Trust Your Market Place - 15th Anniversary Post

My 15th Anniversary Blog

Trust Your Market Place

Well that makes 15 years of the NUTS4R2 blog.

As regular readers will know, I don’t usually do an actual review on anniversary blogs or posts ending with a 00 number. So this time I thought I’d talk about something which really annoys me about the decisions, presumably economically minded decisions, in the world of the boutique media labels.

We’re in a golden age of physical media right now and collectors and modest film fans alike have never had it so good. And this isn’t an attack on the boutique labels and, as you’ll know from my recent 2700th post (right here), I love what these labels are doing, but, seriously, they need Paddington Bear to come along  and give some of them a long hard stare when it comes to releasing only partial series’ of films…

I was in Fopp records about 8 weeks ago when I saw that the 88 Films label had put out a Blu Ray of Erotic Ghost Story, which had somehow escaped my attention. I know nothing about the film but I’m always happy to learn about any cinematic history which involves supernatural shenanigans combined with naked, sexy ghost ladies. All well and good but, literally a week or two after I’d bought it, 88 Films announced a box set (already on the shelves now for a few weeks) of the Erotic Ghost Story Trilogy. What can I say? If I’m learning about sexy gals n’ ghosts then I really need to stretch that degree to a masters but… why the heck did they put out a single edition when a box set was in the works? To punish people who bought the single edition and make them double dip… again?

Similarly, let’s look at Arrow films (who are great but also do seem to be all about money for old rope these days)… I was fortunate enough to grab their box set of all four Psycho films pretty much the week it was released. Lucky me then because, literally a couple of weeks after, it was already unavailable and Arrow had reissued it as a Psycho Sequels box set, excluding the first movie. What the heck? Who would want that without the first film? And sticking with Arrow, they’re about to make me double dip with the ‘badly described because none of these films feature the same characters’ Sergio Leone Dollars Trilogy. But here’s the thing, instead of releasing it as a box set as you might imagine would be the best format to release these films, they’re stupidly releasing it as three single editions, one per month. I mean, what the heck? And don’t get me started on their missing film from their Coffin Joe box set... I mean, I’d almost rather they didn’t issue any of them if they’re going to have one missing.

Eureka Masters Of Cinema are another much respected label doing some bizarre ‘odds and ends’ releases too. I got hold of their Mr. Vampire release one year and, the very next year, they released a Mr. Vampire sequel set of the other ones closely (but still somewhat loosely) related to that movie. I’ll get to why I think they and 88 Films have been doing this stuff to us in a minute but… let me just reel off another couple of examples for you…

I’ve been saying to my friends (and anyone who will listen) that, with all these gazillions of Shaw Brothers releases seeing the light of day on Blu Ray these last few years, somebody should put out a box set of one of the jewels in their crown, the four Monkey movies based on the Chinese tome Journey To The West (best known over here in the UK from the Japanese TV show adaptation called Monkey, in the 1980s). It seems to me that a box set like this would be like a licence to print money. Monkey money. Well, the Australian label Impact has just released three Shaw Brothers movies into the wild, similarly themed but in single editions and… one of them is the first Monkey movie. I mean… what? Surely they must realise their target audience for these will be happy to pay out for all four in a nice slipcase? What the heck?

Let’s turn our attention to Severin Films now. Severin, for a while now, have been putting out huge boxed editions covering subjects like Al Adamson, Ray Dennis Steckler, Folk Horror, Black Emanuelle and even Psychotic Women. And for years now, I’ve been wondering why they or someone else hasn’t put a Russ Meyer box set out onto the market, which would surely sell well? And Severin would, of course, be the perfect fit for those films… except… a few months ago, Severin put out Meyer’s Vixens, SuperVixens and Beneath The Valley Of The UltraVixens as single editions… with a couple more single editions following a month or so after that. What’s going on? Surely they must know a box set would get even more bucks in for them?*

One last example before I carry on... Curzon cinemas have their own Blu Ray label that releases ‘comprehensive’ box sets covering directors (their words, not mine) and lovely things they are too. Why then do their box sets for Wim Wenders and Lars Von Trier both have at least one film missing? What’s the point of that then?

Okay then...here’s what I think is going on in some of these cases (or slipcases). Single editions before boxed versions such as Mr. Vampire, Erotic Ghost Story and The Monkey Goes West may well be testing the waters to see if anyone wants to buy them. But come on, trust your market place people! The kinds of customers who buy this stuff, even it’s a blind buy, known their movies and have done their research. They are as likely to splash out on a boxed edition as they are a single edition. And in the case of someone like me, less likely to buy the single editions. For example, I’ve never bought Blu Ray editions of The Exorcist or Trancers movies because I can’t find them all in the same boxed venue. I dont want to have to do the work tracking down different distributor’s versions around the world because legal can’t get all the films in one place. So deal me out, there are a gazillion other films already taking up my time and valuable shelf space.

And if it is a case of testing the financial waters on a release before repackaging it with the sequels... sure, some people will buy it but, there are just as likely going to be people who won’t because they’re optimistic a box set will be coming down the line at some future point. In which case, you’re just not getting an accurate reading on how well the full monty would do on the shopfloor (real or virtual).

So yeah, my message for my 15th Anniversary post is... please labels, trust your customers a little. We want the movies you’re putting out, for sure, but we want them all in one place, properly curated. Definitive editions are definitely the way to go with these things. Anything else just leads to customer frustration.

And for those of you who have been reading this blog over the years... thanks very much. Normal service will return again tomorrow.


* Since writing this last week, I’ve listened to one of their always excellent Severin Podcasts which explained that, due to their growing relationship with the rights holder and the rigid art direction and production of these coming from the estate, the Russ Meyer titles are not something they can get all the licences for, at present. So that lets them off the hook as far as those are concerned and let’s just be happy with what they managed to achieve.

My 2700th Post - 31 Best Boutique Blu Ray labels

Blu-tique Fashion

My 2700th Post -
31 Best Boutique
Blu Ray labels

This listing, or something probably very much different to it, was originally due to have come to this blog a few years ago, as one in an occasional series of articles exploring the best boutique labels for DVD and Blu Ray. However, when I started researching it and trying to figure out who I wanted to include this time around, I came to the realisation that independent physical media labels are not just easily surviving in this so called age of the digital revolution... they’re thriving. This made it very difficult to properly do that article justice, I would have to include around 60 labels, many of them only a few years old.

It’s seems strange to me that the big companies like Warner Brothers, Disney, Universal, MGM and the like are releasing less and less product on physical media, preferring instead to capture the digital streaming market which, as fans of physical media know, is a very shaky proposition and, as more stuff gets deleted from the servers, I think people are realising their only salvation a lot of the time is in Blu Ray and UHD for the significant, near future.

So, yeah, that left me with a dilemma of who do I include when, half of these labels I don’t have any examples of myself. So the project stayed in limbo for a few years until now, a few weeks before this is to go live. I realised nobody is really going to do justice to it all... so I thought I’d just do a top ten labels list and leave it at that. And, of course, it quite quickly got to the point where ten seemed like a poultry amount as I tried to whittle it down to that small number. So, yeah, here we go then... here’s my look at my most essential 31 labels and, if you’re a buyer of physical media, you might find yourself pitching up in some interesting places if you read further.

Each label title has an embedded link taking you to their web site.

AGFA (American Genre Film Archive)
Okay, so to learn how AGFA started, you need to read the book Warped And Faded (reviewed here) which explains why this is a label devoted to rescuing, saving and restoring zero budget projects by people who can’t really afford to make movies... but do anyway. It’s a partner label of two of the other labels you’ll find on this list... Vinegar Syndrome in the US and 101 Films in the UK. So if you want to check out such trash as Godmonster Of India Flats (yeah, not watched it yet but it’s in the pile), the Lady Streetfighter collection, The Sword And The Claw or even the Wakaliwood Supa Action Volume 1 collection then, yeah, you know where to go.

Arrow Films (and Arrow USA and incorporating Arrow Academy)
What can one say about Arrow Films? Sometimes they get it wrong and repressed discs have to be distributed to their customers. Sometimes a release will sell out on pre-order. Sometimes they’ll miss a deadline or two. But with such heavy hitting box set releases as their three (to date) Shawscope collections delving into the abundant past of the Shaw Brothers action film catalogue (licensed to them by Celestial Pictures, naturally) and such cinematic confections as Yokai Monsters, Gamera, a definitive Bruce Lee at Golden Harvest box and J-Horror... not to mention various horror and giallo classics from the likes of Dario Argento and Lucio Fulci, then you have to cut them some slack. Bottom line is, with releases as good as these, you can’t ignore them (much as you might like to on occasion).

