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lunes, 29 de marzo de 2010

Double versions, same movies but different product ( part 1)

Before the 80's ninja craze boomed, IFD distributed many taiwanese movies all around the world. They were simply taiwanese movies in their original cut but including english credits for the international markets. Many of those movies arrived to Spain & they were released on tape by small video companies & they got the favour of the audience since they could be found in most video rental shops. So, at that time we enjoyed films such as Shaolin Conspiracy, Wolfen Queen, Phoenix the ninja ( Miraculous flower) among other titles.

But It happened some gangster movies produced in Taiwan between 1979 and 1982 were also released in Spain by Joseph Lai's IFD on its original taiwanese cut and few years later the same movies came back to the international markets with some changes such as new art covers, new scenes containing ninjas, gunplay, new dialogs, re-edited shots & gweiloh actors.

Let's list some of them:

-Angel's Blood Mission is a taiwanese gangster movie but the Spanish art cover showed us a Rambo lookalike man that never appeared on the film.




This movie is just a gangster drama about revenge that offers us a mixture of gunplay & kung fu, BUT, when the ninja crazed started, IFD re-edited this movie changing the dialogs & adding some new shots starring Mark Watson & Mike Abbott creating a totally new movie entitled ADVENT COMMANDO: ANGELS BLOOD MISSION



This new version containing the pasted shots never arrived to Spain so we only could enjoy the original cut.

-Kill for love: This film is an action drama shot in 1982 starring taiwanese actress Luk Siu Fan ( whose filmography was partly edited in Hong Kong by Ocean Shores on VCD) credited by IFD as Fonda Lynn. It tells the drama of a countryside inmigrant in the city and how she is cheated by her greedy boyfriend who try to kill her in order to marry a rich woman.



Years later, due to the demand of ninja movies Kill for love became into a new movie titled Official exterminator: Kill for love, but in some territories was also released as Ninja Knight 2: Blood Brothers or Ninja Killer.




Again the new pasted scenes were starred by Mark Watson & Mike Abbott.

-Kill, butterfly Kill was a kind of taiwanese version of Abel Ferrara's Ms 45 where a woman is raped & she takes a brutal revenge on her rapists.





Once again, this film was become into a new movie titled American commando 4: Kill buterfly kill just adding some extra scenes starring Mike Abbott & Mark Miller. This new edition was never released in Spain, only the original taiwanese cut was avaliable.

More to come to your screen very soon!


sábado, 27 de marzo de 2010

Ninja Terminator Meets Guido & Maurizio de Angelis

Last night while I was surfing in youtube searching for music videos of some of my favourite composers I was delighted with this surprising video that uses some shots from Ninja Terminator but mixing the sound with a funny tune by Oliver Onions ( Guido & Maurizio De Angelis) a famous italian duo.

Anoche mientras me paseaba por el youtube buscando videos musicales de varios de mis grupos favoritos, me sorprendió el toparme con este video que usa escenas de Ninja Terminator combinando la pista de audio con una tonadilla de los hermanso Guido & Maurizio de Angelis, los que le ponian la música a las pelis de Bud Spencer & Terence Hill y a los dibus de Claudio Biern Boyd!



Isn't it funny?
¿No es maravilloso?

jueves, 25 de marzo de 2010

Joseph Lai's interview on Impact magazine

Yesterday we published the full uncut interview Mr Mike Leeder, editor of Impact Magazine made to Mr Joseph Lai in 2001. Today, we are proud to publish here the interview as it was published in Impact magazine on its issue of October - November 2001.

Thanks to Mike Leeder to allow me to publish it, Thanks to Peter to pass me Impact Magazine that inlcudes this interview & Thanks to Mr Joseph Lai for his answers.

