Yet, another entry dedicated to the taiwanese gangster movies released by IFD & Filmark before 2012 ended. I think the blog is becoming a bit boring lately because I have just been focusing it on a single subject, the taiwanese black movies, for the last months. But in the other hand, I am trying my best to identify so many original movies as possible because it is a very good way to enjoy & understand IFD & Filmark movies. I got tired of reading or listening comments such as " IFD ninja movies are the bottom of the barrel ninja movies"...well, once you know how they were "produce", you may change your mind about them and you might realize they were not Ninja movies but gangster movies with new ninja scenes...and then, if you have a minimum interest on rare cinema you will know many of those movies used in the new edition were a portrait of the taiwanese society of that time...and many of those movies are gone forever...
IFD & Filmark got their golden age selling their catalog in economic rising countries during the early & middle 80's. Countries like Spain, Italy, Portugal and Greece ( that now are in coming back to the Third World) were main markets for the cheap products Lai & Tang offered. Unluckily many of those copies are also lost and they are even gone from IFD catalog.
When Tomas Tang left Joseph Lai and he founded Filmark, he just followed his ex-pal steps. He bought a bunch of Korean, Thai, Filipino & Taiwanese movies and then some of them were edited with new fotage shot in Hong Kong and some of them were just re-dubbed into English & released in their original form but just making the audience think they were Martial arts movies.
Joseph Lai & Tomas Tang shared the movies they bought together during the Asso Asia time, they had previously bought some movies from director Cheung Chi- Chiu ( aka Richard Chen) such as Deadly Silver Angels or Rainbow force that were released by IFD, but Filmark also kept some movies from that package & released it in the same form. One of those movies Filmark kept was Handsome Vagabond.
Handsome Vagabond was also directed by Cheung Chi-Chiu in 1982 & got almost the same cast & technical teams as the ones above mentioned. So, we found on it people like Eagle Lee, Tattoer Ma or actress Chan Lai Wan that used to be credited by Filmark as Lyon Chan while it was credited as Juliet Chan by IFD...
Once again, this taiwanese movie was titled with different & alternative titles that made it quite difficult to find ind identify. Handsome vagabond was also known as Street fighter 2 and other two or three aka titles in Chinese language. Then Filmark retitled it as Raging Queen for its international release.
Of course, Raging Queen wasn't the Spanish title when it was released on tape, the spanish distributors added another title and eventually Handsome Vagabond arrived to my home as Codigo Mortal ( Mortal Code)
At least, this time, the cover designer didn't add any ninjas on it, but three white guys fighting to make us think the movie was an american release or something similar.
For Further information about this film, please check it at HKMB
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