BFI (British Film Institute)
I always used to think of both BFI and Eureka Masters Of Cinema as being a kind of UK equivalent to America’s great label, the Criterion Collection. Now, of course, there is also a much less prolific but equally high quality UK arm of Criterion too... but BFI has some great releases in their vaults. With titles such as the inaugural release of Scala!!!, four boxes of Essential Bergman movies, some epic Kurosawa classics and their impressive Flipside range of peculiarities, not to mention modern classics like Starve Acre… they’re a much more impressive label than you may at first realise.

Blue Underground
When the once great US DVD label Anchor Bay got kind of diminished and became pretty much a shadow of its former self, Blue Underground started up to, in my opinion, carry on what Anchor Bay used to do best. And they’re still, surprisingly, at it. Maybe not all of their output is headline grabbing stuff these days but with titles like the definitive restoration of Daughters Of Darkness, The New York Ripper and Argento and Martin’s Two Evil Eyes in their listings... they’re still an essential label, in my book.

Cauldron Films
Cauldron Films ship exclusively to Canada and North America but if you want to import them to someplace like the UK, you can generally pick them up at the excellent Diabolik.com web store. Without these people we wouldn’t have had such releases as Murder In A Blue World, Crimes Of The Black Cat and the amazing 1974: La posesión de Altair to explore.

Criterion Collection (and the less prolific Criterion UK)
What can you say about Criterion? Source of the wonderful Criterion Closet episodes on YouTube and purveyors of the best in classic World Cinema since the days of Laser Disc and VHS. Including important selections from the likes of Fellini, Kurosawa, Tarkovsky, Bergman, Godard, Truffaut, Wenders, Ackerman... you name it and they’ve got all the giants. Admittedly they’re still very expensive compared to the majority of their competitors (you pay for the quality extras and restorations) but, over the last few years, some of the other UK and US labels have been matching their asking price and then some on occasion (I’m looking at you Second Run and Severin!) so, still a high quality ‘go to’ label and still with the power to surprise with some of their left of field releases, it seems to me (I never expected to own The Roaring Twenties on a decent home video format, for example). Plus they have some seriously refreshing cover artwork.

Cult Epics
If you know who people like Walerian Borowczyk, Tinto Brass, Just Jaekin and Radley Metzger are (no, don’t google them if you’re at work) then it’s nice to know this label is out there, faithfully restoring some of their classic works in a world where their particular style of cinematic excess hasn’t made a come back in the way that other genres and sub-genres have. Although, I suspect Arrow and 88 Films in the UK may start taking a crack at these at some point too, judging from some of their recent output.

Curzon
The famous chain of high brow London art cinemas have their own Blu Ray label too now. They have produced some nice box sets over the years which, while not always quite definitive (their Wim Wenders and Lar Von Trier sets have a film apiece missing, for example), are always a quality and much desired release. Such as their wonderful box dedicated to Kieslowski’s Three Colours Trilogy. Although I draw the line at a Peter Strickland set, to be honest.

Diskotek Media
This once great label was always more about Anime releases than anything else but they also have some quality product you can’t get anywhere else, including lovely Blu Ray versions of live action classics such as Uzumaki, Sex And Fury and Female Yakuza Tale... which still makes them an interesting label for sure.

88 Films
88 Films have always been a UK friend to Italian giallo movies and Italian horror films but they’re continuing to go from strength to strength. After they (and Eureka) cracked the Shaw brothers and Hong Kong action film markets in the UK (with Shout Factory in the USA and Arrow in the UK jumping onto that same band wagon) they are now releasing some pretty snazzily branded label collections devoted to Japanarchy, Nikkatsu Roman Porno, French Erotica, Hong Kong Category III titles and a beautifully branded tribute to the British Tigon Studios classics. What’s not to like?

Eureka Masters Of Cinema
This label has always had their finger on the pulse of quality film releases, embracing many of the classic silent films such as Pandora’s Box, Diary Of A Lost Girl, Nosferatu, The Cabinet Of Dr. Caligari, Metropolis and, just recently, the sold out within a few days (glad I pre-ordered my copy) box set of Louis Feuillade’s French silent serials of Fantômas, Judex, Les Vampires and Tih-Minh. But they’ve also been releasing some essential Japanese samurai movies, not to mention some much loved Hong Kong action comedies of late. And where else would you find diverse titles such as Message From Space (Japanese Star Wars), Sam Fuller movies and the silent films of Laurel And Hardy all under one brand. They continue to do essential work within the boutique Blu Ray market.

Hammer
British stalwart Hammer Films are, like the title character in their Dracula films of the 1950s through to the 1970s, back from the dead. Their inaugural release from their back catalogue was unleashed just over a month ago with an outstanding, big box presentation of the great Captain Kronos, Vampire Hunter... literally days before the actor who played him died. Not only is the packaging and extras (and wealth of accompanying printed materials) absolutely top notch but they’ve also printed various logos and quotes from the film in the sturdy cardboard packaging in which their product is sent through the post. Next up from them is a similar treatment of the classic Four Sided Triangle... which is a film I also love.

Imprint (Via Vision)
With the exchange rate on US currency, not to mention their postal charges, now officially having ‘gone through the roof’, it’s time to look at countries with much cheaper exchange rates and Australia is an especially good one because they have two really great boutique labels who are happy to send their products overseas too. Imprint particularly has my gratitude because the fourth volume in their ‘take it or leave it hodge podge’ Tales Of Adventure series of boxes features restorations of no less than seven Republic theatrical serials, comprising King of The Rocket Men, Flying Disc Man from Mars, The Invisible Monster, Radar Men From The Moon, Zombies of the Stratosphere, Mysterious Doctor Satan and Commando Cody: Sky Marshal of the Universe. Not only that but they’ve also started releasing some of the British TV shows of the 1960s and 1970s that the great Network label were releasing before they went bankrupt a few years ago in, by all accounts, some very nice editions.

Indicator (Powerhouse Films)
Wow. What a success story in the limited edition market British label Indicator have become in the nine years since they started up. With definitive boxes in numerous volumes dedicated to Ray Harryhausen, Hammer Horror, William Castle, Jean Rollin (the usual suspects admittedly but in such nice editions, some of which are uncut in the UK for the first time... don’t throw those old US editions away just yet, though), Mexploitation films and even early Columbia horror movies. A wealth of cinematic exploration just waiting for your retinas to join in the fun.

Kino Lorber
US label Kino Lorber has a really diverse mix of titles from all walks of cinema and in huge amounts, it has to be said. Now, the caveat emptor with Kino is that, in some cases, a cheaper and sometimes better version of their film can be gained in your own country… I mistakenly bought They Might Be Giants thinking it was the only version available, only to find out that Indicator had released a slightly better version on my home turf in the UK, for example. That being said, there’s a lot of stuff you just can’t, at time of writing, get anywhere else such as the trilogy of 1960s comedy/spoof versions of Fantômas, five of the OSS117 movies and two of the three Warner Oland Fu Manchu films. So with titles such as these, they’ve more than proven their essential status in the boutique Blu Ray world.

Mondo Macabro
Wow. Mondo Macabre continue to bring out the weird side of cinema, now in astonishing Blu Ray editions (although they’re usually quite expensive to import and tend to sell out and go out of print quickly, curse them). And with titles such as the Indonesian Warrior Trilogy, Café Flesh and Dr. Jekyll Meets The Wolfman, they continue to provide quality releases to connoisseurs of celluloid shenanigans.

Nucleus Films
Okay, so this British label doesn’t have a lot of publicity… so it’s easy to be in the situation where you suddenly see a title on the shelf at HMV or Fopp and had no idea that it had been released onto an unsuspecting public. Films like the unusual giallo Death Laid An Egg and other Eurosploitation fare such as Garden Of Torment, The Libertine and Jess Franco’s The Erotic Rites Of Frankenstein are among the titles they have on hand for the discerning enthusiast.

101 Films
UK label 101 Films are perhaps seen as nothing special with a true hodge podge of different titles, until you realise that there are a fair few gems in their catalogue such as Jack The Giant Killer, Spacehunter - Adventures In The Forbidden Zone and the Irwin Allen version of The Lost World. In recent years they’ve also become the British partner label for AGFA (see above) and I hope that’s going well for them because I somehow can’t see the British public getting behind many of the AGFA releases but, hey, it’s cheaper than importing certain titles.

Possible Films
Possible Films is owned and run by the great US independent film maker Hal Hartley and this is his way of taking back control of his own films and putting them out in the best possible editions (apart from No Such Thing, which I am assuming is being strangle-held by MGM and which definitely needs a Blu Ray version soonest). The downside is that the pricing is way beyond Criterion levels (my acid test for such things) but, if you want high quality releases from the greatest living American director… stuff like The Unbelievable Truth, Trust, Simple Men, The Girl From Monday etc… then you have to splash the cash.

