LA FEMME NIKITA, not the HK way, not the US way, not the telly way... the FILIPINO way!

BURADOR, ANG BABAING SUGO (Philippines, 2000)

 Trailer:

 

Check out this trailer; it's a remake of the French classic LA FEMME NIKITA from the Philippines!!! And it looks awesome! The Nikita character is played by Filipino actress January Isaac who starred in a bunch of action film from 1997 thru to 2004. EDIT (2021): I believe she lives in the US now.

I posted the trailer on my Filipino blog recently but it NEEDS to be posted here as well cos it's just too cool!! And, uh, also cos my extensive search for a copy of the film has brought me... nothing. I'm pretty sure it was only released on VHS and maybe there's a VCD in the Philippines. The trailer was uploaded by Dvdmaniacs member Robert who's located in the US and he tells me the trailer stems from a locally released tape (with a different film) that his parents rented many years ago.

Unfortunately, Robert doesn't have the film either. If any of you have a copy... well, you know in which direction to send a DVD-R (hint hint). Unfortunately, I have a feeling a copy isn't gonna turn up any day soon. Boo-hoo.
Got it!!!

EDIT: ARRGGGGHHHHHH!!!!! The uploader closed his account and I forgot to download the trailer!!! [and yes I'm kicking myself in the head] If anybody else has the trailer could you please upload it again. Cheers. 

EDIT NO. 2: Thanks (big thanks!) to a tip from an awesome reader the trailer is now here again A-N-D I even have the full film as well now (check link in comments' section)!!!  xD
- And this time I've made bloody well sure to download the trailer (and film) in case it disappears again!!!

EDIT NO. 3 (2021): Man, this is 11 (elleven!) years after I initially posted this trailer and now it's gone AGAIN! Alright, that's it! I'll upload it to this blog myself this time instead of linking to somebody else's upload!

Crazy Indonesia: Samson dan Delilah on DVD!!!

English export title: REVENGE OF SAMSON
French DVD/VHS title: LA REVANCHE DE SAMSON


How utterly awesome!! It's come to my attention (thanks to Kothar, another hardcore Indo film collector!) that Sisworo Gautama Putra's Indonesian movie SAMSON DAN DELILAH (1987) has been released on DVD in France! Actually, it seems it's been out a while and there are no less than two DVD releases and a VHS release! Gee, sometimes you think these world-weird films aren't available anywhere other than on Malay VCD and then they turn up on Euro DVD!

As I said, SAMSON DAN DELILAH is directed by Sisworo Gautama Putra who also did THE WARRIOR (aka Jaka Sembung), THE SNAKE QUEEN and SRIGALA. Check his filmography here (a much better film base for world-weird cinema than the bloody IMDb!!). I have never watched the film but I remember reading about it on Günter Müller's cool (and sadly long gone) site WEIRD ASIA. I think I might have his review on my old computer. I'll check and post it here if I do. According to the credits on CITWF the film stars none other than Indo horror queen Suzzanna! (from QUEEN OF BLACK MAGIC, SNAKE QUEEN, SUNDEL BOLONG (aka Ghost With Hole), and tons more Indo horror films).

The French title is La Revanche de Samson and you don't need fluency in French to figure out it reads "the revenge of Samson" in English. The DVD is available from eBay France and not surprisingly it's not English friendly. I don't know if it carries the original Indonesian audio.
EDIT: It doesn't.




Plot description translated by our friends at Google:

Samson, aged 11, sees his mother murdered by a soldier from the Netherlands. Now he feels an implacable hatred for the invaders in his heart. His grandfather sends him supernatural powers and makes him invulnerable. As an adult Samson is ready for revenge and no force can stop him. He survives the worst violence and the occult powers of his enemies. His actions win the sympathy of the people. Then the sumptuous Delilah decides to seduce him. Spells of love they have reason to Samson?

I tried to correct it somewhat but, uh, I think I'll just leave that last bit here. No idea what they mean. LOL.



Video-cd/Malaysia/fullscreen/Indonesian audio/no subs/cut by 6 minutes!

PS. About the DVD's format and cut status: My collector friend has informed me that the DVD is both widescreen and fully uncut! In fact it runs 6 minutes longer than the Malay VCD!

Thanks to Peter (Kothar) for all the info and the VCD cover scan!

Fellow WORLD-WEIRD blogs that fly under the radar but that you OUGHT to know about!!!

Kult Eye Bleeder went on air just over a week ago and it's already amongst the ones I check every day. And to a Filipino & Indo film aficionado it's definitely a welcome read! The writer is probably gonna include films from other territories as well but so far it's been a cool world-weird ride all the way.

What I really like about this blog writer is his ability to combine enthusiastic reviews with useful info and keeping it short! If I had a dime (or Daim if you're in Scandinavia, lol) for every time I've come across a review and the writer didn't even bother to mention who the bloody hell the director is, or who the lead actors are, or even which country the damn film was made in then... I would have a lot of dimes!

And sometimes overly enthusiastic reviewers keep going for miles on end. You'll get plot descriptions that are easily two or three times as long as the original screenplay! Please reviewers, you don't need to let us know every little detail. Godzilla took a step forward, then another one, then yet another one, and one more. He looked at King Ghidorah. King Ghidorah looked back. Then King Ghidorah also took a step forward. And another one. And one more. He looked at Godzilla. Then they began to fight. You get the point. And the Kult Eye Bleeder guy seems to know and understand this (okay, he forgets the director's name a few times but, hey, all beginnings are difficult, LOL). I hope he keeps the blog afloat, there's enough dead blogs floating in (Cyber) space already! Highly recommended. Go it out here.