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Most of Hong Kong cinema fans have met IFD productions sometimes, but wrong information has created fake urban legends mixing names, different titles, etc... Now, I honestly wish & hope the publication of this interview may help to erase those all mistakes forever.

miércoles, 24 de marzo de 2010

Joseph Lai Interview

Dear Friends & visitors, these days the Filmart is being holded in Hong Kong. The most important producers & distributors from Hong Kong are reunited there offering their catalogs. Among them is the person who makes this blog alive: Mr Joseph Lai. I am not flattering him cheaply, I just want all the people who visit this blog to know that thanks to Mr Lai & all the movies he has been distributing has made this blog to exist.

IFD most famous logo

Recently my friend Mike Leeder, editor of Uk magazine IMPACT has allowed me to publish the UNCUT interview he made to Mr Lai on 2001. So now everyone can enjoy & learn some secrests from one of the most profilic producers ever come from Hong Kong.

This is undoubtely an outstanding & entertaining interview!

You might not recognise his name straight away, but trust me when I say you’ve probably seen several of his movies. Joseph Lai (Lai Sun-lan) is the head of the Hong Kong based Production & Distribution Company IFD Films & Arts. Yes, the company that gave the world all those Ninja movies starring Richard Harrison and various ‘gwailo’ actors and martial artists. Lai also gave many Hong Kong action directors including Phillip Ko (Ko Fei), Paul Wong (Wong Kwan) and Ridley Tsui (Tsui Po-wah) their first shots at directing movies. He also gave western martial arts actors including Bruce Fontaine, Kenn Goodman, Steve Brettingham, Michael Miller, Wayne Archer and even myself the opportunity to play leading roles in his movies. Lai, currently the Vice Chairman of the Hong Kong Movie Producers Association, is fully aware of the limitations of his movies; he doesn’t regard his movies as high art and doesn’t expect other people to. But as anyone who worked on any of his movies will admit, they were great fun, and they’re very entertaining to watch. I caught up with Joseph Lai at his Tsing Yi based office for the following interview.

The ultimate IFD logo

The
Joseph Lai
Interview
By
Mike Leeder


Mike Leeder: Mr. Lai, thanks for talking to me. How did you first get involved in the film industry?

Joseph Lai: I’ve always been interested in movies, since I was a little kid, I used to watch all the old black & white Cantonese & Mandarin movies. As I got older and went to college, I got more and more interested in drama. I studied all aspects of theatre and drama, from performance to theory, front stage and back stage, all of which has served me well over the years. As for getting into the film industry, it’s thanks to my sister Terry Lai, who owns Intercontinental Film Distributors (one of the largest independent distributors of non Chinese movies in Hong Kong). They were starting to make the move into producing their own films, shot in Hong Kong but with English dialogue and featuring Western cast’s aimed for the international market. They hired American actors like Chris Mitchum (‘Fatal Score’, ‘Lethal Hunter’) for these films, and brought me in as an assistant director initially, but I also helped with translating, scriptwriting and many other things. It was hard work, but a great opportunity to learn everything I needed for the film industry. In about 1973, we also started to buy European films for distribution in Hong Kong, Taiwan, Thailand, the Philippines, Indonesia and so on. We did quite well with these films, but I also began to realize there was a gap in the market that we could fill. At this point there were very few Hong Kong companies that did much in the way of international distribution, and I knew that these films had a lot of potential for distribution in Europe, the Middle East, Africa and South America.

Mike Leeder: IFD was very much of the first Hong Kong companies to get proper worldwide distribution for their movies. Why do you think that was?

