Stone Boy (Philippines, 1982)

Sometimes you keep looking for old tapes for yrs and yrs and never find them, and sometimes you get an automatic email from eBay that says, "Buddy, we found yr tape for ya!" One such tape is the Filipino weirdo movie STONE BOY (aka Boy God/Rocco, Ang Batang Bato). The only two releases I'm aware of are on VHS in the US and in Australia. Yesterday I received the Aussie tape. xD xD xD. So far I've only checked the first 10 min and they look goood! Check Andrew Leavold and Todd Stadtman's reviews here.

...but they were cheap!

I bought a couple of DVDs! Yeah yeah I know! But they were on offer! I couldn't live without them! xD

FRI OS FRA DET ONDE (Ole Bornedal, it stars Lene from Aqua!) ^_^
MÅNGUDEN - "lost" Swedish TV horror movie from 1988. Never released on VHS.
BULLET IN THE HEAD - Fortune Star's new(ish) DVD
A BETTER TOMORROW 3 - new remastered VCD from FS. Still not on DVD (this new version that is).
BAY OF BLOOD (AWE)
NOTHING UNDERNEATH (AWE) - Italian giallo that stars Rene!
SAUNA (AWE)

I ordered them all from CDON except for the two HK films which are from DDDHOUSE.

Edit: A couple of extra titles:
Cut-Throats Nine/Joshua (Code Red reg. 1 dvd)
Ghostwatch (reg. 2/UK dvd)
Creepy Presents: Bernie Wrightson (a big, fat hardcover comic book reprint)

The original BULLET IN THE HEAD ending

If you're not familiar with video-cd's you're bound to get confused by the double audio: Most HK VCDs have two audio tracks, Cantonese and Mandarin. You'll need to switch off the right loudspeaker so you only hear the sound from the left one (which contains the Cantonese dialect, i.e. the HK dialect).


I was talking to Brian of Wildside Cinema about the original ending of John Woo's BULLET IN THE HEAD today. As I'm sure you know the original ending isn't the one that you'll find on the 100s of DVD, VHS and laserdisc releases. The only version that contains the original ending and the original music is the old Mai Ah video-cd from Hong Kong.

To cut a long story short, when John Woo first screened the film at festivals before the ordinary cinema release the film used the ending used on the VCD. It's a shorter, more abrupt and cynical ending. I have no idea as to why John Woo changed the ending before the film was release to a wider audience. I've heard all the speculations, sure, but you can't use fanboy speculations for shit if you ask me.

Maybe Woo got criticised for the ending being too cynical, maybe he wanted a more action movie style ending, or maybe he just wasn't happy with the original ending. Who knows. And why did he (or someone) change the music? Who knows. If you want a 1000 speculative reasons go ask some fanboys.

For the longest time I tried to track down the VCD and I succeed in doing so a while back. It's pretty rare but I'm sure the print is available on YouTube or elsewhere in Cyberspace. For more info on the VCD check this Mark's post here.

In transit over New Zealand or some such place

I hadn't bought anything for a while but during the last couple weeks I've tried to rectify that! So if the mailmen of this world could please hurry up (and spend less time having fun trying to trash my stuff) I'd be happy!

REDEEMER - Son of Satan (reg. 1 dvd)
MIDNIGHT (the John Russo movie) (reg. 2/UK dvd)
GHOSTWATCH (the BBC tv thingy) (reg. 2/UK dvd)
BLACK SCORPION (the Roger Corman superhero movie) (reg. 1 dvd)
NAM ANGELS (the Cirio H. Santoago film, not aka The Losers) (reg. 1 dvd)
RIGHTING WRONGS (aka Above the Law, the Cynthia Rothrock film!) (reg. 1 dvd)
NIGHTMARE: 30th Anniversary Edition (aka Nightmare in a Damaged Brain) (reg. 1 dvd)
EL MONSTRO DEL MAR (Aussie dvd) - whoo-hoo!! Looking forward to this.
SPLIT OF THE SPIRIT (HK dvd)
DEVIL'S TREASURE (HK dvd)
THE HAUNTING OF MORELLA (reg. 1 dvd)
THE NEST (reg. 1 dvd)
BLOOD - THE LAST VAMPIRE (reg. 2/UK dvd) - paid £0,01 for this one!!!
THE ADDAMS FAMILY - complete season 1-3 series set (reg. 2/UK dvd) - supposedly uncut in contradiction to the reg. 1 set (of season 1). Have already received this on and it looks just beaut!
GIRL NEXT DOOR (reg. 1 dvd) - have received this one as well. :D

Anna Calvi (digipack cd)
The Ramones: Live January 7, 1978 At The Palladium, NYC (cd)
C.W. Stoneking: "Jungle Blues" cd + 180g LP!

HUMANOIDS FROM THE DEEP (reg. 1 dvd from Shout! Factory)
PIRANHA (reg. 1 dvd from Shout! Factory)
DEATHSPORT/BATTLE TRUCK (reg. 1 dvd from Shout! Factory)
- Those 3 Shout! DVDs have reportedly already gone out of print!

