Beautiful Thrilling Bloody Sword print on Blu-Ray complete with Tars Tarkas commentary!
Do you like swords? Do you like thrills? Do you like boutique Blu-Ray companies and freshly scanned 2K prints of obscure Taiwanese fantasy Snow White films filled with monsters and mayhem? Sure, we all do, but now you can get all those great flavors in one simple package with the Thrilling Bloody Sword Blu-Ray from Gold Ninja Video! I’ve seen the print, and it is freaking beautiful! Much much better than the blurry and washed out VHS and tv rips that are circulating around the web, ones that we ourselves used in our review of Thrilling Sword way back in the long long time ago. And how have I seen the print before the official release? Because I’m in the official release! Yes, Thrilling Sword has a commentary track with yours truly, Tars Tarkas, giving color commentary and interesting factoids along with Gold Ninja Video founder Justin Decloux! Somehow, I found time to get this done despite having a toddler running around demanding all my time, because this release is just awesome and Thrilling Sword/Thrilling Bloody Sword/神劍動山河 deserves a much wider audience! You got seven generals shrunk down to small size (sometimes they even have all seven actors in the scene, but usually not), a queen giving birth to a ball of flesh, a guy turned into a bear, Satan, giant monsters, frog men, definitely not Rodan, totally not King Ghidorah, unsafe flames, trippy visuals, a guy with a butt on his head, phantom limbs, and much much more! This is a movie that when you describe it to people, they don’t believe you! Now they can not believe you but in 2K! It’s a steal at only $20! Plus, you can always rag on me forever for whatever minor error I made in the commentary track! But I guarantee it is 99% correct.
Just look at the beauty of it!
ORDER IT TODAY! Limited to 800 copies!
NOTE: THIS IS A PRE-ORDER. BLU-RAYS WILL START SHIPPING ON NOVEMBER 22, 2021
A NEW 2K SCAN OF THE ONLY SURVIVING 35MM PRINT
DOUBLE NOTE: If you selected the Subscription Perk from the Gold Ninja Video Indiegogo campaign this will be included, so you don’t need to order it, and it will ship when it becomes available.
There’s nothing like THRILLING BLOODY SWORD, a head-spinning slice of Taiwanese psychotronic cinema that builds a fantasy action movie out of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, impossible fight scenes, and a cavalcade of monsters that include a cyclops, a pterodactyl and Satan himself!
A comet impregnates a queen. She gives birth to a fleshy egg. In disgust, the king tosses the egg in the river. Seven little people stumble onto the egg. They stab it with a knife and find a cute baby inside – who grows up to be a beautiful princess. One day, she runs into a prince fighting a multi-headed dragon, and of course, the two royals fall in love. Unfortunately, a group of dastardly wizards want to keep them apart, and they’ll use every creature at their disposal to do it!
Previously available in only a washed-out video transfer, Gold Ninja Video is proud to present this super colourful film in a new 2K Scan taken from the only-surviving 35mm print commissioned exclusively for this release.
In Mandarin with burnt-in English subtitles.
SPECIAL FEATURES
*Commentary Track by World Pop Cinema Scholar Tars Tarkas and Justin Decloux
*He Wrote Every Punch: The Career of Writer/Director Chang Hsin-Yi
*A Beginner’s Guide to Psychotronic Taiwanese Cinema
*Bonus Feature Film: Incredible Kung Fu Mission (1979)
I said to ORDER IT TODAY! Why are you still here? Get to buying, bub!
Categories: Movie News, Site News Tags: Taiwan, Taiwanese kaiju
The Bravest Revenge (Review)
The Bravest Revenge
aka 武林龍虎鬥 aka Wu Lin Long Hu Dou
1970
Written by Tin Goh
Directed by Kim Lung
Can you believe there is a Polly Shang Kuan film where her parent is killed and she has to seek revenge? I know, right? That only happens in like 99% of the films she did, and it happens here! Revenge will be gotten, and of the bravest sort, at least that’s what the title claims! We all know who Polly Shang Kuan is, so no need to do a deep dive into her, but if you want to know more we covered her in an Infernal Brains podcast and she has an active tag on TarsTarkas.NET with plenty of wonderful films! Tien Peng is his usual heroic self as Sword King Tsai Ying-che, and Yee Yuen hams it up as the glorious villain like he usually does in films such as The Flying Swordgirl
Director Kim Lung (aka Chien Lung) helmed Taiwanese flicks in the 60s and 70s, many featuring revenge themes and many featured female protagonists. Among his films are these cool-sounding ones from 1966 – The Lady Spy, The Flying Killer, and Queen of Female Spies Jin Gang. He also directed 1967’s Dragon Inn, not to be confused with the classic King Hu 1967 Dragon Gate Inn. Most of his filmography is either unavailable or known only to those who collect Taiwanese kung fu movies, and Bravest Revenge might be his best known film now.