Pulse Films
Pulse Films is a French label (although you can also get a few of their English friendly titles from Vinegar Syndrome and their new sister label Melusine) who specialise in movies of… an erotic nature (often hard core and uncut). They lionise some of the actresses in their films (and rightly so) with some nice supporting merchandise such as, in the case of the great Brigitte Lahaie and Marilyn Jess, beautifully designed hardback books detailing their careers. Also, depictions of their naked figures adorning skateboards (yeah, don’t ask, it’s a part of modern day culture that escapes me).

Radiance
British label Radiance has already cast a big shadow on the Blu Ray market here in the UK in just two years since its first releases. Beautifully handled, limited edition releases such as Black Tight Killers, Mario Bava’s sublime Planet Of The Vampires and a Daiei Gothic box set are among their many treasures. The downside is that the releases, especially the first wave limited edition versions, tend to sell out really quickly, sometimes just on pre-order, because so many people want them.

Second Run
Second Run are an often overlooked DVD and Blu Ray label based in the UK who specialise in World Cinema releases (especially Czechoslovakian it seems to me). A large and varied range of titles have been released by them such as the wonderful Valerie And Her Week Of Wonders, Morgiana and, of course, Daisies. There’s a whole lot of stuff I’ve never even heard of from this label and so, that gives them a special value to me as a lover of the occasional film to watch.

Second Sight
Second Sight films are known for ‘bells and whistles’ editions of film that have usually already been out on home video in some format but they have reissued definitive editions of films like The Blair Witch Project, Possessor, Inside (the original French version, naturally) and a very chunky box with many versions of Romero’s Dawn Of The Dead on it. Fair warning though, their editions are often very expensive, for some reason I’ve never been able to quite figure out (other than greed, maybe?).

Severin Films
Well, if I had to choose who is the best boutique label in the world right now it would be a tough call between this label and Vinegar Syndrome but, if pushed, I think Severin would just snag it. With essential box set editions such as The Sensual World Of Black Emanuelle, Al Adamson - The Masterpiece Collection (which reaffirmed my faith in film during the pandemic), the All The Haunts Be Ours boxes, the House Of Psychotic Women boxes, the Game Of Clones - Brucesploitation collections and some amazing stand alone releases such as Jodorosky’s Santa Sangre and Franco’s Vampyros Lesbos, this label just gets better every month (and causes my wallet severe and irreparable damage). They also have a wonderful, joyful podcast highlighting their upcoming releases when they’ve been announced and, of course, their Severin Cellar videos via YouTube.

Shameless Films
Shameless Films were a small British, yellow branded company specialising in Italian giallo, horror and exploitation films on DVD. Contrary to popular belief, they didn’t vanish overnight but are still with us, they’re just not that prolific as in days of old but have started getting maybe 5 or 6 great Blu Ray releases a year out (many of them upgraded versions of thier previous DVD titles). Don’t buy their UK editions of films like The New York Ripper and Cannibal Holocaust though… they’re still censored over here (no matter what language you couch that censorship in).

Shout Factory (including Scream Factory)
Shout Factory (and their sub label Scream Factory) have been around for years in the US, putting out a range of interesting products. Some of their recent and more interesting work being the various volumes of boxed collections of Shaw Brothers Classics and a wonderful steel-book edition of Battle Beyond The Stars bundled with an amazing action figure of Sybil Danning as Saint-Exmin the Valkyrie from that film. However, you might have to go the third party root for some of these great releases as they will only ship some of their titles to North America, directly. Which makes it a pain to get hold of certain editions.

Synapse
Yep, US label Synapse films are still going and they’re now releasing in the blu ray market too. And with titles like Radley Metzger’s S&M odyssey The Image (sorry, that’s BDSM to the kiddies these days) and some Dario Argento classics on their books… they’re still worth a look.

Third Window Films
Purveyors of cinema from the Far East (and I believe partnered/swallowed by Arrow during the pandemic), Third Window Films have some of the more unusual titles from places like Japan on their listings and they have a large number of them, too. Recent releases from them are Mermaid Legend, A Samurai In Time and the wonderful New Religion.

Treasured Films
Treasured Films have only been going for maybe just over a year but with films such as a definitive version of Mausoleum on their books, it won’t be long before they’re a much respected label, it seems to me. They also run a wonderful boutique Blu Ray shop in the UK, selling titles from many of the labels listed here, called Film Treasures (which you can find here). Be aware though, the prices don’t always come out as cheaper than ordering from the US so, do your research.

Umbrella
Umbrella is the other big Australian label and I’ve only got one of their releases to date, that being The Man From Hong Kong (which I hope to watch sooner or later) but, when they also include a CD of that film’s soundtrack, you know the label cares about the product they are putting out. I’ll be keeping my eye on this label, for sure.

Vinegar Syndrome (and Melusine)
Dedicated to rescuing exploitation and also films of a mainly adult nature (porn films from the 70s and 80s, okay?), Vinegar Syndrome are as prolific as their biggest rivals at Severin but they do manage to sometimes even release something complementary to what that label are putting out. For instance, one label did Blood For Dracula while the other issued Flesh For Frankenstein at more or less the same time. They’ve recently moved their straight porn films over to a sub-brand sister label called Melusine (who are also aligned with Pulse, see above) and they have put some essential releases out over the years but, as importantly, saved many films (that most other companies wouldn’t choose to touch) from extinction due to the state of celluloid degradation from which their company takes it’s name. From Curse Of The Devil and The Terrornauts to Michael Mann’s The Keep (finally) and their amazing series of Forgotten Gialli boxes, this company has something for everyone. 

One last honourable mention must go to Mubi but, trying to find a part of their website dedicated to their rich history of Blu Ray releases proved impossible for me so... just go in Fopp and have a look at their Mubi section, for sure.

Heroes Of The East

Hitty Woman

Heroes Of The East
aka Zhong hua zhang fu
Hong Kong 1978
Directed by Chia-Liang Liu
Shaw Brothers/Celestial Pictures
Arrow Blu Ray Zone B

Okay, so the eleventh movie presented in Arrow’s Blu Ray ShawScope Vol 1 collection is Heroes Of The East and, it’s another entertaining yarn. That being said, I’m amazed that Shaw Brothers got away with releasing this one after the racist tone of the movie... I was going to say subtext but it’s way less subtle than that.

Okay, so it’s one of those films which introduces characters with credits from the moment they enter the story. I think I’ve only ever seen this practice done on Shaw Brothers movies and there are a lot in this box set which do this... once the titles are finished, they still just keep coming and coming until every new character has turned up throughout the course of the picture.

The film stars a young Gordon Liu as Ho Tao but, it’s a younger version of the actor in a way I’ve never seen him before... with a full head of almost Beatles-style mop top hair. After some shenanigans where he pretends to get ill rather than go through with an arranged marriage to a childhood companion, he drops all pretence of illness when he discovers she’s not the ugly battle axe he was expecting to have to marry. Far from it and, in the first of many credits in the movie which introduce actors and actresses with their specialist martial arts skills status, she is billed here as Japanese Seikendo Expert - Yuka Mizuno (who is here playing said new wife Yumiko).

Yup, it’s a ‘Chinese man marrying a Japanese woman‘ battle of the sexes comedy, for a while, with the extremely proficient new lady of the house pitching her belief in her own, ‘failing in the face of her husbands more elegant Chinese kung fu styles’ Japanese techniques, in which the battle is initially raised. So, yeah, it's a case of marital arts to martial arts, I guess.

However, it doesn’t take long to figure out for even the most IQ light viewer (so that’d be me then), it’s really about pushing the agenda that Chinese martial arts are far superior to Japanese brands and styles. This gets further pronounced in their domestic disputes to the point when, unable to take her techniques’ failures any more, she high tails it back to Japan.

So Ho sends her a letter challenging her to use her seven different kung fu styles against his in a battle to settle the dispute once and for all. However, her martial arts instructor (who also wants her for himself), shows his grandmaster the letter and seven of the masters in their special techniques (including him), plus the grandmaster as an observer, go to China to accept the challenge in her place, in seven duels.

From here on in, the film becomes a series of seven long fight scenes which, yeah, is all very watchable, fast paced and I dread to think how many times these various actors got hurt doing these sequences. So there are seven different skills and styles poor Ho has to go against... Swords, Karate (which Ho manages to defeat by somehow learning Drunken Kung Fu overnight), Nunchucks, Spears  (no match for Ho’s pole fighting technique), Sai (which is, yeah, the plural of Sai, as it turns out), a huge Judo guy who is defeated by Ho smearing his body with oil and, eventually, the Ninjitsu style as Yumilo’s affronted ex-master uses the most sneaky and deviously underhanded techniques to win his confrontation... losing out to the same techniques pitched against him.

