88 Films

[Finch]

Fist of Legend 1994 teased on their social media with lobby cards of Billy Chow. Regardless of whether it's "just" a BD reissue or a UHD, this new release should have improved subtitles and the original ending with the extra seconds of students training and the title cards explaining the fate of the school reinstated.

[Orlac]

And MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE! - One of the very first films I ever saw...well, the first 5min, as I was so scared of Skeletor it look me 4 years to brave up enough to watch the rest of the tape!

[Orlac]

Fist of Legend 1994 teased on their social media with lobby cards of Billy Chow. Regardless of whether it's "just" a BD reissue or a UHD, this new release should have improved subtitles and the original ending with the extra seconds of students training and the title cards explaining the fate of the school reinstated.

It's a 4k, I'm given to understand.

I actually quite have a bit of nostalgia for the Dimension version, as I'm very found of the alternate music in it (music which is admittedly a cheesy melding of deriviations of Crouching Tiger with Conan plus a dash of Titanic)

[Mr Sausage]

Fist of Legend 1994 teased on their social media with lobby cards of Billy Chow. Regardless of whether it's "just" a BD reissue or a UHD, this new release should have improved subtitles and the original ending with the extra seconds of students training and the title cards explaining the fate of the school reinstated.

It's a 4k, I'm given to understand.

I actually quite have a bit of nostalgia for the Dimension version, as I'm very found of the alternate music in it (music which is admittedly a cheesy melding of deriviations of Crouching Tiger with Conan plus a dash of Titanic)

Same. I spent years watching it on a Dimension VHS, so anytime I hear the original music it just feels off.

I have something of the same experience with Black Mask. My VHS from back in the day thankfully had the original Teddy Robin Kwan score (plus a very good British or Australian dub that gave Lau Ching Wan perfect comic delivery in the hand cutting scene, for instance). So anytime I come across the American version with its inexplicable hip hop soundtrack, I can hardly watch it.

[colinr0380]

And MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE! - One of the very first films I ever saw...well, the first 5min, as I was so scared of Skeletor it look me 4 years to brave up enough to watch the rest of the tape!

I still have memories of first seeing that film as a kid in Cornwall when it was put on behind the scenes of my school's Christmas play, in order to keep all of us underlings with small bit-parts entertained whilst the theatre kids were up front wowing the parents. Although I'm trying to remember if it was the year we did Oliver! (where I was one of the bedraggled chorus of starving orphans banging empty wooden bowls in the "Food, Glorious, Food" number at the beginning. My mum said that it was the role I was born to play!), or if it was the other year when we did a modern spin on Cinderella, "Boilerella", where I had a single florid speech as the butler having to long-windedly introduce guests to the Ball before in mid-introduction being rather rudely told to cram it by Prince Charming so they could all get breakdancing to Michael Jackson's "The Way You Make Me Feel"

Either way, an early finish to my part meant I was able to get into the backroom and settle in for the Masters of the Universe screening for the duration! So I'll always be more fond of that film for the memories surrounding first seeing it than for the film itself!

[Finch]

[CSM126]

…


“Jacky”?

[Orlac]

…


“Jacky”?

That's how his name was spelt in English until he joined Golden Harvest.

[Finch]

May UK titles

[Dr Amicus]

The Body Stealers? Count me in! It’s terrible but, like Amicus’s Terrornauts and They Came From Beyond Space, also genius.

[Finch]

[TechnicolorAcid]

Pretty cool that this is the first 4K of American Pie and I’m also interested in the 2 Jackie Chan titles and Anthropophagous in 4K so pretty solid lineup all things considered.

[therewillbeblus]

The American Pie movies could all benefit from upgrades, the current blus are pretty meh (but worth the price of a $10 set of four films), though I worry that a lot of their cheaper choices will look even more glaring on the format (i.e. the fake backgrounds at the beach occurring only during the climactic dramatic 'Kevin moment' in the second film always takes me out of the movie, or maybe it's just that Kevin's character has always sucked and should've been written completely out of the second film, so I was just scanning around for something else to see and boy was it bad)

[feihong]

Oh wow, I want Island of Fire. That's a pretty interesting movie.

[therewillbeblus]

Oh wow, I want Island of Fire. That's a pretty interesting movie.

I'm already very interested in whatever Jackie Chan and Sammo Hung are looking at to earn those mugshots

[Orlac]

Oh wow, I want Island of Fire. That's a pretty interesting movie.

