago I dreamt I was talking to some people and one of them turned to me and said: "She is dead" and pointed to a woman. I woke up and thought to myself: "That person didn't die, she doesn't even exist". Then I realised the person who made that comment to me was actually my mum who passed away in real life. We may get further away but it never really gets good.

Firefist of Incredible Dragon - Korean poster

Big thanks to Tommy in Japan who sent me a scan of the Koran poster for FIREFIST OF INCREDIBLE DRAGON. Thanks, mate!

Blow your mind for a penny!!!

Unless television has ruined your short term memory completely you'll remember I bought a DVD from Amazon UK for 1 pence a fortnight ago. I remember Fred "Ninjadixon" Anderson asked me if it were a good movie. I suspect he thought it would probably be the worst crap ever. I mean how can you get a good or even decent movie for one lousy stinking penny!?!? I must admit I kinda had the same worry, I mean, come on, ONE PENNY for crying out loud! Well, the movie is FIREFIST OF INCREDIBLE DRAGON (Hong Kong, 1983), I watched it last night and... let me try and put this into perspective... one of the wildest and most insane films I usually bring up when the debate is on, well, wild and insane movies, is WOLF DEVIL WOMAN. Most fans of worldweird cinema will tell you that film is a bat-shit crazy movie. Try and listen carefully to what I'm going to say now, I'll try and write it as slowly and carefully pronounced as I can... "FIREFIST" IS "WOLF DEVIL WOMAN"... AND THEN DOUBLE UP!!!!!! ARRRGGGHHHH!!!!!!




This is without a doubt the most wild, insane, crazy, fucked up, messed up, mindblowing piece of worldweird cinema I've eve seen!!! This film has EVERYTHING!!! Dead corpses, ghosts, flying ghosts, nudity, zombies, bad kung fu, a zombie doing bad kung fu, sleaze, gore, people pissing their pants, the window scene from SUSPERIA totally ripped off!!!, music from spaghetti westerns, bloody bath water, and tons more! The only thing you won't find is a flying head... BUT IT HAS A FLYING HEART THAT KILLS PEOPLE!!!!!







That one penny is the best penny I've ever spent!!! My good buddy Ingolf (who once was part of the Copenhagen gang but now resides in the fjells of Norway) tells me this version is even only a short version and there is a longer French print (only on VHS I think). Needless to say I tried to located that version immediately after finishing the mindblowing experience but alas to no avail. Apparently the French version is even letterboxed. The print states Jimmy Tseng is the director but I haven't been able to find any info on the film and I don't trust the fucken IMDb at all as most of that info is written by drunken Mongolian monkeys - on medication. The UK disc is serviceable but not great: fullscreen, English dub, and the picture looks like ass! (kinda like if it were taped off an outskirt TV signal). And there are scenes covered in a weird blue light, I couldn't even tell if it were MEANT to be that way or if the print just went from crappy to even more crappy - BUT IT DOESN'T MATTER!!! Somehow the rough picture made it all the more fun.

The DVD cover says 2002 but even so you can still easily get it from Amazon UK and eBay. My copy was a second hand copy but I bet it was only watched once (or not at all) as it looks like new. I checked eBay and it turns out the film was also released on VHS in the US but apparently it's never made it to DVD statesside. One seller stated the US tape runs 90 minutes which is quite a bit longer than the UK DVD but I have my doubts about that. I've seen one too many eBay page with info taken right off video cases because the sellers couldn't be arsed to check the tape or DVD (but if you have the tape please let me know. Cheers). If you can't play PAL DVDs I suggest you get the boot they're selling from FarEastFlix; their version is fullscreen + English dub but whether it's off the US VHS or the UK DVD I have no idea. I'm certainly gonna watch this again, I suggest you do the same if you're into worldweird films. xD





The deadly flying heart taking a rest in a tree.

Blogger is back

From Blogger's own... blog:

What a frustrating day. We’re very sorry that you’ve been unable to publish to Blogger for the past 20.5 hours. We’re nearly back to normal — you can publish again, and in the coming hours posts and comments that were temporarily removed should be restored. Thank you for your patience while we fix this situation. We use Blogger for our own blogs, so we’ve also felt your pain.

Here’s what happened: during scheduled maintenance work Wednesday night, we experienced some data corruption that impacted Blogger’s behavior. Since then, bloggers and readers may have experienced a variety of anomalies including intermittent outages, disappearing posts, and arriving at unintended blogs or error pages. A small subset of Blogger users (we estimate 0.16%) may have encountered additional problems specific to their accounts. Yesterday we returned Blogger to a pre-maintenance state and placed the service in read-only mode while we worked on restoring all content: that’s why you haven’t been able to publish. We rolled back to a version of Blogger as of Wednesday May 11th, so your posts since then were temporarily removed. Those are the posts that we’re in the progress of restoring.

Again, we are very sorry for the impact to our authors and readers. We try hard to ensure Blogger is always available for you to share your thoughts and opinions with the world, and we’ll do our best to prevent this from happening again.

Posted by Eddie Kessler, Tech Lead/Manager, Blogger

Tales From the Quadead Zone - get it why don't you!

I've written about Chester Turner's two movies BLACK DEVIL DOLL FROM HELL and TALES FROM THE QUADEAD ZONE a couple of times before in connection with a BLACK DEVIL DOLL eBay auction and the upcoming DVD release (which is totally delayed but I hear it's still on its way - just very, very slowly!). Anyhoo, if you can't wait for the DVD now is your chance to become the happy owner of an original THE QUADEAD ZONE video tape!!! Yeps, the original, very rare VHS is on eBay right now and for another day or so. While I'm writing this there's been 34 bids so far and the latest bid is 650 dollars!!! For the auction go here. For links to cool reviews of the two films and where to get boots from (and I don't mean Dr. Martins) check my old posts.

EDIT: The final bid came to $660.









NB: All this talk about eBay auctions makes me think of crazy Norwegian bearded man Patrick who left us many moons ago for rehab. I certainly hope you're doing well out there somewhere, buddy. Maybe one day you'll let us in on what the fuck happened to you.