So, yeah, there’s a sense of honour among the Japanese characters and they’re not presented as total idiots but, it’s very much, despite Ho’s attempt at a speech to help the Japanese regain face at the end, a movie saying ‘Chinese are better than Japanese’, live with it. So I’m surprised I’ve not been aware of any backlash against the film, which I’m sure it must have had.

It’s nicely put together too and the fight choreography is never boring. Indeed, rather than remain static and follow the action from afar, the director gets the camera right in with the actors, using camera motion to follow the fights around with a certain dynamism and kinetic appeal which, due to some good editing and clarity of where you are in a fight at any time, never gets at all confusing.

There’s some nice little moments in the fighting as well... such as the sense of honour of the characters. For instance, when Ho is using some kind of big choppy blades against his opponents sai, he disarms one sai from the other but then presents it back to him. The Japanese guy promptly sheaths it as it would be dishonourable to carry on using the weapon as it’s already been disarmed. In response, Ho beds one of his own weapons in a wooden support so they can carry on meeting each other on equal terms.

There are also some other things which add to the entertainment value... such as when the Ninja guy uses what he calls his Japanese Crab Fist technique, which really does have him energetically scuttling sideways here and there in stark resemblance to its crustacean origins. If that sounds a little silly... I can assure you it looks way more hilarious and ridiculous than it sounds and, I was almost sorry when Ho used his special Chinese Crane Fist technique to put a stop to his opponents sideways stratagems.

So yeah, Heroes Of The East is a bit of an unusual movie, starting off as a kind of Chinese/Japanese version of a Rock Hudson/Doris Day kind of comedy (with lethal weapons) but then turning into something far more serious, with the honour of Chinese martial arts resting on the energy and enthusiasm of the husband as he tries to somehow win back his wife by, I don’t know, reiterating in a more grander, large scale way what he tried to demonstrate to her in the first place. It’s a freeze frame ending so, yeah, we don’t know if this did the trick or not but, certainly that wouldn’t want to be a conversation I’d like to go back to if I was the male in this particular relationship.

And that’s me done on this one, I think. Despite its racist leanings I found the film to be thoroughly entertaining and didn’t mind the lopsided nature of the story as the comedy turned into something more serious and kinetic. Another good one in this set from Arrow.

Caveat Emptor

At Midnight I’ll
Ditch Your Pre-Order

Caveat Emptor -
The Long Road
To Coffin Joe

Caveat emptor is right.

Today’s article is not a review, alas. Make no mistake, it’s both a warning to physical media buyers and collectors everywhere but it also, I think, asks an important question about one of the underlying tent pegs of obtaining the latest releases in a Blu Ray marketplace, which seems to be in the midst of a ‘last chance’ inspired golden age of rarely seen releases being thrust into the UK and US marketplace. This is something of an extended rant, primarily about three specific entities involved in an incident which is the basis of this entry of NUTS4R2. Let’s call them The Good, The Bad and The Ugly... but I will also name them, right now!

So we have The Ugly, being Arrow Films, who have made some mistakes over the years but always (for the most part) try to fix them. Then there’s The Bad, aka the usually very helpful amazon.co.uk, who are usually really good at customer service and a very approachable organisation. I spend a lot of money with them every year... especially at Christmas time and on many birthdays. And then there’s The Good, the hero of the hour if you like, aka diabolikdvd.com... who you will also hear more of a little later.

Okay... so I said this would be a long one but, like a Tarkovsky or Bergman movie, the long lead in always makes for a more powerful ending, right? I hope. Anyway, so what I’m going to do is start with two flashbacks, to give a demonstration to the way two of these companies have behaved in the past.

So, by no means the main villains of this piece but this is relevant I think, lets go back to Fopp Records, some years ago now. I can’t remember exactly when this was but it must have been a year or two before the pandemic. The great Arrow Films... and they are great, despite the constant technical problems they are apparently plagued with and the ‘money for old rope’ nature of some of their re-releases... announced for pre-order a Blu Ray box of Mario Bava films. Now, it’s not got as many films in it as the two US DVD Bava boxes that Anchor Bay released back in the day but, if there’s a director whose films you want to upgrade to Blu Ray then, surely, Bava must fit the bill with his beautiful shot compositions and use of bright colours. So I went to Fopp Records near Covent Garden, put a cash deposit down and pre-ordered the box set. Because a pre-order means you buy a copy in advance so as not to miss out if it sells out right? Or so I have always thought (otherwise what’s the point of them?). So I went to Fopp on the day the set was due to be released only to find that, the sets had sold out before the physical stores could get the copies they ordered. I wasn’t best pleased and, while Arrow themselves had no copies left either, I immediately got on my phone and ordered what turned out to be one of the very last copies Amazon.co.uk had in stock. And, success, it arrived. Job done, by the skin of my teeth. Although I wasn’t very impressed that Fopp (and I’m sure many other retail outlets) had been left in the cold with a queue of disappointed customers who had also pre-ordered the set from them.

Okay, so my takeaway was... maybe if I wanted something this badly, I should just pre-order direct from Arrow and so, this is what I was doing for a time. And it was great because they give reward points every time you shop so I managed to get a few free films off of them too. All was good until the incident that leads me into...

Flashback number two. Sometime during the pandemic lock down, UK location undisclosed...

One day the postman brought me a completely flat-packed, sealed cardboard box... well it wasn’t a box because it was still flat, despite having the cardboard strip to unwrap it still intact. I opened it and, unsurprisingly given the appearance of said object, there was absolutely nothing inside.  I had a few things on order so I emailed a few companies who I thought it could be before, eventually, finding the phone number of the company on the address label via the internet and giving them a call (after a couple of days of attempts they finally answered). I found myself talking to the manager of a packaging and fulfilment centre who told me the package would have come from Arrow films. Okay, so that narrowed it down to one thing at the time, the pre-order of their Yokai Monsters boxed edition (you can find my reviews of the four films here, here, here and here) which I desperately wanted to see as, to the best of my knowledge, they’d not been released in this country before.

So I got onto Arrow who... really did not do well at sorting this out. They said it was nothing to do with them (possibly true given the box was sealed) and eventually suggested I fill a form out at the post office if the postman had stolen an item. Again, it was a sealed, flat  piece of card... so if anything was stolen, it would have been by one of the workers at the distribution centre they were using, surely? It took me to ‘offer’ to write about the whole experience on my blog for Arrow to finally replace (I use the term replace fairly loosely) the Yokai Monsters boxed set. So hoorah but, lesson learned. I never, to my knowledge, ordered anything directly from Arrow films again... despite their rewards points being very enticing.

Okay... bang up to date and now onto the main story. Thanks to those of you who have stuck with me and made it through this far...

Sometime in the third quarter of last year, Arrow announced pre-orders for a complete Coffin Joe Blu Ray set entitled, Inside The Mind Of Coffin Joe. Essentially a more complete and somehow even more beautiful package than the Platform Entertainment DVD box set a decade or so before. So, having learned from my mistaken trust with both Fopp and Arrow, I mistakenly pre-ordered it from Amazon.co.uk (the real villains of this piece) on 29th September 2023, with an expected delivery date of 4th December 2023. And that was that... or so I thought.

The first sign that there would be any trouble was when somebody, it might well have been Arrow themselves, posted on Twitter that one of the films on the third disc in the set was faulty in that the English subtitles cut out after half an hour. Now I’ve had Blu Rays from Arrow before with similar kinds of errors where either something didn’t work or it was the wrong cut or an advertised extra was accidentally left off. And, sure, it’s sloppy quality control but, to their credit, they always followed it up with a general repressing and disc replacement scheme for all those affected by this. Which, to be fair, is what they did this time around. I just figured it would eventually filter through to Amazon and they’d delay the, already significantly delayed delivery date while they waited for a replacement disc.

However, and here’s where things take an almost sinister twist... a few days later, maybe a week, Amazon emailed me to inform me the order had been cancelled completely. No reason was given. Which is crazy right? Like I said earlier, a PRE-order is what you do to guarantee a copy because you think the discs might sell out. It’s an agreement between you and a company that the product will make its way to you. So I did what I usually do... I went on to Amazon to find it in my order history so I could contact them. Here’s the thing though... and I’ve never heard of Amazon doing this before... they didn’t just cancel my order... they erased it. It was actually deleted from my order history completely. I’d never heard of this happening, even when I’ve had the occasional order cancelled. They were just making it as hard as they could for me and the gazillions of other people who had ordered the Coffin Joe box set from them to complain about it.