Agreed. I love the promo trailer for the HKL DVD - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DBVmkx1KwLA

[TechnicolorAcid]

Bonus Announcement for July:

[feihong]

Oh wow, I want Island of Fire. That's a pretty interesting movie.

I'm already very interested in whatever Jackie Chan and Sammo Hung are looking at to earn those mugshots

It's a film shot by Taiwanese schlockmeister Chu Yin Ping, who made Fantasy Mission Force. I remember hearing someone, maybe Sammo, in an interview saying the film was basically a fundraiser for Jimmy Wang Yu––who plays an aging gangster in the film (really hard to see him as any kind of tough guy normally, but especially at this point in his career––when the other actors carry him into the prison on their shoulders it's way more about the stature of the star than it is about the character or the way they're portrayed). Jackie apparently felt he owed these movies to Jimmy Wang Yu, who helped negotiate his return to Hong Kong after his early problems with triads. But the film itself is probably based on Hideo Gosha's at that time recent movie, Death Shadows, and because of that direction for the film, and the way in which, filmed in Taiwan, it's a little bit more of a wildcat prospect, it ends up being a very bleak action movie where they all become killers at the end, and most of the big stars die in a grim finale. Honesty? I liked the film a lot on VHS back in the day. Haven't seen it since, haven't seen it in its original aspect ratio (most HK movies were letterboxed on VHS, but sometimes a film was indifferently pan-and-scanned, and Island of Fire fell into that category). I remember a scene with heartrending, emotional music, where Sammo helps a woman with big breasts to push her car somewhere, and ends up staring at her breasts pressed against the car window...the movie presents it in slow motion...it's really weird.

Anyway, I'm interested in seeing it again. I've been watching a lot of Taiwanese schlock productions recently, mostly adaptations or knock-offs of Hong Kong films, including Hello Dracula, Killing in the Nude, A Heroic Fight, Challenge of the Lady Ninja, The Beheaded 1000, and the Magic of Spell/Magic Peach movies. They're very terrible by comparison to the Hong Kong product––the only one of that cohort I liked was A Heroic Fight. Mostly they feature none of the robust visualization of the Hong Kong movies––most scenes are just long shots on sticks, without any camera movement at all, making the films seem a lot like filmed plays. I'm interested to see if Island of Fire looks similar––I don't remember that being the case. Either way, I at least remember being moved by the film, especially towards the tragic ending.

But Black Cat 2...that was one of the worst movies I've seen recently. A really, really empty sequel to a pretty alright film. The movie lacks energy, and Jade Leung...Jade Leung is really not very good in the movies after the first Black Cat, and none of the movies hold up. Fox Hunter is at least pretty intense, and has some good action. But Black Cat 2 falls in with a collection of terrible movies like Satin Steel, which shows off how uncomfortable Jade is with acting challenges and with action. Jade isn't an adroit actress––the first movie seemed to work largely because of Jade's inarticulate intensity, but in this movie she's supposed to be cold and precise, a la the Terminator, and it doesn't work as a drama at all. Add to that the clumsiness of the action––Jade is inflexible and otherwise just ill-equipped to do action, so she is constantly doubled throughout the movie for even the most superficial action setups.This isn't well-disguised at all. Plus, Jade is mostly missing for the first half-hour of the movie, anyway, leaving us with the frail insurance of Robin Shou, carrying the plot in his supporting role. There are a couple bits of graphic violence which are nonsensical and surprising (Jade blows away a grandmother point-blank when her Terminator chip is malfunctioning, spattering her blood and brains all over a stunned mall-clown behind her), but those two or three moments are all the film is worth.

[Finch]

To assure people that the new Japanarchy line wasn't a short-lived venture after a lack of Nippon titles in Q2, 88 teased 20-something Japanese titles with half of their team busy filming new interviews in Japan.

[Matt]

Big 88 Films sale at oldies.com right now: https://www.oldies.com/collection-view/88-Films.html

[What A Disgrace]

Beauty of Beauties is now a TBC release date.

[Finch]

The 71% discount on the Drive 4K is almost making me wish I liked the film more than I do.

[Finch]

Project A Collection in 4K got pushed back to July. I'm done with making bulk orders of upcoming titles, especially 88. They postpone so many of those. I wouldn't be surprised if Fist of Legend was to get delayed, too.

[Finch]

Tai Chi Master teased:

[Finch]