[Credit where credit is due: Yes, the Godzilla example is inspired by a similar one in an ish of OC]

Picking up Chinese film flyers in Melbourne's Chinatown, 1991-96

Due to a long-term relationship I lived in Melbourne (Australia) on and off from 1991-96. I had already discovered the wonders of Hong Kong cinema when I lived in London in the late 80s to '91 so I'd often go to see HK movies at the Chinese cinemas in Melbourne.

Every week the cinemas would put out cheap "two-tone" coloured flyers that you could pick up and needless to say I tried to collect them all. Unfortunately, most of mine are long gone by now but the one I probably remember the most is this one that I'm using in this post.

The funny thing is that this isn't a scan of my own copy but a scan made by someone else who also went to the same cinemas in Melbourne during the same period. The funny (i.e. funny weird) thing is that we never met. Well, actually we most likely did but I guess we never had a reason to speak to get into a conversation (other than maybe "hey mate you're a Gwilo too, ay". LOL). However we would "meet" many years later. Read on.

Mind you, we were easy to spot in those days as we would have been some of the very few white guys there. This may be hard to imagine to fans of Asian cinema in 2010 but 20 years ago these films were only beginning to get discovered by fans outside of Asia. And by "fans" I don't mean fans of mainstream or arthouse cinema but hardcore horror and splatter movie fans who would be reading photocopied fanzines and trying to seek out new movies to deliver the guts and gore. If you're 20 years old you might think I'm trying to pull your leg but believe it or not but we didn't actually have access to computers or the Internet as we do nowadays. I know, sounds wild! It was a different world back then.

The same actually goes for animé; What many people forget these days (or don't know) is that in 1990 these Japanese cartoons weren't discovered by little 13 y.o. nerdy fanboys but by fans who lived on a steady diet of RE-ANIMATOR and TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE PART II type films, and these fans kept trying to seek out new thrills. Well, they (i.e. WE) sure found them.

Many years later after I'd left Melbourne someone left a comment on my other blog in regards to a post about a John Woo film and although he didn't say who he was I recognised him right away as a reviewer named Mark Savage from an Aussie film fanzine called Fatal Visions. I used to buy the mag and remembered him clearly because he used to do a regular section on HK cinema. With each new ish I'd always flick quickly thru the pages and read (devour) that section right away! LOL. Later he also became a film director in his own right but that's not really important in this regard.
- And incidentally this was the very same guy that I never got to meet in the darkness of the Melbourne Chinatown cinemas!

It's weird to think that we could have the same hardcore interest in HK's new wave cinema, and we could go to the same movies for 6 yrs, and yet we wouldn't meet until 13 years later when he's in the US and I'm in Scandinavia and it happens on-line! Hah! I remember writing to him saying it was a pity we never met back then and he said "sure is". Life is weird sometimes, just like the films on this blog, LOL.

Go to Mark's blog for more flyers.

TNT JACKSON finally getting a proper dvd release!

[click cover scan for full size]

Brilliant news!! The last couple of days I've been asking around to see if there's a proper DVD release of Cirio H. Santiago's TNT JACKSON from 1974 available anywhere. The film is a Filipino/American co-production with Roger Corman's company, and it stars renowned Oxford trained character actress Jeannie Bell in the lead (alright-alright, her training was from being a Playboy Playmate but that's even better, lol).

Santiago liked the film so much that he later remade it not once but twice (as Firecracker aka Naked Fist in 1981, and Angelfist in '92)! There are about (at least) 10 different DVD releases of the film in the US but they're all public domain releases and they certainly look like public domain. They look like ass. My old Danish ex-rental VHS looks heaps better. The cover on this page is from the sell-thru release but they're almost identical.

Anyway, the news from today is that Cliff Mac and his cool Shout label are putting TNT JACKSON out next year on DVD with another Cirio H. Santiago film called SAVAGE!!! Great news or what! I have no idea if there's any DVD releases of SAVAGE but I wouldn't be surprised if there's only similar multo crappy public domain shit available. Obviously, I have the film on Danish ex-rental VHS, haha (thanks heaps to Diabolik/Hans-Jørgen!).

I couldn't find a trailer on YouTube so here's a bit from the film. You don't need to watch it all just check a couple of minutes. The entire film is on YouTube's film upload channel but it's the same crappy DVD version that probably would make any grindhouse cinema proud. Awful picture, awful sound, jumpy print at reel ends, the lot. Wait for the new DVD or get a copy of (or off) a video tape.

Jeannie Bell was also in Santiago's THE MUTHERS and a few more film and TV things like "Ironside" and ""Kolchak: The Night Stalker". I have no idea what she's up to these days.

Ohh, Yukari!!

Someone in Japan uploaded a bunch of cool Yukari Oshima clips to YouTube! The clips are from a Japanese TV show Yukari did in 1994; A film crew would follow her around to the sets of her films and in some of the programs she interviewed people (also on film sets she wasn't in). This first segment is interesting not least to Filipino film fans as it's from the Filipino movie set of TAPANG SA TAPANG (1997) (thanks to Robert F. for tracking down which film it is!).



And here's Oshima with Sammo Hung on the set of DON'T GIVE A DAMN:



On the set of FIST OF LEGEND with Jet Li:



And check the Osh doing hard work on this film set in Mainland China (again, no info on which film it is):



And finally a pretty boring segment but she's just so damn cute. xD.




NB: Jesus Manuel informed me that the third film in the "Yukari in China" video is from DRUG FIGHTERS, a movie she did with Yuen Wah. Thanks, JM.