I didn’t let that deter me... too many important films were on the line... I found a way to eventually bypass it (after all, I still had the order number in my original email) and got them on the phone. I explained to the guy why this had happened and he told me to wait while he found out. His answer was... the order’s been cancelled.  

Not what I asked, I explained, I wanted to know why it’s been cancelled when a pre-order is supposed to be a guarantee, as far as I knew, that the order would eventually be here. I didn’t care how long I had to wait for the product, I didn’t want my order cancelled. There was another long wait while he again talked to his line manager and when he eventually returned it was with the news that... um... my order had been cancelled. What the heck? Again I explained to him that I already knew this and so I enlightened him once more as to what the issue was with Arrow and how I’m sure there would be a replacement disc coming at some point. So he put me on hold again for a while more and talked to his line manager once more and, you know what he said? He said my order had been cancelled. Yup, I said. I am aware. It’s not just been cancelled it’s been erased. Did I need to get a Delorean, go back in time and take actions to stop my order being erased from history? I asked to speak to his manager. Oh certainly sir, was the reply. He transferred the call only for his manager at Amazon to deliberately hang up without saying a word to me, ending both the call and any trust I’d built up with Amazon over the past few decades.

Okay...meanwhile, I’d done some asking around. At a film fair I went to, one supplier hadn’t even received his shipment of Coffin Joe boxes. Another had received his own personal copy but he was still awaiting a replacement disc for their last release which was wrongly pressed, let alone getting a replacement disc for this. And, when I was buying some stuff from Fopp (just so I can write about cool stuff for my lovely readers) I casually asked about the Coffin Joe box to be met with a tirade of... well let’s not say swearing, this is a family blog, but met with a tirade of negative energy against Arrow who have ‘pulled this stuff’ one too many times. Apparently there are a lot more instances of this happening with this company than I realised (and again, to their credit, Arrow always did something about this). It’s fair to say though that the general perception of the company from the people who shift their product for them is not particularly glowing, it turns out.

Okay... enter the hero of the hour... @Diabolikdvd. A brief exchange on the Twitternet with this US based speciality store convinced me to get one of the faulty copies as soon as I could because it was selling out fast and wouldn’t be reissued (it has been reissued and gone on for resale on both Arrow and Amazon, it turns out, but that information was emphatically not what was being said at the time so that’s not Diabolik’s fault). So, having at least being refunded the money from Amazon (I’d purchased those with vouchers so redirected those to grabbing the third volume of Shout Factory’s Shaw Bros boxed sets), I ordered one from Diabolik in the US (for a heck of a lot more money than the UK version, what with all the postage... again, not the fault of the supplier) and it arrived in around a week. Good service and I shall consider ordering from them more than I do already when it comes to new releases, I think.

I won’t dwell on the various claims from FedEx* trying to get taxes for the shipment both before and after they delivered it, when Diabolik had made clear that it was all pre-paid up front as part of the price... I looked on the internet and it seems FedEx have been doing this to a lot to people lately, incorrectly, for whatever reason. So I then put in a claim to Arrow who... after literally four emails worth of toing and froing about their disc replacement scheme and a further follow up last week (by the time you read this blog post) when I queried why some people had received them but I still hadn’t... finally sent me a replacement disc yesterday (again, just under a week before this blog post is published). I haven’t checked this yet... I’m almost afraid to. The replacement disc has the UK certification on it over the same disc artwork as the US version I got but I’m assured by all and sundry that this is only a cosmetic difference and that the content is exactly the same.

So there you are, after six months of stress about this title, I finally have the whole thing. But, I’m understandably, I think, not very happy with Amazon at all about all of this trouble. And so, I’ll leave the reader with the same question I pitched earlier, because I think this is the long term take away from all this... apart from not trusting Amazon again. And it’s this...

Is a pre-order of a physical item supposed to be a way of guaranteeing you get a copy before they sell out? And, if not, then what the heck is the point of having a pre-ordering system anyway, if it doesn’t benefit the customer? Food for thought.

Meanwhile... if you have a multizone Blu Ray player then https://diabolikdvd.com/ is worth investigating, for sure.

 *A few days after writing this, FedEx sent me another letter threatening legal action, for the sake of £22.24 they thought I owed them. I have now, finally, been able to contact FedEx and settled that matter once and for all.

2400th Blog - Boutique Label Blues

A Funny Thing
Happened To Me
On The Way To
The Boutique
Blu Ray Label...

My 2400th Blog Post

Okay, for my 2400th blog I thought I’d have another little rant about one of the hobbies I hold dear to my heart... physical media. Not limited to but, for the sake of this mini article... Blu Ray movies. And, more specifically, the boutique labels which, to be honest, are the only thing which makes the world of physical releases a joy to invest in. Now regular readers must surely realise how much I enjoy and admire the products of boutique labels like Criterion, Severin, Vinegar Syndrome, Arrow, 88 Films and a whole host of others bringing out lovingly restored movies, many rescued from obscurity and given the kind of life they always deserved coming in from the cinematic wilderness. So please believe me when I say that none of what follows is a dig at any of these labels and the problems that I see in no way tarnish the wonderful reputation and good work that these and many other independent companies are doing.

However, there are two big negatives I’ve been thinking about lately and which I shall be getting into in a minute but, they both stem from/are symptoms of... the same issue, it seems to me. That issue is that, as the internet increases its grip over the world, whether we happen to like ot or not, we are living in a global community and, certainly many film fans are happy to embrace that pleasant state. And, as a British guy who is sick of seeing certain kinds of films censored in my own country, buying from global sources either because they have the best option or are, quite often these days, the only game in town... makes much more sense. A film lover in the UK probably would be in a lot of trouble if multi-zone Blu Ray machines were unavailable but, as it happens, they’re relatively cheap and easy to acquire and, humongous shipping rates of recent times aside (I used to be able to buy a US DVD of a film before it hit our cinemas for a much cheaper price than I would have been charged by my own country a year or so down the line), they open up the global market for everyone. However, the boutique Blu Ray labels of various countries (the UK and US especially included), either don’t seem to realise this, don’t want to lose a licensing deal or... you know... maybe they don’t care.

So what we have... and this is the unfortunate part... is wonderful labels such as those mentioned above releasing a film in ‘the best possible version’ and then, some months or even a year later, another label from another country releasing their edition of the movie in, you know, ‘the best possible version’. Sometimes it will be different masters of a film and sometimes it will be the same transfer with the other label’s credits showing up on the end title of, say, a special feature. And to make matters worse, some of these will have the same special features, some will have different special features, some will have a mixture of both and others will have a compelling extra such as a soundtrack CD of the score (often already released by another CD label in the past and in the exact same edition... yeah, that’s a similar grumble to what I’m talking about here).

So for the globally minded cinephile... and I don’t really know of any other kind among the physical media buyers I personally know...  if it’s a film they want then they will buy whichever label brings it out first, in whatever country that has to be. Unless, of course, they gamble and play the waiting game and take the chance that the first edition will be sold out before another version gets released, if it ever does. And it’s annoying as heck and I wish the labels would just liaise with each other and coordinate so we only have to have one version of a film coming out in the world within, say, a ten/twenty year period.

So films like Suspiria, Two Evil Eyes and the like all have a couple of different versions available (at least), all in slightly modified variants with alternate extras. And I’m sure it must be affecting each label’s sales negatively because, more than likely, most people will only buy the first one on their radar and give a hard pass to the next one down the line. I only want to end up with one version guys! As I write these words (I’m guessing you’ll be reading them a few weeks later), the BFI have released a formerly hard to see Elisabeth Taylor film on Blu Ray called The Driver’s Seat. I would possibly have been enticed to buy this if, as it happens, I hadn’t already bought the same movie earlier this year (or it may have been late last year) in what I suspect is a much more ‘bells and whistles’ release from the US under it’s other title, Identikit, as part of Severin’s House Of Psychotic Women Rarities Blu Ray set. So I really don’t need to buy the new one (and won’t... for all I know it’s exactly the same transfer too). No longer a rarity then, I guess.

And don’t get me started on the masterful giallo from Dario Argento, Four Flies On Grey Velvet. This used to be absolutely impossible to see at one point and I have bought a few ‘improved’ bootlegs over the years, until it finally started getting official releases, all with a little more footage or in a much better scan as each one came out. This culminated for me last year on purchasing what I think may be my seventh version of the film, in a very limited ‘one week on sale only’ edition of it from Severin Films which includes, wouldn’t you know it, an additional hitherto unseen cut of the film. Okay, it was worth it then if you like the film but... wow... the UK label Cult Films just reissued their ‘better subtitles’ version of the film, which I suspect is more or less the same one their sister label Shameless issued a year or two before. Except this time its in a box of four Argento films comprising this and... three other Argento movies which have been out numerous times in the UK... including from this same label sometimes. Who the heck is going to bother to buy this set unless they’re a complete newcomer to this director’s works? It’s crazy.