Bravest Revenge is actually pretty good for a standard murder revenge kung fu movie, because it has huge fight sequences. There are multiple scenes of characters carving their way through dozens of people like butter in giant choreographed fights, they are fantastic! The last 30 minutes is an almost non-stop battle through themed stages of a giant fortress as the heroes slice through goons and are only occasionally slowed by the various mini-bosses. If this came out today this would be accused of imitating a video game, but it is from 1970 and all we had for video games then was things like Spacewar!, so maybe it is more accurate to say all video games stole from Bravest Revenge!
Read more…
Categories: Movie Reviews Tags: Kim Lung, Ma Kei, martial arts, Polly Shang Kuan, Sit Hon, Taiwan, Tien Peng, Tin Goh, Yee Yuen
Fight for Survival (Review)
Fight for Survival
aka 十大掌門闖少林 aka The Fight for Shaolin Tamo Mystique aka Shi da zhang men chuang Shao Lin aka Lady Wu Tang
1977
Written and directed by Hou Cheng
Hold on to your hats with shock, as here is a Polly Shang Kuan film where things are weird! I know, right? Who would have thought! As usual, it’s a good weird, part of the kung fu comedy atmosphere of the late 1970s. Fight for Survival/Fight for Shaolin Tamo Mystique (the much cooler name I first learned of the film as!) is packed with a bunch of big named cameos, characters who developed odd body modifications thanks to whatever kung fu specialty they have, gender bending, cornball comedy, and terrible dubbing. If you enjoy characters with extending arms and legs, who employ weird headbutts and walk on their hands, or who are randomly painted up as animals and waiting in rooms at the Shaolin Temple, then you are in for a treat.
The version I have is fullscreen and dubbed, which is a shame, as this film has a lot of neat choreography and costumes that requires a widescreen high-definition transfer to get the best effects. I guess I can expect that the same day the widescreen Monkey War shows up on remastered Blu-ray, aka NEVER! What a shame the wildest and craziest movies are also the most ignored when it comes to high quality.
In this film, Polly’s character Shih Pu Chuan sets out to recover 10 books stolen from the Shaolin Temple, each volume teaching one kung fu technique, and each technique has been mastered by the respective theif of that volume. But, if you only learn one of the kung fu skills, your body soon begins to modify itself based on that kung fu skill. Thus, the guy who learns to extend his arms has permanent long arms. The guy who stretched his legs looks like he’s walking around on stilts. The woman who stole the Positive Kung Fu book turns into a man, and the guy who stole the Negative Kung Fu book turns into a woman. The only way to not get physically screwed up is to learn all the skills so there is a balance. Even Shih Pu Chuan isn’t immune, her female character begins to turn into a man, and her sifu can’t remember how to do Negative Kung Fu. That leads him into discovering the Temple let the books get stolen and her subsequent quest. At one point it is declared that the villains can’t turn back to normal because they are evil, which might be saying that without balance, you are evil. Just remember, folks, every thing in moderation.
Of course, that also leads to yet another film where Polly Shang Kuan plays a gender bending character. This time she’s officially playing someone who is both sexes, though her long term goal is to stay a female. The only real disadvantage of turning male is gaining a faint mustache and having lots of ladies falling in love with you. As the main lady is the woman who used to be the man who stole the Negative Kung Fu book, things become tragic irony.
The main tale of the training and quest only eats up about an hour of the running time, we then have extended scenes where the many cameos attack Shaolin Temple because their followers (some of the followers were involved in the theft and some weren’t) are arrested in public. Now Shih has to defend her home from all these new people, but thankfully she now has lots of skills with which to do so.
The crazy specialties of the thieves gives us some awesome goofy kung fu, along with a whole host of guest stars who pop up when the thieves impersonate them in the beginning, and then return in the end when the real versions of the masters attack the temple. The cast is one of those ridiculously huge casts that makes me want to do a Roll Call 30 people long, and is filled with actors who aren’t identified very well. Luckily, I came to my senses, and it’s only 4 people long! We’re aren’t obsessively stupid at TarsTarkas.NET for nothing!
Like most of the Taiwanese kung fu comedies, the humor is a mix of slapstick and reaction shots. These aren’t films that are taken seriously by hardcore martial arts fans. Add to that the ridiculous dubbing and often awful fullscreen vhs presentation, and you can see why these flicks don’t get any respect. Which is a shame, because the ri-donk-ulousness is awesome! I’ll take a film that knows how to have fun over a dramafest that takes itself far too seriously any day!
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Categories: Movie Reviews, Ugly Tags: Chan Sam-Lam, Chan Wai-Lau, Che Chi-Sang, Chen Lei, Cheng Fu Hung, Chia Ling, Don Wong Tao, Elsa Yeung Wai San, Fang Mien, Gam Sai-Yuk, Hoh Si-Man, Kam Kong, Lee Keung, Lui Wan-Biu, Lung Suen, martial arts, Polly Shang Kuan, Sze Ma-Lung, Taiwan, Tang Gok-Yan, Wang Tai-Lang, Wen Chiang Lung, Weng Hsaio-Hu, Yuen Si-Wo