Platoon The Warriors on YouTube...

I didn't know till now that Youtube is full of users who upload tons of full-lengh movies into their accounts...I was used to see clips from all kind of movies but this thing of uploading full movies has really surprised me. But I have to say my heart is divided into two parts because of this....First, I am happy because we are given the chance to watch many rare movies from every corner of the world. I have seem movies that are not avaliable on DVD, VCD or VHS outside third-world countries or they are just collectors pieces...but in the other hand, I don't agree about uploading  copyrighted movies...I consider myself a collector, I enjoy cinema & I think I have to pay for a work other people have done for my own entertainment. It is fair...You make a work, you develope your owns ideas, you have the right to get your benefit...I hate piracy & I despise pirates...

Platoon The Warriors is a copyrighted feature from IFD that is still on their catalog...someone has uploaded it to YouTube. The source is an English-dubbed language VHS from Greece, since the film has not known DVD release, I have decided to include it here, just in case some reader hasn't seen it yet. Anyway, I encourage you to purchase legal releases...

 Platoon The Warriors, as you may know, was directed by Philip Ko who used as main body a 1984 filipino production titled Diegong Bayong, starred by filipino star Anthony Malonzo. Diegong Bayong is a powerful, bloody & gritty action drama that was nicely edited by Philip Ko. Platoon the Warriors is a personal favourite of mine. Oh, I also found in Youtube the original Spanish trailer. I have to say, I had never seen it before on any spanish release...& I like it a lot!!!!!...

Taiwan Black Movies at IFD & Filmark (part 14): Advent Commando 6- Naked Revenge

Naked Revenge was the title IFD gave to the international release of a taiwanese gangster movie in the early 80's. It was another of those movies that flooded the spanish video rental shops trying to pass as a kung fu flick among the avid audience who just wanted to see chinese fellas kicking asses!...but once you played it, you didn't find an average kung fu movie but a modern day gangter melodrama...

Naked Revenge was released in Spain on its original Taiwanese cut

I remember when I first rented it with my younger brother, he didn't like a bit and after 10 0r 15 minutes he left the room inmersed in a deep ocean of boredom...I was not!...I like it...I enjoyed the roughness & raw violence displayed...I was ( I still am) an easy-to-get-happy audience.

Opposite to many IFD/ Filmark titles that were quite easy to find on video in Spain, Naked Revenge was a hard to find one. In fact, the copy I own is the only one I have ever seen & I never ever found another copy since I decided to collect all IFD & Filmark stuff...

A pimp named Tattoer Ma

Then, during the Golden Age of IFD, when Joseph Lai made lots of money in the international video markets, Naked Revenge was re-edited, re-dubbed & was added new scenes shot in Hong Kong starred by IFD post-Richard Harrison regulars Paul John Stanners, Brent Gilbert and even Mark Houghton & retitled American Commando: Naked Revenge...years later, was again retitled as Advent Commando 6: Naked Revenge.

Advent Commando 6: Naked Revenge, the new re-edition starred by some of our favourite gweilohs was never released in Spain & I ignore if it was ever released in some other countries. I have searched for a copy but I haven't gone a clue about it.

IFD edited Naked Revenge & it was become into the 6th chapter of Advent Commando saga

Well, Naked Revenge, as we stated above was the IFD title for a taiwanese movie originally titled The Reformed Gambler, a 1981 production directed by Chui Yuk-Lung who was always credited by IFD as Steve Lung in many movies.

The reformed Gambler wasn't a fancy title for IFD...Naked Revenge sounds much better...doesn't it?

The original cast of The Reformed Gambler includes Tattoer Ma, Champ Wang & Paul Chang and other taiwanese popular actors such as Lung Fei, Chen Hung-Lieh & Chan Sing...

Oh, Cirio H. Santiago directed in 1985 a film titled Naked Vengeance that was released in some countries as Naked Revenge...obviously it has nothing to do with the IFD film.

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.

We are back to action...

Dear friends & followers ( if I still have some!)...four months have passed since the last entry in this humble blog. These four month have been full of personal problems that kept me away from posting. I simply was not in the mood for it, but keeping the blog temporarily closed hasn't been a waste of time. During all these months, I have been collecting more movies, pics, artworks & searching for more information & details that may help me ( and the people who read this) to understand better the works of Joseph Lai, Tomas Tang, Godfrey Ho, Philip Ko and other great people from the Hong Kong movie industry.

In the following days, I would like to finish the entries dedicated to the Taiwanese movies bought/ edited/ released by IFD & Filmark. I still have some raw material for some entries. Once the taiwanese stage was over, I would like to do the same with the Thai movies, just because good friends of mine such as Regis Madec from THAI WORLD VIEW & Jub Khun have been kind enough to help me to identify ALL & EACH thai movie ever bought & released by Tang & Lai, so, I think it is quite interesting to let all the people know those titles, specially the ones that still canl be found on VCD & DVD in some Thai-movies online shops.

Thanks to All a lot for your support!

Ninja Operation :Knight & Warrior on Widescreen

This blog was born just in order to give some credit to the movies produced & distributed by IFD / Filmark, Godfrey Ho, Joseph Lai & Tomas Tang among others. I was tired of reading & listening these movies were the "bottom of the barrell", "the worst  films ever" and similar expressions said by people who generally don't know how those movies were done or by people who watch Ninja Terminator looking for Arnie....said in a different way, we can't watch 55 days in Pekin expecting to see a Wong Fei Hung movie...so, we can't see an IFD ninja movie expecting to see a  ninja movie like American ninja saga or anything related to classic Ninjitsu or a classic japanese ninja films. Once this premise if fully understood & digested IFD & Filmark movies are nice cinematic experiences of exploit cinema since they contains all the ingredients for a perfect "ninja salad": ninjas, kung fu, erotic scenes, stolen music, asian actors from different countries, a very exotic if not a lost film from the southeast asia,etc etc..