Joseph Lai: I think that too many companies were short-sighted, they were concentrating only on the local market and thought that international distribution was either an impossible dream, or just too much hassle. In fact, IFD was the first Hong Kong Production Company to attend film markets likes Cannes, MIFFED and the American Film Market (AFM). IFD was the first Hong Kong company to become an AFM member, Golden Harvest had become a member earlier but that was through registering itself in America, but we were the first Hong Kong registered company to become a member. At that time the AFM had very strange policies, such as your membership was only allowed if you were making English language films, and at that time we were the only company in HK making English language movies.
We couldn’t compete in Hong Kong with companies like Golden Harvest and the Shaw Brothers, they owned their own cinema chains throughout the territory, but we were the first company to really get good distribution deals overseas, soon followed by co-productions. One of first major co-production partners was Korea, they really liked Chinese Kung Fu action, and we found that it was cheaper to shoot there than in Hong Kong. We raised financing and cast some of the most popular Kung Fu actors at the time including Chen Hsing, Carter Wong and this Korean guy, Casanova Wong, in our very first production there, ‘The Magnificent’. The film did very well, and we went on to make many more co-productions with Korea, movies with Dragon Lee, Gordon Liu, Carter Wong and then later we did co-productions with Taiwan, Thailand and many other countries, At first we were just making Kung Fu movies, and I began to realize that only having Mandarin dialogue versions with subtitles wasn’t enough, some countries wouldn’t buy subtitled movies. So we started dubbing our films into English, I think that was another first for our company, to start offering English language versions of all our movies. The way we looked at it was, that there are many more people around the world who speak English, and would rather hear dialogue than read it. So we hired a lot of British people from the Radio & Television companies to come and work for us, ‘moonlighting’ as dubbers and doing the English dialogue for us. Looking back now, I can say that we could have done better sometimes, but at the time and with very limited budgets, I think we did a good job, and our films sold very well.


Mike Leeder: Why do you think that your films sold so well in the international market, when even now there are so many ‘prestigious’ Hong Kong movies have never officially been released in the West?

Joseph Lai: I think that because we were realistic when it came to selling our movies, we didn’t ask for outrageous prices or try to impose restrictions on companies. If you wanted to buy only the video rights for our movies for your country, that was not a problem to us. Some Hong Kong companies, would insist that if you bought their films, the film would have to get at least a limited theatrical release first and then after so many months it could be released on video. You can’t do that in every country or with every company, that can affect your relationship with buyers if you are imposing restrictions on them like that. We also built lasting relationships with distributors, they would come back to us time and time again for product. Our films might not have been the best films of all time, but people knew what they were getting with our films. We delivered on everything we offered them, so distributors came back for more.


Mike Leeder: Now initially IFD comprised yourself, Thomas Tang and Godfrey Ho, who was pretty much your director for all seasons. How did the three of you come to work together?

Joseph Lai: I knew Thomas from college, so I brought him into the business first and we were working together and then Godfrey came along, he was this very young enthusiastic director at the time. He’d worked for companies like Shaw Brothers and for other independent companies and producers. He came to us at IFD, and we worked as a team for several years on a lot of different movies and projects, before eventually Thomas and Godfrey left and set up their own companies, with Thomas setting up Filmmark and Godfrey continuing to do some work for us both before forming his own company. Godfrey has done so many projects, he is teaching Film now at Hong Kong Polytechnic!

The legendary Asso Asia company offered us the best Kung Fu from Korea

Mike Leeder: IFD was the first company to really take advantage of the marketability of those hooded assassins, the Ninja, after the first Cannon Ninja films began to do well, and the Ninja would go on to play an important role for your company and its filmography.

Joseph Lai: How do you know that? You know too much! (Laughing) I know we made so many different Ninja movies, ‘Ninja Terminator’, “Ninja Squad’, ‘Ninja Hunt’, ‘Ninja this’ and ‘Ninja That’..I really can’t remember all of them. When I travelled overseas I would always check out the cinemas and video shops in Europe and America to see what the audiences were responding to..I saw this movie by Cannon Films, called ‘Enter the Ninja’ And I didn’t really think it was very good, the action wasn’t special but the audience really liked it and it did very well for them. I thought that we could make movies like this very easily, Hong Kong is the best place for Kung Fu or martial arts action movie making, we know how to shoot martial arts action very well. We can always double someone for special moves, it’s even easier if they are wearing a mask! We can double them for everything!
I came back to Hong Kong and told Godfrey ho that we were going to make Ninja movies, and he didn’t really know what ‘Ninja’ were at that time. We worked out we could shoot the fight scenes with really skilled fighters and stuntmen, and then shot pick ups with the real actors, it would be easier that way. Ninjas wearing hoods, it really made it easier to shoot spectacular action and then have an actor pop up for dialogue and close ups.