At the other end of the spectrum, when 88 Films released A Black Veil For Lisa in a limited edition (now reissued as... um... a non limited edition), it only included the English cut of the film which, I knew from reading around, was not the best version. The full Italian cut is out in Italy but without the English subtilties. Luckily I already had a bootleg with both versions on it and, when I saw how different the Italian version is (and much more in keeping with the traditional cinematic interpretation of the genre... black glove killer included in a few shots of that version) and the different ending, which made a mockery somewhat of what one of the experts on the set was saying about the film (I hope that wasn’t deliberate and they’d just not seen the proper Italian version), then it means I am now chomping at the bit for a company to actually release a correct version of the movie on Blu Ray, rather than the one we’re stuck with at present. Similarly, 88 Films edition of Prozzie turned out to be 'not the complete version' and I had to re-acquire this one under another title, Olivia, in uncut form from Vinegar Syndrome in the US. It’s ridiculous guys... we just wanted one version and... we wanted the right version.

Arrow Films have been doing a lot of this unnecessary ‘lets add a new extra and repackage it’  malarky lately too. Their recent slew of ‘Essential Giallo’ boxed editions are almost exclusively anything but essential. These are boxes of gialli, with different colour themed packaging per box but, guess what? All but one of these boxes are just repackages of other releases still on sale from the same company in individual units. There’s just one edition to date, the Black edition, which actually had all the gialli included as premiere releases in this country (and possibly any English speaking country). I bet I know which one of their box sets sold the most units. Tellingly, the Black edition seems to have disappeared very quickly from physical shop shelves. I guess that did well for them but, if it did then they didn’t learn much from the experience, being as the next two ‘Essentials’ releases were ‘new money for old rope’ editions once again.

Okay, so there we have the two problems.. companies issuing similar or identical versions at the same time and companies repackaging the same versions and pretending it’s something shiny and new (most film fans would not fall for that tactic, I’m sure). I don’t want this rant to go on forever and so I’ll just leave it at that for now. I do love all these boutique labels but, they need to start talking to each other... I’m sure they’d get more sales by releasing products that like-minded labels are not also releasing around the same time (make that decade). Especially when there are thousands of movies out there which haven’t been issued even once yet... let alone their eighth time. For example, a number of times when Severin have announced titles like Blood For Dracula, Vinegar Syndrome have released a complementary title around the same time such as Flesh For Frankenstein. So one feeds into the other with increased sales for both, is my guess.

One last reminder though... if we didn’t have these kinds of labels at least making the effort and, in some cases, pouring a lot of love into their work, then the physical media landscape would be disappearing a lot faster than it already is. These labels are doing startling work and they need your support... just be carful which editions you go for. Buyer beware.

The Boxer From Shantung

Everybody Was
Shantung Fight Win

The Boxer
From Shantung
aka Ma Yong Zhen
Hong Kong 1972
Directed by Cheh Chang & Hsueh-Li Pao
Shaw Brothers/Celestial Pictures
Arrow Blu Ray Zone B

Warning: Spoilers aplenty.

Another Shaw Production then... as the end credits often said.

The Boxer From Shantung is another blistering classic which I’ve not seen before but, it’s a pretty good slice of action mayhem, it has to be said. Kuan Tai Chen, in his acting debut, plays real life character Ma Yongzhen... a person who has been portrayed a lot of times in various movies (some of which I’ll someday get to see, I’m sure)... although I understand the story is only very loosely based on him, which probably differs from production to production.

In this one, Ma is a drifter who has left Shantung with his brother (or possibly best friend, depends what they mean by ‘brother’ in these kinds of movies) to try and find gainful employment in Shanghai, only to be living the life of a tramp, struggling to find what work he can. He does, however, have practically unbeatable Kung Fu skills which he’s somehow managed to acquire over the years (notice I didn’t mention anything about boxing skills again... I don’t want to harp on about it but this is yet another Shaw Brothers movie that mentions a boxer without actually having one... I’m guessing the concept of a boxer is completely different in Hong Kong).

During the course of the first 20 minutes or so, Ma manages to demonstrate his kung fu skills when he has an altercation with one of the local gang bosses and, when he comes to blows with said boss, the two come out of it having won a mutual respect for each other. However, Ma takes no rewards for any of the favours he does for people (including becoming embroiled in a fight at a local tea house where he meets a woman who takes his romantic interest, sadly unfulfilled due to the strange arc the story takes) and just wants to make his own way... for a little while at least. Once again my Western thinking brain may be the problem here but the story now goes in a completely different direction to that which I thought it would take. That being said, it certainly reminds me of the kind of bleak, ‘crime sometimes pays up until a point’ US gangster movies of the 1930s starring the likes of Jimmy Cagney and Humphrey Bogart, to be sure.

After a while, following a big ‘knock him down and win twenty dollars’ fight with a massive Italian fighter (which took 5 days to shoot), he doesn’t turn down the reward of owning a small part of the local territory... nor the protection racket money it brings in. It isn’t long before he’s well on his way up as a local gangster but, as is evidenced by his method, he doesn’t let his men beat anyone up for money as he remembers what it’s like to be poor so... yeah... he’s kind of the good guy gangster. However, a much worse mobster is trying to take over all of Shanghai and when he kills the other gangster that Ma looked up to at the start of the movie, things get real. And when I say real, I mean far from real but very athletic with bloody kung fu fighting featuring bashing fists, harbinger hatchets of bloody carnage and slicing, wooshy daggers that make the foley a joy to listen to.

It’s nicely shot too, including some nice colour palettes which shift to different tonal variations and some interesting camerawork, some of which uses a movement, followed by a zoom in on a detail... followed by a movement off from that zoomed location to go pick up another highlight of a scene. It’s edited in a way that it all makes sense and there’s some nice close ups of twitchy, angried up faces held for long periods as anti-heroes and villains trade scowls and work their facial muscles due to, I suspect, somebody watching far too many Leone movies.

Then there’s the final showdown in a tea house which took another ten days to shoot (out of a gruelling 30 day schedule where one director shot day scenes and the other the night scenes). The fight starts off with Ma, who hasn’t got a scratch on him in any fight preceeding this one, immediately taking an axe to his guts, which he leaves in there for half the fight (which takes up most of the last half an hour of the film... which Arrow and Celestial Pictures between them have thankfully made available in its original two and a quarter hour length cut). And yes, he still manages to take on 50 or more combatants and kill them all before perishing himself, after doing his best Samson and Delilah impression and literally smashing through a column to bring the floor above him down, levelling up the playing field to give him access to the last in a long, hierarchical chain of increasingly important villains.

And it’s quite obvious Tarantino must have watched this film quite a bit because, yeah, it’s very similar in both style and impact to his infamous House Of Blue Leaves sequence from the end of Kill Bill Volume One. That being said, compared to the fighting scenes in the eight Taiwanese Kung Fu movies in the Eureka Masters Of Cinema Cinematic Vengeance boxed set I watched earlier last year, the fights I’m seeing in the Shaw Brothers movies, while immaculately edited and sporting high production values... do seem a bit low energy and slower paced to the ones I’ve seen in the Joseph Kuo movies.

However, the fights in this one are still quite brutal bloody ballets of kinetic energy and are more than entertaining for what they are. The Boxer From Shantung is an absolutely brilliant chop socky movie which was extremely successful (there were a fair few bootleg sequels knocked out by other companies very quickly, by the sounds of it) and certainly influential. I really enjoyed this one and am looking forward to exploring some more films from the excellent ShawScope Volume One box set from Arrow soon. This is good stuff.

Spook Warfare

Kappa-nese Action

Spook Warfare
aka Yōkai daisensô
aka The Great Yōkai War
Japan 1968 Directed by Yoshiyuki Kuroda
Daiei Blu Ray Zone B
From Arrow’s Yōkai Monster Collection Blu Ray set

Spook Warfare, also known as The Great Yōkai War... which is also the name of the partial reboot of this movie made decades later... is the second film of the original Yōkai monsters trilogy, again from 1968 but with a different director. And it’s a very different feel to the first movie in that a) it’s much more focused as one story, rather than two different character factions trying to solve the same problem, as in the first film and b) it feels much more comical in its execution. This second thing is interesting because, like a few of the Godzilla films where child heroes are pitched in with magazines showing ‘page 3 girls’, the Yōkai monsters films seemed to be perceived by a modern Western audience, from what I can make out, as children’s films. Well, I don’t know about that...

