"ANGELS, GUNS, VIRGINS, THE APOCALYPSE? WHAT A MESS!!" I HEAR YOU SAY. WAIT TILL YOU SEE THE FILM!!!
The new German dvd release of ANGELS WITH GOLDEN GUNS (aka Virgin Apocalypse / Terror im Frauenlager) has finally been released! Actually... it came out two weeks ago but I wanted to make sure I got hold of the limited "Cover A" before I told y'all about it, haha (sorry, but there's only a 100 printed!). But in any case, here it is!
I received it this morning and haven't had time to check it properly yet. The film is a wild mix of Girls With Guns/WIP/Girls Kick Ass And Look Cute/and-what-have-you film from Hong Kong 1988. I've previously watched it via a raw fullscreen copy off a vhs and I don't know what director ANG SAAN was on but he must have popped a lot of it to make the result so totally over the top wild and crazy as he did - while making absolutely no sense at all. Well, I kinda thought I had figured out what the hell the film is about but maybe I got the plot all wrong as other people (IFD expert Jesus Manuel being one) have watched it repeatedly and still don't know what it's about, haha.
ANGELS WITH GOLDEN GUNS has never been out on official dvd before and old vhs releases suffer from crappy fullscreen formats and/or having been dubbed into languages only spoken by little people in hidden away places. The new German dvd has been taken from a 35mm German print that I'm told was missing 1 minute of footage, however, the missing footage has been reinserted into the film from a German vhs (luckily the vhs was also in the right picture format). And don't worry, fellow English speakers, the dvd does indeed come with both German AND English dub.
Spannick, who provided me with the info via Cinehound forum, told me the German dub has totally cool music that isn't in the English version. So it would probably be fun to watch it in that version as well (maybe for the second viewing if you don't understand Deutsch). I'll repost the scene Spannick uploaded which is off the German print and definitely has a cool score. I do remember the music in the old vhs version as being pretty boring. Hmmm, come to think of it I don't even think it HAS any music in this scene. :/
The dvd also has a full extra film, COMMANDO FURY (aka Training Camp / Girls in the Tiger Cage / Aufstand im Frauenlager). The film is listed on various sites as being from HK 1986 but the HKMDB lists it as being from Taiwan 1983. The old German vhs release is heavily censored (check screen grabs of cuts here) but the new dvd is uncut. Unfortunately, the film is owned by IFD in Hong Kong and they didn't even have a proper print! All Joseph Lai could offer was a crappy fullscreen master with massive frame cuts. I'm told that most of their film stock consist of old crappy fullscreen video masters that were used for the old original video releases!
They don't even have 35mm prints in the correct aspect ratio any longer! That is so sad! It's not very often we're lucky enough that a label actually wants to have anything to do with these old cult films and when finally someone does wanna put them out on a proper dvd release ... they can't fucken do it because Joseph Lai didn't bother to keep original prints! Argh!! This is also the reason why the dvd release of KILLER ELEPHANTS is fullscreen (the lbx version was included off a German vhs). The German company decided to skip the fullscreen print and used a fully letterboxed Japanese vhs instead. The tape master is dubbed into English and subtitled in the black bar (I'm told the new dvd has covered up the subs).
The film is available from D&T MAILORDER in Austria. There are links to the handful of different covers here (it's become a trend in Germany to release the same film with multiple cover options). Alternatively, you can order it directly from Björn Niehüser who runs the label. Anyway, I'm off to the Frauenlager (women's prison camp)!! xD
- Insane girl fright scene:
Great write-up Jack.
ReplyDeleteThere are so many WTF scenes in Virgin Apocalypse, someone could dedicate an entire blog dissecting each muddled moment. It's still great fun, and very sad news indeed that there's probably not much more where this came from in terms of quality prints.
Hey Steve, good to see you here, mate. Yes, I must admit I was quite surprised, not to mention disappointed, when I heard from two different sources (that both have dealt with the company directly) that Joseph Lai doesn't have proper prints for his films. I guess all we can hope for is that future video labels can track down 35mm prints and use them for their dvd releases like this label did with Virgin Apocalypse. I didn't mention it in my post (cos I didn't know about it at the time) but the missing footage in the German print is due to wear and tear on the print, i.e. they're not censorship cuts. The approx one minute of vhs inserts look as good as they'll ever look, imo.
ReplyDeletePS: and thanks for your kind words in reg. to the post, Steve. :D
ReplyDeleteBtw, did you see I posted some of your videos here a while back? Well, I did. ^_^