THRILLER - cut, dubbed and subbed in Danish

Here's the über über rare Danish VHS release of THRILLER - A CRUEL PICTURE, or as it's known in Danish KAMPEN MOD MAFIAEN. And no obviously (sooo obviously) this tape isn't sitting on my shelf. If only. There's only one known copy and it's located in Sweden. LOL. I have the scan from a Swedish message board and I'm told the Danish tape is the cut and English dubbed version.

(Click scan for bigger size)

Thanks to Filminteressert of Uncut and Cinehound forums for making me aware of this scan.

Thriller - A Cruel Picture

Alright, this isn't supposed to become the prime blog collectors turn to to check out what's going on the the world of rare VHS auctions... but I am gonna turn your attention to just one more exclusive auction; The Swedish VHS release of THRILLER - EN GRYM FILM, or as it's known in English THRILLER - A CRUEL PICTURE, directed by Bo Arne Vibenius and starring Christina Lindberg. This female revenge film is very very rare on Swedish VHS. For a long time only one copy was known to exist but now this second copy has turned up. It's not on eBay but on the Swedish eBay equivalent Tradera. The auction is running for another day and the latest bid as I write this is just over 5000 Swedish kronor ($715+). For the auction go here.

PS: No, you don't need to participate in the auction in order to watch the film as there's a really good reg. 1 DVD out. And in contradiction to the tape it's fully uncut (but be aware there's also an R-rated DVD. Make sure you get the right one, LOL).

Ghost of Guts Eater: SOLD!

Lars Jacobsson in Malmø, Sweden has lost his religion (i.e. he's giving up collecting old dusty video tapes) and he's selling off most of his treasured collection on eBay. The most interesting of his auctions is definitely his Swedish VHS release of the old Thai horror film KRASUE SAO from 1973, known in English as GHOST OF GUTS EATER. Lars' tape is the only known copy to exist among collectors (and the Swedish release is the only one in the entire world outside of Thailand! As a matter of fact I'm not even aware of any VHS or VCD releases FROM Thailand!!!) and in addition to this there's also the fact that GUTS EATER is actually a pretty entertaining film in that genre which I like to call the "flying head with intestines dangling underneath" genre (it may sound like common sense that such an expensive tape would be entertaining but trust me my scaly friend many VHS collectors pay good money for crap films simply due to their rarety!).


The auction ended yesterday and an unnamed collector in Switzerland won it for the whooping price of 510 dollars. Not the highest price ever for a video tape but high enough. Apparently, the same collector also scooped up Lars' BLACK MAGIC WITH BUDDHA Hong Kong ex-rental VHS for $152.


Congrats to whoever that Swiss collector is (btw, a couple of years back I bought BMWB directly from TaiSeng in the US for ten whole smackeroos. Haha. But of course my tape is the sell-thru release and it doesn't have the rarity of an ex-rental tape (which also has a much, much cooler cover art work, that's for damn sure!!). The film and the version of it is entirely the same tho).


Read more about GHOST OF GUTS EATER in this old post.

Ghost of Guts Eater scans:
Top pic: The Thai poster. Middle pic: The Swedish VHS. Bottom pic: Custom made DVD cover done by some geezer Patrick knows. LOL.

droPPing naMes

My friend from Copenhagen Nils Markvardsen (aka "the sleazy cowboy" aka Denmark's spaghetti western aficionado numero uno aka publisher of eXtase magazine!) went to the Fantastisk Film Festival a week ago in Lund, Sweden, and hooked up with Enzo Castellari (who directed Keoma, The Big Racket, The Inglorious Bastards, The Last Shark/Jaws, The New Barbarians, Bronx Warriors, and many more). Nils did a half hour interview with Castellari and promises we'll get to see in at some stage, probably online as he's not really working on a new ish of eXtase (boo-hoo!!). Great shot, Nils. "The nice gent and the Cuban freedom fighter" as I call this picture, haha.

Magnus Carlson, editor extra-ordinaire of Gory-Glory magazine, also dropped by and said hello to the ol' director of those multo violenta Italian genre flicks. Obviously, Magnus didn't have far to travel as he hails from the area anyway.

And here's a photo of Jocke Andersson who you'll recognise as a regular commen-tator (heckler? LOL) here on the Lejemorder blog. The piccie is from Jocke's visit to Luigi Cozzi's store Profondo Rosso in downtown Rome this summer. Needless to say the other gent is Cozzi. Check out Jocke's new English language blog Rubbermonsterfetishism. By the way, I just discovered Profondo Rosso actually has a webpage. It's in Italian but you can translate the site by using the Google bar.

