Tuesday 22 March 2011

Rare worldweird video covers

WITCH WITH FLYING HEAD (Taiwan, 1982)
[Tai Seng VHS, USA]


[click scan for bigger size]

This must undoubtedly be one of the most rare Asian films and video tapes!

WITCH WITH FLYING HEAD isn't available ANYWHERE!!! There are no DVDs, no video-cd's, no laserdiscs, nothing but the faint memory of some very few long lost video releases. This is actually the only release that I'm aware of but a few years back I got some third hand hearsay info that there might have been a Vietnamese video release at some point. In any case, none of them had English subtitles I don't think and I'm not aware of any fan subbed versions.

And before you ask: No, I don't own this tape. I would sure love to! The scan comes courtesy of Jean-Claude Michel from Cinehound forum. And he doesn't own it either but was lucky to get a friend who owned it to make him a scan just before he himself sold it off again. Who knows where in the world this copy is now!? A while back I asked Pete Tombs of Mondo Macabro if this where a film they would consider for release and he said they'd love to but they couldn't find neither a print nor the copyright owners!!! O_O

So for now I'm certainly holding on to my dvd-r bootleg that looks like it was sourced from a 3'rd or 4'th generation video tape.

The film's entry on Hong Kong Movie Data Base.

3 comments:

  1. Hi,

    Just came across your site. I am now selling WITCH WITH THE FLYING HEAD on ebay. Tai Seng original tape:

    http://www.ebay.com/itm/271032718754?ssPageName=STRK:MESELX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1555.l2649#ht_500wt_1288

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  2. Hi there,

    That's very cool, thanks for the info, mate.

    But it seems you're ONLY selling to buyers in the US!! Argh. (i.e. no, I'm not in the US but across a big water!)

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  3. When I was ion college, I acquired a bootleg VHS copy. One of my friends knew Cantonese (but was illiterate in it--her father taught only the boys to read and write it), and I played part of it when she called me, and she thought it sounded Vietnamese. It was later suggested to me that it might be in Thai. We know a Thai version existed at one point because the poster Toombs shows in his book is in Thai.

    ReplyDelete