Taiwan Black Movies at IFD & Filmark ( Part 13): King of Prodigal Boxers

The same year IFD released its first Thunderbolt saga movie, Mission Thunderbolt, starred by Hong Kong big stars such as Chen Kuan Tai & Chan Wai Man, another series of taiwanese movies on its original cut were also released. It is very curious how IFD chose some of those movies to released them with new added fotage but some others were just thrown into the international markets on their original cut...just the credits were changed into English language.

One of those movies was King of the Prodigal Boxers that it was also starred by Chen Kuan Tai & Chan Wai Man. The film was just another taiwanese gangster & melodrama film with Chen Kuan Tai playing a kickboxer who goes to Hong Kong seeking revenge against the people who murdered his family. Nothing new under the stars...

Original poster showing Chen Kuan Tai cutting off his finger

 IFD marketing department was maybe the funniest place  in the office. King of the Prodigal Boxers was the new fancy title for a 1983 production originally titled Deadly Duo. A Hong Kong-Taiwanese movie directed by Yu Yin-Chuen who, based on HKMD, never ever directed another film. Among the cast, we found interesting performers who made very interesting & bloody gangsters movies in Hong Kong & Taiwan such as Lily Lan Yu Li who starred the taiwanese movie seen in Ninja Dragon, Wong Goon-Hung ( aka Champ Wang) & even Ho Pak Kwong who seems to appear in 99 % of the movies produced in Hong Kong at that time.

King of the Prodigal Boxers was released in Spain twice, as many IFD movies during the video boom. The spanish title was La Piel de Un Asesino ( The skin of a killer), a title that brings to our mind  Alain Delon's film titled Pou la peau d'un flic ( For the skin of a cop), a movie that was released in Spain during that time too.

The first Spanish VHS art cover was very similar to the original IFD artwork with Chen Kuan Tai & Champ Wang faces on the poster plus a knife cutting a finger in a yakuza style, then the back page show some still pics from the movie...

This video artcover was honest to the audience...

 But the second Spanish release of King Of the Prodigal Boxers was done in the middle 80's when Cannon Films released Michael Winner's Death Wish 3 starring Charles Bronson & the fourth installment of Rocky & the still pics from the back page are from another different movie...then the spanish distributors designed a very fancy artwork who missed both movies!!!...in this case the spanish distributors went beyond IFD!!!!

A masked Paul Kersey + Apollo Creed & Rocky + sexy female cop = King of the prodigal boxer. Do you think the artwork designer watched the movie before he did this VHS cover????

Anyway, King of the prodigal boxers is not a very good movie, not even for IFD standars but it is good enough to spend a funny afternoon & a good chance to see big stars starring low budget movies.