This is in my opinion the first & most importat fact why IFD & Filmark films are so unfamous but there is a second reason. Because of the video boom most of those films were edited to be seen on TV, so the different releases were edited on horrible FULLSCREEN and that effect makes the movie less dynamic, we lose a lot of details & in many ways it is not confortable to see a film on that format.

To prove what I said above, I would like you to check what David Pinnegar nicely reccomended in his nice message: A WIDESCREEN VERSION of the very best ninja movie ever produced by IFD Ninja Operation: Knight & Warrior ( aka Silent Assassin). This film deserves to be watched on its widescreen format to apreciate that peope at IFD knew their duties.

  

 Fully Uncut & Widescreen version of NINJA OPERATION: KNIGHT & WARRIOR. IFD Property, Please respect the Coypright laws

 This video has been possible thanks to RockoMylers from Youtube & on his own words: 

 Special thanks to Emperor Ing for supplying me with the English audio source for this video; without him this wouldn't have been possible. Yes, it's the film restoration that the entire world has been waiting for: a complete version of Godfrey Ho's Ninja: Operation Knight and Warrior a.k.a. Ninja: Silent Assassin in its original 2:35:1 aspect ratio(or as close to it will probably ever be). This little piece of video wizardry was pulled off by combining the audio from a (relatively)high quality encode of the pan-and-scanned VHS of Ninja: Silent Assassin- the American version of Ninja: Operation Knight and Warrior- with the more complete image from the French VHS release of the film which was titled Black Ninja(no relation whatsoever to the 2003 direct-to-video Clayton Prince film of the same name). Surprisingly, putting this together required much more than simply overlaying the English audio over the French video and doing a bit of color correction, because the latter not only runs at the PAL standard of 25 FPS but also uses a markedly different print as its source than does the American tape.The differences generally amount to a matter of frames at reel changes which were easily fixed by repeating or cutting a few frames as needed, but on some occasions there are a few seconds of material that are outright missing from the French print andon those occasions I had no choice but to default to the pan-and-scanned American VHS. Thankfully, those occurences are few and far inbetween, but they DO happen so keep that in mind. Also, there are some issues with this version that slipped by me when I was editing this in Vegas- rest assured that those will be ironed out as much as possible by the time I upload this to a file host. In any case, enjoy your partially-restored audio-visual trainwreck.

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!!!

Taiwan Black Movies at IFD & Filmark (part 11): Ninja Dragon

Ninja Dragon is possible one of the most well-known IFD ninja movies because of its many releases on different formats & even today is an easy to find film. Ninja Dragon was possibly shot back to back to some other IFD ninja films such as Ninja Terminator, Ninja The Protector & Diamond Ninja Force. All of these movies share almost the same supporting actors, crews & even locations.

by 1985, IFD ninjas didn't use headbands!!!

Ninja Dragon tells the story of two Shanghai international tycoons played by Richard Harrison as the hero & Paulo Tocha ( credited as Bruce Stallion) as the villain. A couple of years later ( Ninja Dragon  was shot in 1985) Tocha would become very popular as the evil kickboxer Paco in Jean Claude Van Damme's classic Bloodsport.

Paulo Tocha (aka Bruce Stallion) got an impressive film career in HK: from cameos or extra roles in Shaw Bros to main star at IFD & Filmark & then to bigger productions & finally Hollywood!

Ninja Dragon was choreographed by Donald Kong ( aka Chiang Tao) who played different roles at IFD around those years before he move to Filmark where he used to be credited as Don Kong, Tony Kong or Whatever Kong. He did a nice job on Ninja Dragon: the film opens like a classic kung fu film showing different ninja weapons & then we have a red background where two ninjas display their skills. This kind of opening was very popular on many kung films at the end of the 70's...even Jackie Chan's Snake in the Eagle's shadow used this kind of opening.

Bruce Lee + Sylvester Stallone + IFD flavour= Ninja Bruce Stallion

In the other hand we have a Taiwanese crime drama played by well known players such as  Lily Lan Yu Li who played  Madam Phoenix in Jackie Chan's Killer Meteors & also some other Taiwan Black movies distributed by IFD such as Fury of a Virgin among others & Chan Kuo- Chu who also played along Jackie Chan & Jimmy Wang Yu in Island on Fire.

IFD knew how to buy nice movie with nice players as Chan Kuo Chu

Ninja Dragon was done using a 1982 taiwanese production titled Dark Trap directed by Lee Wing-Cheung who among other works he directed Cat 3 cult films such as Rape & Die or Dress off for life. But the most interesting thing about DARK TRAP is that this taiwanese black movie is just a remake ( well, let's say a Xerox copy suits better) of a Shaw Bros film directed in 1976 by Hua Shan titled Brotherhood. Lee Wing-Cheung worked as assistant director in Brotherhood & then in 1982 he decided to remake it using some of the original cast from Brotherhood!!!.

On January 19th 2011, I did an entry writen in Spanish in this blog about Ninja Dragon & Shaw Bros Brotherhood. At the time I had noticed both films had the same story & even same actors.You may see that entry clicking HERE. Back then I didn't know the title of the source movie used by IFD for Ninja Dragon. Today, and Thanks to Teddy Wong from HKMDB, another IFD mistery has been unclosed!

As always on these entries, a question, an important question is needed: Does anyone know if Dark Trap was released on tape or is on VCD? Does anyone own a copy of it? Any kind of information about it will be highly appreciated!