Under this logo Mr Lai brought us Animation & some video productions

Mike Leeder: Now the man who became immediately identifiable with your Ninja movies was Richard Harrison, a former Spaghetti western actor, he’d previously worked in Hong Kong on the Shaw Brothers ‘Marco Polo’ and ‘Boxer Rebellion’ movies. You used him as the ‘Hollywood’ star of such films as ‘Ninja Terminator’, ‘Ninja Hunt’, ‘Ninja Squad’, ‘Ninja Silent Assassin’ and so many movies. When you first hired him, did he have any idea of how many movies he would be starring in?

Joseph Lai: I don’t think he knows exactly how many movies we would end up using him for. (Laughing) It’s even hard for me to say just how many movies he appeared in for us, we did everything from ‘Ninja Thunderbolt’, ‘Ninja Operation’, ‘Ninja Dragon’, ‘Ninja this’ & ‘Ninja that’. At the time, the market was so strong, the demand for action and martial arts and especially Ninja movies was almost too much. Even though we could work fast, we couldn’t supply enough movies to met demands and that was when we began thinking of some of movies we already had in our vaults, or movies from countries like Korea and Thailand for instance, could we update or change them by editing new footage into them by adding Ninjas or western actors, so we could market them internationally. Back then some buyers didn’t want movies with all Chinese or all Asian leads, they wanted movies with Western leading actors. So we bought a lot of Korean and Thai movies and began to redevelop them, try and package them so we could sell them internationally by changing certain ideas and adding new elements.

Richard Harrison & John Cheung: An explosive couple on IFD

Richard Harrison wasn’t a really big star, but he was marketable, distributors knew who he was and said he was recognisable. Godfrey had worked with him on the movie for Shaw Brothers and had been able to keep a little bit of contact with him. We got in touch with him and invited him to come to Hong Kong and work on some movies for us. I think he enjoyed being in Hong Kong, and seemed happy to stay longer and do more movies for us. At that time, we had so many movies we were trying to remarket that one of my production team suggested that we should use Richard for all of them. He was very easygoing, he didn’t charge us too much money and he was in Hong Kong, so why don’t we use him as much as we can? And we did! He would shoot a couple of days a week for each movie, I think we did at least 20 movies with him this way. But he knew what we were doing, he might not know the exact number of movies we released that feature him, but he knew that is what we were doing, we were resourceful, we only had limited budgets.

Harrison is an icon from IFD productions, but he refuses that label

Mike Leeder: Your movies might never be classified as ‘high art’ but they’re always entertaining, even if they can sometimes be hard to follow, with various subplots etc. I remember watching Golden Harvest’s ‘Hot War’ movie a few years ago, and thinking that while it had a big budget and a big name cast. The film came across like an approximation of an IFD movie, but one that took itself far too seriously and wasn’t half as enjoyable as many of your movies.

Joseph Lai: We have never said that our films are the best, that our films are the biggest and most epic movies of all time. But our films have always delivered on much of what they promise. We make our films for the audience. I believe that film can be an art form at times, but not every film, only a limited number can be regarded as art. It’s called the film industry, you have to provide the product that the audience and the distributors want in order to survive. You might make the most thought provoking, incredible movie of all time, but nobody goes to see it. We roll with the audience, they want kung fu, we’ll give them kung fu, they want Ninja’s, we’ll give them Ninjas! They want Kickboxing a few years later, we turned to making Kickboxing movies. Why? Because that’s what the audience wanted. Action is a universal language, drama is much harder to sell internationally. A lot of our audience isn’t really there for anything but the action, they don’t want the story to get in the way of the action. The buyers from the Philippines & Korea, you know how they used to be, they would time the action sequences, the gaps in between the action, they knew that the audience wanted to see action! Our films have probably sold to many more territories than a lot of other Hong Kong companies films have done. The films were warmly received by the audience, and especially by the distributors.