And finally, completing the Scandinavian blog roll here (i.e. in that I mention a blog from each country, not that I mention every film blog in the Scan countries!), here's a pic of bearded Norwegian drunkard Patrick of Tales of a Bearded Movie Aficionado blog which has got one of the coolest blog logo pictures ever. Patrick also ventured to downtown Roma and shook hands with Cozzi two yrs ago.


Oh, and is the Swiss collector who just won GHOST OF GUTS EARTER from Lars Jacobsson really gonna pay for it when he finds out Lars cut the tape to pieces???



(click the scans for bigger size. In regards to the photos I wouldn't advise it though. xD)

Thanks to DSF for subscribing. More mesmerised members into my cult. Yay, spiffy!
I have no idea who is behind DSF but his blog is here and anybody who left a nice comment to "that" post almost four months ago is welcome on this blog. :o)

And I forgot to link to the Flying Maciste Brothers who subbed the other day: Destructible Man.

Quarantine (2008)

I just finished watching QUARANTINE which is the American 2008 remake of the brilliant Spanish horror movie [REC] from 2007. I read somewhere (in Fangoria I think) that it's a re-interpretation of the story, not a remake as such, and that it's a really good film on its own. Gee, whoever wrote that could have fooled me! To me it looks like a scene-for-scene remake!! And yes if you haven't watched the original you're probably gonna think it's somewhat semi good but if you've actually watched [REC] you're most likely not gonna wanna watch the American version again but stick to the original Spanish one! Yes, the story is still good, and yes the location (the house) looks really good too, and the FX is equally good. But that's about it. Altho the dialogue in the remake follows the dialogue in the original version it seems to me that these director wanna-bees who churn out these remakes of old horror classics all believe that as long as their actors deliver the same lines as in the original it's all fine and on par with whatever they're trying to copy. Unfortunately, they often miss the whole fucken point about making the dialogue BELIEVABLE!! And in this movie it just isn't! It was the exact same problem with the remake of THE OMEN! There is not ONE moment in QUARANTINE where the female main character is believable! She overacts as if she been paid to do so. And her lines are delivered as tho they were uttered by an actor from a local 3rd rate amateur theatre! She's probably an okay actress but you don't believe for one moment that she's for real! The actress in [REC] was believable! Altho you know it's a film she stood out as if she were a real reporter in a creepy house! The entire cast of the original was believable. The whole movie was fucken believable. QUARANTINE on the other hand is a fucken cartoon. Oh, and one more thing that annoys me greatly is the lack of credit where credit is due! If you watch the documentaries on the dvd there isn't one single moment where any of the actors, director, producers, or other people behind the camera even start to mention that their film is actually a remake. They all keep kissing each other asses and talk about how they came up with everything for the film. Duh!! It wasn't very hard; they watched the original film and took it from there! Unfortunately, I'm probably gonna have to watch this plastic clone again for another upcoming review but otherwise I wouldn't wanna touch this turd again. I highly recommend the original Spanish film as it's well played and pretty bloody scary. If you MUST watch this then do yourself a favour and save it for AFTER you've watched [REC] . After having finished with the DVD I turned on the TV and one of the crappy commercial channels was showing RETURN TO THE HOUSE ON HAUNTED HILL (a sequel to the remake of HOUSE ON HAUNTED HILL [1999]) and altho it's probably a crappy sequel to a crappy film at least it looked a lot more fun (in a crappy, guilty pleasure way!) than QUARANTINE. Obviously I've ordered the UK disc that contains both films right away. £5 from Playcom. Yay!


PS: Hello to the Flying Maciste Bros. Thanks for subbing. :o)

No headline needed

Ohh, stop it, I can't take it, my stomach, hahaha. Oh man, is she for real??? Hahaha.

H-Bomb (1971) review

Heey, two days after my feeble attempt at a review Fred Adelman shows us how a real review of H-BOMB is supposed to look! Just go here. :o)
And do check out his site, Critical Condition. It's one of the (maybe thee) longest running review sites on the Internet as it actually started out as a real fanzine way back in the early 80s. Highly, highly recommended.

Stoner aka A Man Called Stoner (1974)

In my parcel from DDDhouse yesterday I also received the DVD version of STONER (starring Angela Mao and George Lazenby) from FS/JS. I already have both the VCD version and the Danish VHS. And, uh, I'm still waiting for the DVD from PanMedia (yes some of you are going to hate me now, LOL).

Why all these releases? Have I got a STONER fetish or something? Ahh, no. LOL. However, there are no less than four different versions of the film! No shit! A short HK print (the one on the HK VCD), a longer HK print (which so far has only been available on the Japanese DVD but which has now also been released on HK DVD, which means you'll get two different prints if you but the same FS/JS release on VCD and DVD!!!), and there are two English dubbed versions made for the international market; one longer than the other.

