Althought June is a month that makes me lazier due to the high temperatures in South Spain area, here we go again with another Taiwanese black movie used & distributed by IFD during the video boom in Spain. At that time it seemed IFD catalog was endless.
IFD & Filmark released some of the most obscure taiwanese gangster movies on video, but sometimes they also brought us some with better known stars who also got a career in Hong Kong whose movies enjoyed better distribution. One of that movies was Phoenix The Raider.
IFD creative unit was also a bit lazy about choosing names or titles, when they found an interesting one they used countless time like the Thunderbolt or Phoenix. Do you remember Phoenix the ninja? the girl in Ninja Dragon was also named Phoenix...Curiously these two words have always been used on Taiwanese movies titles or characters.
Well, Phoenix the Raider was starred by Elsa Yeung & later superstar Brigitte Lin who was named as Venus Lin in most of her movies distributed by IFD like Golden Queen's Commando or its sequel Pink Force Commando also starred by Elsa Yeung and other future HK movie starlettes. By the way...Briggite Lin also starred a taiwanese movie titled Burn Phoenix burn in 1982. This coincidence should have been used by IFD guys and re-name Briggite Phoenix Lin instead Venus...
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| Spanish VHS cover |
Once again, we guess Phoenix The Raider was the IFD international title given to a taiwanese gangster movie originally titled The Deadly Angels, a 1982 movie co-directed by Ulysses Au Yeung-Jun a veterane director & Leung Sau-Geun an actor who starred some movies along Lin & Yeung and then he tried to be director on this film but the experience was too much for him since he never directed anything else.
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| original taiwanese poster displayed at HKMDB. |
The deadly angels was starred by some regular Taiwan black actors such as Eagle Lee, O Chung Hung or Heung Wan Pang and even we find a young Charles Heung today the powerful head China star in an early role as an inspector before he became the bodyguard of Mr Ko Chun The God Of Gamblers himself!!!