Korean ninja movie courtesy of Asso Asia

Mike Leeder: Now you also gave a lot of stuntmen and action actors such as Phillip Ko, Paul Wong, Ridley Tsui, and Hung Yan-yan etc their first chances to officially action choreograph and direct, working for IFD.

Joseph Lai: I think we were the first company to give Philip Ko the chance to direct. He had done a lot of 2nd unit or action unit work for companies, choreographing the action scenes and we gave him the chance to direct dramatic scenes too. It was the same thing with Tsui Po-wah (Ridley Tsui), he had been doing some work for us as a stuntman and action performer in some of our movies, I felt that he had a lot of skill as a stuntman and fight choreographer, but that he would also be able to handle directing dramatic scenes. I told him if you want to be a real director, you must do more than just action.

Philip Ko developed his directing skill under IFD

Mike Leeder: Now the demand for ‘Ninja’ movies changed after a certain Jean-Claude Van Damme burst onto the market with ‘Bloodsport’ & ‘Kickboxer’, and following the success of those movies. You also started making kickboxing movies yourself.

Joseph Lai: Yes, those two Van Damme movies did very well internationally. And several distributors started asking us if we had any kickboxing movies for them. It was very easy for us to make this kind of movie, so we put down our Ninja weapons and picked up some boxing gloves for these kind of films. We started hiring many of the Western martial artists and actors who were in Hong Kong at the time, I think a lot of them were your friends, people like Bruce Fontaine, Kenn Goodman, Nick Brandon, Steve Brettingham etc. We hired them to come in and work on our movies as the leading actors, and filmed new footage with them. We built a boxing ring at our studio and started making these kind of movies.

Kickboxing & the devil himself meet on this funny crazy production

Mike Leeder: I remember shortly after I first arrived in Hong Kong, I visited the old IFD offices in the Garley building on Nathan Road, so I could drop off my information and Bruce Fontaine (‘Kickboxer King’, ‘Operation Condor’) was there and he showed me a file that contained photographs and resume from a young man, who was named Jean-Claude Van Varenberg when he dropped off his materials to you.

Joseph Lai: Oh yes that’s true! (Laughing) Yes, Van Damme did come to our office many many years ago when he first came to Hong Kong, he was very enthusiastic and hungry to make martial arts movies. He had a good look and very good skills, he offered us the chance to sign him up for some films at a very good price. But at that time we were already deluged with so many projects, we were making so many films and had contractual obligations to various distributors that we had to fulfil. I couldn’t just stop making those movies so I could do films with him. I remember talking to him about this, and saying we would have to think things over and develop the right project for him. I think back then he felt, we should have and could have dropped everything we were doing to start shooting movies with him the next day. (Laughing) So he went away and in Hollywood, through Cannon Films he got to make ‘Bloodsport’ and then ‘Kickboxer’, both of which shot in Hong Kong, and then of course we ended up making movies that were influenced by his films. It’s just the way the world is sometimes.
A lot of the western martial artists we used on films, worked on movies like ‘Bloodsport’ & ‘Kickboxer’, and then did movies for us. There was a Thai boxer, he looked like Sylvester Stallone, we called him Bruce Stallion I think. He was in ‘Bloodsport’ with Van Damme, and many movies for us. (Joseph is referring to Paula Tocha, who was credited as Bruce Stallion in several movies for IFD, and faced off against Jean-Claude Van Damme in ‘Bloodsport’, as well as later on “Death Warrant’ and ‘In Hell’)

Paulo Tocha acted for IFD, Filmark & many other production companies in HK before his success in Hollywood

Mike Leeder: Now in addition to the Kickboxing & Ninja movies, you experimented with gangland dramas like ‘Euro Crossing’, prison movies like ‘Soldier Champion’ and even costumed superheroes in ‘Catman 1 & 2’, and even ‘Robocop’ with ‘Robo-Kickboxer’.