And reportedly all four versions are edited differently!!! Very obscure and I wanna check out how different they all are. I know. Fanatical. xD

H-Bomb (1973)

In 1972 Chris Mitchum and Olivia Hussey both starred in Antonio Isasi-Isasmendi's Italian/Spanish/French co-production SUMMERTIME KILLER. That film has become somewhat of a cult movie but actually already in 1971 [see edit note] Mitchum and Hussey joined forces in the Thai/Hong Kong co-production H-BOMB. After having just watched the film it seems to me that this is a co-production where the Hong Kong part is probably just the money aspect of it. The director, P. Chalong, and most of the cast is from Thailand, the film was shot in Thailand, and everything reeks of Thai. Well, apart from the gwailo actors in the lead roles, obviously.

Edit: H-BOMB was actually made in 1973 after SUMMERTIME KILLER!
(See Andrew Leavold's comment at the bottom of this post) 




I tried to get hold of this on video about a year ago when it was listed on eBay but lost out to another bidder. Well, good thing too cos I'm pretty sure all the old video versions are fullscreen (like the ones used for the Youtube clips) and guess what; Joy Sales just put out a fully letterboxed print!

I received my copy from DDDHOUSE in Hong Kong today and watched the movie right away. And what can I say other than it's great fun! It's a mess... but a fun mess, haha. One reviewer on IMDb writes:

[ ]...entire thing feels like it was edited by a bunch of blind chimpanzees...NO! Scratch that! DRUNK blind chimpanzees!

- and, uhh, that pretty much sums it up. LOL. However, just as that reviewer says later on in his review, H-BOMB is totally entertaining. A lot of stuff doesn't make sense but screw that; It's a fun movie! There, I've said it three times now!




The plot is about some crooks in Thailand having stolen a... wait for it... H-bomb! And they're basically up to no good. In addition to this they've bumped off the two best secret agents the US had to offer. What to do, what to do. Hmm, the US and the UN could have sent in troops, the terror squad, the local CID, the police, Scotland Yard, a whole army of secret agents. But no, they send in... Chris Mitchum. Hahaha. It's so fucken hilarious, I mean millions of lives are at stake here and they send in one single agent to solve the case (and they don't even tell the Thais so a couple of times our hero is about to get arrested!!).



Anyway, enough about the convoluted plot (which was most likely written on the back of a beer coaster). Suffice to say there's lots of action and of course Olivia Hussey is a babe. The print that Fortune Star/Joy Sales have released is as I mentioned earlier a good looking letterboxed print. Well, "good looking" in its being letterboxed but unfortunately it's an old scratched print that was used as a door-stop for 20 yrs. It's got a lot of scratches. As with so many of these releases from FS/JS's this one gets a VCD release way before we're rewarded with a DVD so that's all there is for now. But like I said earlier, even tho I haven't watched any of the old video releases this probably looks better than those due to its letterboxed status. There's only one audio track, which fortunately is the English dub (with Chinese subs in the black bar). Now, if this hadn't been so entertaining in a crappy, rough and even gritty way I might have been more annoyed by the fact that the two main actors are dubbed by someone else than themselves but it wasn't a big deal. There a bit of gore and nudity as well (one beheading and our friend Chris visits a bar with nudie dancing). Recommended!


From H-BOMB:




Pretty cool fan made trailer for SUMMERTIME KILLER:

ANDREW LEAVOLD's comment (posted in 2010) to my review of H-BOMB over on my Backyard Asia blog:
"Hi Jack...you'll find the production date is around '73, after Summertime Killer. The Thai producers wanted to duplicate the success of Summertime Killer, and so imported its two stars (see the Chris Mitchum interview on Bamboo Gods). H-Bomb is Chris' first film made in Asia, followed by the Bobby Suarez productions Chinese Daredevil Commandos (abandoned), Cosa Nostra Asia (1973) and Master Samurai (1974)."

Four Flies ever on proper dvd?

Here's a scan of the "legendary" English dubbed VHS bootleg release of Dario Argento's 4 FLIES ON GREY VELVET. The VHS is taken from a 16mm print. And no I don't have it (I have the German bootleg DVD that came out a couple of yrs back). Will we ever see a perfect release of this film. Fully uncut. Proper sound. Proper picture. It's ridiculous that while so much filler goes directly to DVD some of these much wanted films just either stay in limbo or get released as inferior, crappy versions. It's indeed enough to make a grown man boil his eyes out like a little Japanese schoolgirl. :o(