Taiwan Black Movies at IFD & Filmark (part 12): Deadly Silver Angels

I truly think it is an almost impossible mission to compile a completa IFD catalog since many of the movies they released and/ or distributed dissapeared from it for no obvious reasons. And most of those "gone" films are /were Taiwanese productions on their original cut  and even some cut and paste versions of those movies. Deadly Silver Angels is one of those missing titles from IFD catalogs. It is a strange case since it is an easy to find movie on tape in many countries but is not longer on IFD hands...

As many early IFD films of Taiwanese Black Movies , Deadly Silver Angels was released in Spain twice by different companies during the VHS craze. The Spanish title was Angeles De Plata Mortales what is simply a word by word translation from the international English title.

First Spanish VHS release...Even Bruce Lee is on the cover!!!!

Second Spanish VHS...No Bruce Lee but Indonesian actress Eva Arnaz from 5 deadly Angels ( the title Deadly Silver Angels got on its USA tape release) + the original names of this taiwanese productions was the design of the art cover!!!..A big misunderstanding because of the several aka titles!!!!

While IFD credits shows Deadly Silver Angels as a 1983 production, the fact is this film was shot in 1981 and its original taiwanese title was  VIRAGO ( Strong of a Woman). At first sight we may think IFD offered us this movie on its original taiwanese cut as it was usual back then when IFD just distributed asian films overseas outside Asia.

Original Taiwanese poster. Thanks to Teddy Wong of HKMDB.

But there is something weird with Deadly Silver Angels that makes me think IFD started its "cut & paste" editing style before Richard Harrison arrived. The prologue shows a bizarre nightclub scene where a couple dances until they get naked...well, the girl gets totally naked while the guy ( thanks God!!!) keeps his white cottom pants on.

This film should have been titled Angels on pants!!!

This scene, obviously, has nothing to do with the movie starring by Elsa Yeung & Eagle Lee about gang fights & female revenge, besides the original Taiwanese cut opens with Eagle Lee singing in a nightclub. But the most bizarre fact is the same naked dancing scene was used again by IFD in Angels With Golden Guns ( aka Virgin Apocalypse), a Hong Kong-Thai co-production released by IFD the same year they released Deadly Silver Angels.

The Greek art cover insists on showing pants pants pants!!!!

Was editor Vincent Leung Wing Chan too busy editing several IFD movies at the same time & got confussed? Was this scene so important to IFD guys that they wanted to use it so many times as possible? I don't have answers to these questions but this scene set the strange, whacky & weird sense of eroticism displayed by IFD on following films.

But that's not all...Deadly Silver Angels got a kind of pseudo-sequel / remake titled on its Hong Kong VCD Scape at Dawn, starred by Taiwanese action star Yin Su Li ( Barbara Yuen when credited by IFD). For a time, I thought this "Deadly Silver Angels 2" was an alternative title for Armed School Girls.

I found this VCD in Hong Kong during the late 90's when hong Kong was my second home.

But doing a deeper research on the cast & their "links" to other IFD productions I recently found out that Scape at Dawn is just an alternative title of Escape of the Female Prisoner directed in 1984 by  Lam Ying whose Survival of the Dragon was also released by IFD in the West.

Yin Su Li has nothing to envy to Elsa Yeung. Both are terrific when female revenge is needed!!!