Joseph Lai: You know too many of our movies! (Laughing) I think you worked on some of these, yes? (Laughing) We wanted to make more varieties of movies, so we started experimenting within the action movie genre. It’s like for the last few years we have done a lot of cartoon based projects and not so much live action martial arts. The market has changed somewhat, it’s no longer all about Stallone, or Schwarzenegger or Van Damme, now a lot of the time its real actors and they also make action movies. We had to diversify, or we’d go under.

SuperHeroes from IFD

Mike Leeder: How did you find working with the Western martial arts actors and stuntmen you used on so many of these films, people like Bruce Fontaine, Steve Brettingham, Jonathan Isgar, Kenn Goodman, Nick Brandon etc.

Joseph Lai: It’s funny, you could always tell which people were the ones who really wanted to be actors or stunt performers, and the ones who were just doing it for fun. Sometimes we’d be shooting, and people who had been hired for an important role wouldn’t turn up as they had made other plans. I preferred working with the professional western action actors.

The best "gweiloh" actors in Hong Kong worked for IFD

There were two Americans, Bruce Fontaine and Kenn Goodman, they did a lot of work for us at IFD, they did several films in supporting roles for us, and then when we made ‘Kickboxer King’, they played the leading characters, and we also let them do some of the fight choreography for that film. I think it was the first time they really got to do any choreography. Both of them were very talented martial artists, they both went on to work for Jackie Chan on ‘Operation Condor’. But I think they probably got to show more of what they could do action wise in some of our films, then many of the bigger movies they made.
There was an Australian actor, Jonathan Isgar? I think that was his name, he did a few movies for us, a couple were action comedies where he played an old man, and he was also the star of the two ‘Catman’ movies we made. (Laughing)No, don’t laugh, those two movies sold very well, people liked the character! He also worked with Jackie Chan!

Jonathan Isgart multitalented actor

Nick Brandon, he did a few films for us as a supporting actor like ‘Kickboxer King’, and was the lead in ‘Robo Kickboxer’, but I think he liked being behind the scenes more. He was one of the sailors on ‘Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story’, in the opening fight.
Another English guy, Steve Brettingham. He also did a lot of movies for us, he played supporting roles and then got to be the lead in a few films. He was in ‘Kickboxer King’, ‘Year of the Kingboxer’, ‘Kickboxer from Hell’, he did a lot of films for us. He was trying to be the new Van Damme, he had a very good physique like a bodybuilder, but he could fight too! But he was funny, he wanted to be in the movies, and especially as the star, but then he was always complaining about them.
I know you also did a few movies for us too?

When the audiences got boring of ninjas, the kickboxing movies entered in our screen

Mike Leeder: Your last major film (at time of interview) was a co-production with Germany, ‘Royal Destiny’. How did this project come about and are you still interested in co-productions for future projects?

Joseph Lai: Ah yes, ‘Royal Destiny’ was our co-production with a German company. It featured a German leading actor and actress, and we supplied local talent including Byron Mann (‘The Corrupter’, ‘Invincible’), and Ridley Tsui for the film, who handled the action scenes and some of the drama. It was interesting having a German crew working side by side with the Hong Kong crew, I think we both learnt something from each other. As for future co-productions, if the projects are interesting, there is always an opportunity for co-productions.

Mike Leeder: Do you see IFD moving back into live action movie making?

Joseph Lai: Yes, we are looking into it. The trend for realistic action is coming back, people want to see real action, not overly exaggerated or lots of special effects. If it’s a science fiction movie like ‘The Matrix’, people can understand the action being unrealistic, but if you’re doing a movie that’s set in the real world, sometimes if the action is too big, it can pull you out of the movie, you don’t believe in it anymore. Trends move in a circle, and I think IFD will be back on the screen again soon.



Thanks to Mr.Joseph Lai for taking the time to talk to me.