Yes, the monsters in this are much more friendly and helpful to the innocent, human victims in the movie but, there’s quite a bit of eye gouging and splashes of blood thrown about in this one which logically tells me that the ‘child-friendly’ angle is a bit of a misconception. Indeed, the UK release of this one by Arrow, as part of their four film Blu Ray Yōkai Monster Collection, carries a 15 rating. So I feel somewhat confused that a modern reviewer on the IMDB (no, I couldn’t bring myself to read the whole review... and I generally don’t read other people’s reviews of a movie before writing my own for fear of being somehow ‘infected’ with their words and viewpoint, anyway) starts off the review saying that he is not the target audience, these are kids films.

Hey ho... anyway, this does have a somewhat lighter tone than the previous film and starts off when two archaeologists accidentally unleash an Ancient Babylonian demon, Daimon, who quickly makes his way to Edo Period Japan and bites a previously benevolent magistrate on the neck like a vampire. What this basically does is inject the magistrate with the demon, who carries on disguised as the magistrate.. but as the totally bad guy version of him (we know he’s bad straight away when he slices the family dog up with his samurai sword). He basically drinks the blood of his bewildered servants to keep himself going and also injects clone demons of himself, with equal powers, into some of them.

However a kappa, water spirit (not looking completely unlike the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles of a couple of decades later) who haunts the magistrates grounds, is ejected by the demon so he goes into the forest and rounds up as many of his Yōkai friends as he can to attack the demon. Well they take a couple of goes at it but, after most of them are accidentally trapped inside a bottle by a magical inscription, they call on even more Japanese apparitions to help them, when they are eventually freed. And they help the poor humans to defeat the Babylonian demon and his clones because, as they point out, they don’t want a foreign demon running around and causing evil chaos as it would give Japanese apparitions a bad name.

Many of the Yōkai monsters are back from the first film, including two of my favourites the Rokurokubi (telescopic neck woman) and Karakasa Obake (the playful, hopping on one leg, tongue dangling umbrella demon). Alas, the big, bear cyclops Tsuchikorobi is not in this one but, also absent is Kuchisake-onna, the giant headed incarnation of the slit-faced woman. I can see why she’s absent in this one though since, as I said, the film is much lighter and comedic tonally, so she might have been a little too sinister to include this time around.

There are no real striking shot compositions that I can particularly recall standing out but there is some nice, hand held and moving camera stuff when the buddhist monk who is trying to expel Daimon is shot in a much more dynamic fashion and lit with reds and oranges, presumably to add visual interest to what would be, otherwise, a pretty boring instance of a guy sitting down and chanting.

The film flows along in a much more coherent fashion that the previous entry in the series and you never once feel like the elements of this story could ever have been transposed with a standard chambara of the time, which was a problem with the previous one, which might just as well have been labelled Zatoichi VS The Demon or Sleepy Eyes Of Death Meets The Yōkai.

One of the highlights of this one would be a moment when, after Rokurokubi uses her growing neck to surround Daimon like a boa constrictor, I thought to myself, careful lady, he’ll tie a knot in your neck if you’re not careful. Sure enough, he does just this! Secondly, I finally got to see a real use for the Karakasa Obake, as a Yōkai new to this film (and who looks startlingly similar to some early sketches of the design for Yoda when The Empire Strikes Back was being made, if I’m not much mistaken) uses him as a proper, expanded umbrella to float up to the head of the giant version of Daimon so it can get close enough to stab him in the eye.

I have to say that, although this is not as quirky, in some ways, as the first film 100 Monsters (reviewed by me here) I think that overall I prefer this movie, although the constant engagement of the various Yōkai and, indeed, having them as the main, driving force of the movie tends to make them less special than when they were used more sparingly.

If you’re like me then this kind of cinematic genre is unmissable and I’d certainly recommend Spook Warfare to any scholar of 1960s Japanese cinema. It’s pretty entertaining and you even, thanks to Kappa, begin to feel almost emotionally attached to the various Yōkai and their plight. Once again, thanks to Arrow for putting out such a wonderful boxed edition of these movies.

Gamera VS Deep-Sea Monster Zigra

Zigra Follies

Gamera VS
Deep-Sea Monster Zigra
aka Gamera tai Shinkai kaijû Jigura
aka Gamera VS Zigra
Japan 1971 Directed by Noriaki Yuasa
Daiei/Arrow
Gamera Complete Collection Blu Ray Zone B

Okay... so I’ve watched the six previous films in the Gamera series so far, all twelve of which are part of the fantastic Gamera - The Complete Collection Blu Ray boxed edition from Arrow Films. And up until now I’ve been pretty impressed by them all. Well, it was bound to happen but, I have to say that Gamera VS Deep-Sea Monster Zigra is an absolutely terrible film. But, as I found out after I watched it (and pretty much suspected all the way through, since it’s pretty obvious what the main issue with this movie is), there’s a very good reason as to why this one’s so terrible and, in some ways, we should maybe be grateful that this at least finished up with a comprehensible story.

It starts off with a pre-credits sequence establishing to the audience that by now the Japanese are so advanced with their technology that they have set up a base on the moon. We then see a spaceship from another planet blow up that moonbase and ‘displace’ a moon buggy... which really just looks like it’s been disintegrated but, amazingly, this moment does make some sense in terms of the plotting much later in the picture.

So, after the credits with the main Gamera song being sung again, we meet two dads and their respective son and daughter, who have stowed away on their little fishing boat. They then see the spacecraft that does so much damage at the start of the movie and it displaces their fishing boat to bring it inside the spacecraft. They meet Zigra’s human envoy as she shows them how powerful Zigra’s ‘completely unseen throughout the entire movie apart from one big monster fish’ alien race are. They’re here to conquer the Earth because they live in the sea and have polluted their own planet. So, in a theme shared with the fashion at the time (and again now, as it happens) and reflected in the same year’s other big kaiju eiga, Godzilla Vs Hedorah (aka Godzilla VS The Smog Monster, review coming soon), they come to Earth to stop us polluting our seas and to use them for themselves, while keeping the humans alive so they can eat them to survive.

Somehow the kids manage to lead their ‘fathers in a coma’ out of there and get their boat clear in a completely implausible and ‘against any credibility or logic’ manner, so that they can warn Earth’s military defence force, who are based in the local Marineworld for the rest of the movie because... well, that’s the thing...

We are already ten or twenty minutes into the movie and still no giant monster battles or anything. This is a slow movie and I honestly thought, after a while, that the opening ‘Gerry Anderson style’ exploding miniature moon base set was purely there to put a bit of action into the film before this long lead in. However, as the movie progressed and there were very few monster battles, I realised that the budget must have been miniscule. Indeed, when the human envoy of Zigra is sent to Marineworld to kill the kids, there’s a long and drawn out, somewhat comical (not entirely sure it was supposed to be) chase scene and, it was at this point that I was absolutely sure that this had been put in merely to pad the running time because they couldn’t afford the money to get more monsters fights into the mix (nor the time, as I later found out).

And, yeah, I was right. The director was now a hired gun, no longer on the payroll of Daeie studios... and was expected to put in all the overtime that a film like this required to make deadline for free, along with the crew. The budget was slashed right down on this one and not because the last movie wasn’t a success... it absolutely was... but because the studio was out of money and time. Hundreds of people had been made redundant prior to this and a crew member had even died from the stress of working for Daeie on this film. The studio filed for bankruptcy soon after so, the next Gamera film was also cancelled but, frankly, the lack of budget and adequate resources of people and time really show on this production.

So when we do get the first of two fights, where Gamera is beaten by Zigra and left for dead (which is beginning to become a formula for the dramatic impetus of these films now), it just looks cheap and almost like the battling monsters (Zigra has turned into a Goblin-shark style metal creature after Gamera destroys the spaceship) are just standing around waving their arms about and being unnecessarily vocal. It’s just kind of dull and, frankly, although the design of Zigra looks okay and on a level with previous foes, well... I just don’t see how you can make a giant monster battle feel so uninteresting, to be honest.

The key to freeing the people left comatose in the human envoy’s path is to interfere with their sonic harmony by yelling into a microphone thingy which translates it into the exact same sound waves which had rendered them into their helpless state. The same trick is tried on the space lady and, after a guy yells ‘Ha Ha Ha’ into the mike, she drops down on the floor and reverts to a moon geologist who was apparently in the moon buggy at the start of the picture. Gosh, this begs the question of just what one verse of Little Brown Jug might have done to Zigra’s alien control.