TWIN PEAKS Gold Box (reg. 2/Denmark) - contains the complete series plus lots of extras including both versions of the pilot. Some of the other versions only omits the international cinema version of the pilot but have commentary tracks instead. I went for the Danish box as I'd rather have the international pilot on DVD than the commentary tracks (none of them are by David Lynch anyway). According to Dvdcompare.net the international pilot is only available on stand-alone DVD somewhere in Asia (I forget where exactly). I've already got the old version on that obsolete format we used to call "video" back in the day. LOL.

Second-hand from Blockbuster's:
TESIS (aka Snuff) (reg. 2 DVD/Denmark)
BAD GUY (aka Nabbeun Namja) (reg. 2 DVD/Denmark)
KOLLEGIET (aka Room 205, the original Danish film, not the remake) (reg. 2 DVD/Denmark)

reg. 2 DVD releases from AWE:
BLACK PAST
LA SANGUISUGA CONDUCE LA DANZA (The Bloodsucker Leads the Dance)
CASTLE FREAK
FASCINATION
INFERNO
NIGHT OF THE HUNTED
THE SHIVER OF THE VAMPIRE
THE BURNING MOON
PREMOTUS

Second-hand from Amazon UK:
Marilyn Monroe: "Gold Collection - Classic Performances" (cd) + "The Essential Recordings" (cd)

Oh Marilyn!

Gee whiz! I've never seen this clip in its entirety before. Awesome!

You seem to mind you own business - but you don't miss a thing

Check out this cool trailer for Joe D'Amato's TOUGH TO KILL (aka Duri a Morire). Paul Cooke and David Z later used the title for their equally cool book "Tough to Kill". The trailer is culled from a Danish VHS.

Thanks to Hans-Jørn for the upload.

"I love it how if you didn't know him...

...you'd think he were 75 years old, Black, and from the Deep South of America. Instead, he's 25, White and fucking Australian!!"




I was watching "Tracks" on Arte TV a few days ago and they had a feature on this guy. His name's C.W. Stoneking and his music is like as if he'd just stepped out of a timemachine from 1920-something! The above quotation is from the comments section under the YouTube video (it's not quite true that he's 25, actually he's 37 y.o.). There's a link to his webpage and I knew I had to order one of his albums right away! He's got them on both vinyl and CD. I ordered his latest album (in both formats). I can't say I know much about this old music (cos I don't!) but the Arte feature was enough to make me interested.

The Blonde Fury (HK, 1989)

I watched THE BLONDE FURY (aka Lady Reporter) last night. I've only watched it once before (some twenty years back on German television!). This is Cynthia Rothrock's film and it's such an fun flick overall.

The plot is confused, her hairstyle changes from scene to scene (because there was a long gab in shooting the film) but, uh, it's not like we're not used to confused plots in HK films. Haha. The good, good man John Charles* starts off his review in the HK filography book this way: "Awful comedy relief and insipid dialogue detract severely from..." and gives it 4 stars out of 10 (which in regards to his star system renders the film worthwhile only to fans of the director/actors with low expectations!).

The US distributed version from Tai Seng; same cover but with an added sticker.

I don't agree in reg. to THE BLONDE FURY, like I said it's such a fun movie. It's got violence, the usual kind of batshit crazy insanity we're used to with these films, and it's got Cynthia Rothrock in the middle of her best period film wise. And the film is funny too. Highly recommended (in my book anyway!).

Unfortunately BLONDE FURY is hard to find on DVD. The version I got hold of is the old Deltamac DVD from HK. Tai Seng distributed it in the US (reportedly under the alternative title. Interestingly enough, altho the print used for the HK DVD uses the BLONDE FURY title the alternative title is also added in a subtitle under the real title!?). However, despair not, you can get it on VCD from dddhouse and hopefully Fortune Star will rerelease it on DVD at some stage as well.


*John Charles is a "good, good man" cos he wrote "The Hong Kong Filmography 1977-1997". It's thee best HK film book ever. Even if he doesn't enjoy many of the "batshit crazy" films that I do. xD

The Cinema Snob on Video Violence

Here's an old episode of The Cinema Snob. He was pretty funny back in the day but I think he blew it when he started to post out of character. It was more fun when you thought he actually was like in those videos. Oh well.

Three days of silence...

...well if you don't count the screaming psychos on the stereo or the blasting TV set that is! But anyhow, I've been off-line for three days and it's been a bliss! I'm sure my inbox is full and I've got 3000 PMs on various message boards and FB. It's 7 in the morning and I haven't even been to bed yet so I'm not gonna check anything until tonight. HEY JON!! I GOT A NICE PARCEL IN THE MAIL!!! THANKS!!!!!

And I watched the tough French crime flick 36 Quai des Orfèvres (Olivier Marchal, 2004) on TV last night. Argh, awesome! It was everything new American crime films just aren't! I highly recommend it.