__________________
An edited version of this interview appeared in Impact magazine www.impactmoviemagazine.co.uk In addition to serving as Far Eastern Editor for Impact, Hong Kong based Producer/Casting Director Mike Leeder has worked in front and behind the camera on such projects as Jet Li’s ‘Fearless’, ‘Rush Hour 3’, Yuen Woo-ping’s “True Legend’, “The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor’, ‘Bodyguards & Assassins’, ‘Ip Man 2’, ‘The Bodyguard: A New Beginning’, ‘Underground’, ’10 Dead Men’ and many other projects.
Leeder can be found online at www.impactmoviemagazine.co.uk and www.alivenotdead.com/mikeleeder and be contacted at bigmikeimpact @ gmail.com

domingo, 21 de marzo de 2010

Chatchai Plengpanich Filmography at Filmark International

The face of Chactchai Plengpanich will be always remembered in the west as the main actor / hero of Cannibal Mercenaries. I suppose most of people who love bizarre & obscure movies from Southeast Asian countries already know Cannibal mercenaries was vampirized by Tomas Tang & his Filmark International as The Jaguar Project that included pasted shots starring IFD & Filmark regulars Paul John Stanners & Alan English. The new added shots were directed by the ex-vemon Sun Chien who actually plays a minor role as buddist priest at the beggining of this Filmark gem.




But Chatchai Plengpanich also appeared in other Filmark productions that used some of his movies as main body.

Filmography at Filmark

-The Jaguar Project: Just a re-edition of thai classic Mercenary with some added & hilariously funny dubbed footage.


-Terminal Angels: Chatchai plays the role of a journalist who traces some gangsters. in a thai variation of the Girls with guns subgenre. The action scenes are so good as the ones made in Hong Kong.





-Ninja, force of assassins: Tomas Tang took this hard boiled cop revenging actioner to offer us a ninja experiment. Tang used a thai movie entitled DIAMOND SLUM for this movie.






Other Chatchai's movie edited on VCD in Hong Kong was West Side story, a cop-thriller action movie whose story is quite similar to Diamond Slum. Both movies share the same cast who play similar roles.







Since I don't own a copy of every Filmark cut & paste movies I can't assure this is a Chatchai Plengpanich Full filmography at Filmark. Any hint of kind of information will be always wlecomed!

sábado, 20 de marzo de 2010

Cut, paste and re-edition (2nd chapter)

Tomas Tang was, as we all know, was the bussiness partner of Joseph Lai after Lai left Intercontinental Films & he founded IFD. At one time Joseph Lai joined Tomas Tang & they founded ASSO ASIA, a company that brought us dozens of Korean kung fu movies. Later Tomas Tang left Lai & he founded his Filmark international that just imitated the working methods of IFD. And from here it comes its most interesting time since Tomas Tang also bought a bunch of asian movies for re-editing & re-dubbing them & throw new products into the international video market.

Let's check some examples

-Silver Dragon Ninja (Corrupción en Chicago- Spanish video title) is an interesting & funny ninja movie supposely directed by Donald Kong, but the fact is Donald Kong just re-edited a filipino-hong Kong coproduction from 1981 entitled KILLER COP (THE TRAP) directed by Ang Saan & added some extra ninja footage starring Paulo Tocha & Eric Neff.

Ocean Shores VCD of Killer Cop, later it was edited into Silver Dragon ninja

one of the thousands international editions of this Filmark classic

As usual, the ogirinal cut without the ninja scenes was edited in Hong Kong by Ocean Shores.

-Ninja Force of Assassins ( aka Justiciero de acero-Spanish video title) is a really nice title from Filmark that just used a Thai movie starring the same guy from Cannibal Mercenary. I have been trying to track down the original thai VCD but all my effords have been useless till now. Since the original source has not an international english title, it is an odyssey to check its techical details.

Spanish VHS art cover of ninja force of assassins

Original print on Thai VCD that doesn't include the pasted ninja shots

-Ninja in the killing fields ( aka Destructor ninja, aka El campo de la muerte- Spanish video titles), is another obscure thai movie that has not international english title & it is almost impossible to access if you are not familiar with Thai cinema. Sorapong Chatri is the main actor of this production in its original form. Someone from filmark added 15 minutes of ninja action starring Stuart Smith & Louis Roth.