And the special effects, which had been going downhill since the absolutely stunning work on the second movie, Great Monster Duel: Gamera VS Barugon (reviewed here), are really not of a standard I would have expected a studio to let out of the gate to be honest. I mean, these films rely on stuff like back projecting the monsters behind the characters in some shots, to wed the humans and the effects work. Here, however, the back projection screen showing the giant shark fin coming towards the boat in the water, or Gamera’s head as he carries the boat to safety, is actually made up of highly visible, vertical slats which you can clearly see breaking up the image all over the screen. I mean, what were they thinking?

The only thing in this film which is of note, is a cute moment after Gamera has defeated Zigra. The antagonist is lying on the ground with his five big shark fins standing up. Gamera hits one with a rock and notices that if he hits each one in turn they produce different tones. So he then proceeds to play the Gamera theme on Zigras back as if it was a xylophone. But, honestly, this is the only cool bit in the entire movie. And it’s a shame that, after such a successful run of really groovy, giant flying turtle movies, this last one for nine years is such a terrible swan song for the original version of the character.

And that’s me done with Gamera VS Deep-Sea Monster Zigra. Its not a movie I can recommend in any way, shape or form and, it’s not one I’d choose to go back to unless I was watching the entire series of movies again. However, as we will see... this was not the end of Gamera. And I just hope the next one is better than this because, I can’t see how it could be much worse.

Gamera - The Giant Monster

Turtley Awesome!

Gamera - The Giant Monster
(aka Daikaijû Gamera &
Gammera The Invincible)
Japan 1965 Directed by Noriaki Yuasa
Daiei/Arrow Films Blu Ray Zone B

First there was Nezura! A movie about a deluge of oversized rats attacking Japan.

Or, rather, first there wasn’t Nezura! Because the huge horde of real life rats used on the miniature models not very far into shooting were infested with fleas and maggots and production was apparently shut down by the health and safety people. But there was still money left over from the project and Daiei studios, who were behind the successful series of Zatoichi films at the time, were going to be the first studio to try and take on Toho Studios at their own game... namely, the first studio other than Toho to make a large scale monster movie (kaiju eiga) in the wake of Toho’s 1954 Godzilla and its various sequels or other monster movies. And so, Gamera was born. The first of what would eventually be, over the decades, 12 films featuring this giant, fire breathing, flying turtle to date.

And I’d never seen any one of them but Arrow Films have just come to the rescue here with what is a truly beautiful box set of all the Gamera films restored for Blu Ray in a marketing move made, perhaps, to emulate the successful Criterion edition of the Godzilla - The Showa Era films box set from last year (and packaged in a similar way to their own wonderful Herchell Gordon Lewis boxed edition). This new Gamera - The Complete Collection set is a true behemoth of an oversized box set including a hardback reprint of various Gamera comics too and a fairly interesting, soft bound book about the series of films. If you look carefully at the hardbound book which packages the discs, you’ll also find small artwork cards of each of the films (again, the brightly coloured illustrations are in a similar vein to the ones found in the Criterion Godzilla set) and also a map in a pocket on the inside front cover of ‘Gamera’s Japan’, double sided in English and Japanese versions. It’s a truly lovely package but... what about the films?

Well, I’ve only seen this one so far but I have to say that, as an admirer of the Godzilla films, I was truly impressed with just how brilliant the first movie in this series is. It’s the only one in black and white because, well, the budget wasn’t all that but, the ‘almost novice’ director took on the huge challenge of making the movie when all the other directors at the studio took a pass and went through a chaotic and difficult shoot to make... one of the best kaiju eiga I’ve ever seen, for sure.

The film starts off with researchers in Iceland and three of the main characters, Dr. Hidaka played by Eiji Funakoshi, his assistant and a reporter... spot some mysterious and sleek planes in the sky. In the American recut (which I’ll get to later), they are named as Russian planes but in this, far superior Japanese original version, they are unnamed. This, however, doesn’t stop the Americas from blasting one of them out of the sky and the atomic bomb on board detonates in the ice. Like many an Eastern monster movie, this man-made incident awakens an age old beast from his hibernation and, before you know it, Gamera the giant turtle has cracked out of the ice and goes on a, fairly docile for the most part, rampage when it somehow finds its way to Japan.

These early sequences are amazing and, on some scenes in a ship, the director even swings the camera around to capture the seesaw motion of the vessel (the more creative shots deleted from the American cut, for some reason). Also, apart from one hilariously bad line reading at the end of a scene, the American military as represented in the Japanese cut seem very naturalistic and authentic (the guy introducing the film in the Blu Ray set has a different opinion on that one, for sure). Everything felt quite real to me in those US scenes which were shot by the Japanese.

Once Gamera is out and about of his icy slumber, the opening credits play out on his scaly shell as he walks off towards Japan. We get a foreshadowing of, frankly, much more evil than we think may be coming when the Eskimos tell, in their warning to the Japanese doctor, that Gamera in their legends is ‘the devil’s envoy’.

I have to say the film looks great. Coupled with some very crisp, high contrasting black and white photography which made me think of the early films of Seijun Suzuki, we have some lovely shot designs in some of the movie, where the director might frame people within simultaneous diagonals and verticals made by poles and other foreground objects. Added to this are some really nice special effects works and miniatures. Not all the miniatures are convincing, for sure but, enough of them are well enough done to ensure that Gamera’s rampages look impressive and have consequence.

The film does all the expected Godzilla stuff where Gamera demonstrates his fiery breath and even fails to blink at high charged electricity wires but, he’s also got a little trick he pulls, once he’s been turned over onto his back and the Japanese military think they’ve won their battle. This is where he pulls his arms and head into his shell and fires jets out of the openings to turn it into a kind of flying saucer. A neat trick which, obviously, wasn’t a feature that Godzilla was armoured with. Also, although this is not a deliberate thing, his genetic make up also blocks radio signals in any area in which he is found... so that’s obviously useful to him.

There are also some grim moments here, even though Gamera does seem to be a completely inadvertent and reluctant antagonist. For instance, you do see him breathe his fiery breath onto a whole crowd of people... who we see ‘burn’ via that old ‘turn the image into a negative exposure’ trick that the early Doctor Who stories used to use whenever anyone was shot by a Dalek or some other aggressive enemy. This is something you don’t actually see Godzilla do in any of his early films (although it’s surely implied), to my knowledge, so this one does have a grittier edge to it, for sure.

However, that gritty edge is a little hamstrung by the fact that there’s a turtle obsessed kid called Toshio who thinks his former pet turtle has somehow grown into Gamera and he basically just runs into danger, risking his own life and everyone else’s, throughout the film. I think we’re supposed to be given a shot of hope for the future of humanity with the less than subtle insertion of this character but, honestly, he just seems like a hugely deluded, beyond stupid character presence, if you ask me.

Asides from this ‘meddling kid’, the only other thing which I think is a slight negative is the sound design. Every time something explodes in this film, which is quite often, it’s accompanied by the sound of a bullet ricochet. Seriously, this makes no sense and kind of gives the action sequences a bit of a surreal, possibly humorous quality when they really could do with just some hefty, rumbling bangs instead.

The ending is interesting on this one too. Not making the same mistake as Toho did on their first Godzilla film, Gamera is captured alive at the end and rocketed off to Mars. How this denouement continues in the future of the film series is unknown to me at time of writing this but I’ll let you know soon.

Like Godzilla and many of the other, earlier kaiju eiga, the film was given to the Americans and they cut a load of stuff and added a load of footage to make it into... well, let’s call it a totally different experience. The American version doubles up on the letter M in the title and this version is also made available as a bonus feature on the first of the Arrow Gamera discs, to give it the title of Gammera The Invincible.

The US cut adds lots of unwanted narration, includes a whole bunch of new ‘explanatory’ scenes to include American actors Dick O'Neill  and Brian (Quatermass) Donlevy (in much the same way that Raymond Burr was added into Godzilla - King Of The Monsters), changes just a few musical cues (not the whole lot this time, thankfully) and somehow transforms this slick and brilliant debut of the giant turtle into a slow, dull, lightweight version of the Japanese template. The role of the kid is cut down so he’s a little less prominent but, honestly, that’s the only possible improvement and it generally makes the movie hard to watch. Even the replacement military scenes seem to have less ‘oomph’ to them and it really destroys the icy cold atmosphere of the opening ten minutes of the movie.

Ultimately, though, this has to be one of my best blind buys for a while and this beautiful new boxed edition from Arrow is easily a big competitor with the recent Severin Al Adamson box set as, in my opinion, ‘Blu Ray release of the year’. I can’t wait to watch the other 11 films in the set spanning decades of Gamera films. Gamera The Giant Monster is absolutely an unmissable film if you are a fan of Godzilla and other assorted oversize creatures of Japanese cinematic history... and this turtle-y awesome Blu Ray set is definitely the way to go. I absolutely loved it.