VCd cover for a ninja movie from Thailand used for Tomas Tang's experiments

British dvd cover

If someone could add some info about these two thai movies ( or even can get those VCDs) nI would be extremely pleased & thanked to him forever.

-Ninja VS Ninja. Well, this is a rare gem, a strange movie among strange movies since it was planned. Ocean Shores wanted a share of the benefits IFD & Filmark were getting in the international markets. So some executives at Ocean Shores rescued a production from 1981 titled THE BOMB SHELL & after a raw re-edition & dubbed it into English, they added around 15 minutes of ninja fights shot in Betacam!!!!!! The final product is an experience to be watched & believed.

Ocean shores squeezing to the limit its catalog: same movie, different product



The original print of THE BOMBSHELL & its bastard, vampirized sister Ninja Vs ninja were together as different movies in the international catalog of Ocean Shores till the day it closed. Meanwhile in Hong Kong only the original cut without ninjas was avaliable.







More to come very soon!

Corta, pega y edita (Segunda parte)

Ya sabemos que la IFD Films usaba películas de varios paises asiáticos para perpretar sus experimentos ninjas. El método de trabajo era sencillisimo y pronto otras compañias comenzaron a imitar el modelo de Joseph Lai. Repasemos algunos de esos títulos venidos de otras productoras.

-Corrupción en Chicago (Aka Silver Dragon Ninja) es una película de ninjas de la FILMARK INTERNATIONAL supuestamente dirigida por Donald Kong y protagonizada por Paulo Tocha y Eric Neff. La película que sirvio de cuerpo principal para los 20 minutos de acción ninja dirigidos por Kong fue una coproducción de 1982 entre Hong Kong y Filipinas titulada KILLER COP (THE TRAP) dirigida por Ang Saan, un veterano actor de películas de kung fu que dirigió varios films de acción pistolera muy bestias a principio de los 80.




Como era usual, la película original sin los insertos dirigidos por Kong fue distribuida en Hong Kong por Ocean Shores.



-El Justiciero de Acero (Ninja, force of assassins) es otra película de ninjas distribuida por Tomas Tang en los mercados internacionales y que tomó prestada gran parte del metraje de un films tailandes de desconocido título internacional protagonizado por el mismo actor de Cannibal Mercenary.



Tal película ha sido editada en VCD en su pais de origen. Si alguien pudiese facilitar algún dato técnico sobre la misma o como conseguir una copia, le estaría eternamente agradecido.

-Destructor Ninja ( Aka El campo de la muerte) es un film de la Filmark International con contaba contaba en el reparto con Stuart Smith & Louis Roth. Fue editada en España en dos ocasiones y en el caso de su edición como Destructor ninja, la sinopsis y ficha técnica correspondian a otro film de la Filmark titulado Clash of the ninjas.



Como en el caso anterior, Destructor ninja ( El Campo de la muerte) reutilizaba el metraje de otro film tailandés del que no dispongo ningún otro tipo de dato salvo su carátula y la certeza de se existencia en VCD en su pais de origen.

-Ninja Vs Ninja, Tela marinera, amigos, la propia Ocean Shores subiendose al carro del corta y pega al ver los beneficiosos resultados de la IFD y la Filmark en los mercados internacionales del video. La propia Ocean Shores encargó a un técnico de la casa "llamado" Cheung Nick que reeditase un film del año 81 titulado THE BOMB SHELL que previamente habian distribuido para que le añadidiese unos 15 minutos de escenas ninjas rodadas en BETACAM y sacarse de la manga este Ninja VS Ninja.








Ambas ediciones estuvieron conviveindo juntas en el catálogo internacional de la desaparecida Ocean Shores, aunque dentro del territorio de Hong Kong sólo se vió la edición original sin los pegotes ninja.






Proximamente más!