BAMBOO HOUSE OF DOLLS (Hong Kong, 1973)

aka Junglefængslet i bambushelvedet (Denmark)

VHS / Belgium / letterbox / English dub / French & Dutch subs

Hong Kong trailer:

This is the awesome WIP movie BAMBOO HOUSE OF DOLLS which stars Lo Lieh and Danish soft porn actress Birte Tove. This Belgian VHS carries the English dub which unfortunately isn't on any of the DVD versions. The HK dvd carries both a Cantonese and Mandarin dub. Altho the film is from HK the intended dub is the Mandarin dub, not the Cantonese!

VHS / Greece / Somewhat letterboxed / Mandarin dub / English, Chinese & Greek subs

DVD / Denmark / letterbox / Mandarine audio / DK-NO-SW-FI subs / uncut

NB: Cover fuck up!
The DVD cover states the audio is Cantonese but I'm informed that it's actually the correct Mandarin dub.

BLACK MAGIC WITH BUDDHA (Hong Kong, 1983) [review]

aka BLACK MAGIC WITH BUTCHERY
directed by Lo Lieh



by JACK J

Two adventurers find a mummy in a grave in Thailand. They open the mummy's head and take out the brain. One of them, Ben, brings it with him back to Hong Kong in a little wooden box. Once back home in HK Ben wants to use the brain to gain wealth. The brain has some kinda power and by using black magic Ben can get it to help him reach his goal. But as in so many other 'black magic' films from HK the main character is truly a bad egg, and Westerners often find it hard to deal with a film that doesn't have a good looking hero who at the end would score some equally good looking chick!

Well, as I said Ben uses the brain to become rich but as so often when you sell your soul to evil forces there is a price to pay: When Ben has got his wealth he must return the brain to where he took it. And as it is also often the case, our 'hero' doesn't wanna fulfil his part of the deal. And so heaps of weirdo stuff take place due to the brain being pissed off with Ben: Ben's family find dead dogs and monkeys 'round the house. While Ben is driving his car blood suddenly gushes down the front window. The evil brain changes to a bigger size and hides in the fridge!

There is also some amazing wild and gory scenes containing quite a bit of the old gooey red stuff: Ben chucks up pieces of brain, the pieces collect themselves into a full brain and then tries to escape a good magician who tries to zap the brain with, like, a zapping spell! Ben is also attacked by the brain that then opens his head so that his own brain is spurting out everywhere and down his face like gooey porridge! And heaps of other wild stuff happen!




The flick is directed by Lo Lieh, who also acted in the BLACK MAGIC films, and also in HUMAN SKIN LANTERNS. The style of BLACK MAGIC WITH BUDDHA is smiilar to that of BLACK MAGIC 2 (and probably also BM 1 and HUMAM... but I haven't watched those, unfortunately!) and THE RAPE AFTER.

These are movies with black magic and gross-out stuff that you don't find in any Western films; there is an almost nasty feeling that follows you thru the whole movie! All these films are highly recommendable! They also steer away from the hopping vampire/ghost movies in that they are played straight. There is none of the otherwise well-known HK slapstick humour. The only funny scene in BMWH is entirely due to the version I watched wasn't shown in its letterboxed original format but had been changed to the tv format, which meant that in one scene you see a knee sitting at a table talking to a hand on the other side!

The subtitles were, well, lets just say they were a bit hard to read, with words missing at the beginning and at the end of lines, odd grammar and ehh unusual spelling. But on the other hand, this here is a Danish fanzine and who be am I to slag other pepples off for doingg inkorrect inglish! But anyway, when a film is as good as this who gives a fuck!

Version reviewed: Hong Kong release in Cantonese with Chinese and Englisjh subs.

First printed in #1 of my zine BANNED IN BRITAIN in 1994.





Brian at Cool Ass Cinema blog also just reviewed the film and the poster scan in this post is borrowed from his review (and he got it from Hong Kong Movie Data Base, LOL). The VHS cover scan is from Lars Jacobsson.

THE BIG BOSS PART 2 (Hong Kong/Thailand, 1976)

aka Tang Shan Er Xiong







GEE, I WISH I WERE IN ZAMBIA!!!

About a year and a half ago I stumbled over the above trailer on YouTube. The film is THE BIG BOSS PART 2 and it's a kind of sequel to the Bruce Lee film. It was directed by Chan Chue and stars Lo Lieh and Bruce Le (and should not be confused with several other films also using the same title in various different territories). The film is listed on Hong Kong Movie Data Base as being a HK film but I'm sure some of those actors are Thai so until I get more solid info I'm listing it as a co-production. Oh, and the difference between this one and THE BIG BOSS is that Lee's film is out there, everywhere, on DVD and VHS, while this on is... completely impossible to get to see. Well, unless you live in Zambia! (I'll get to that in a tic).

The trailer looks like this is a fun, trashy, cheap, exploitative and WILD film! Some martial arts fans have stated it looks crappy and, well if I were a real kung fu film fan I might agree - but I'm not! I'm a fan of, well, trashy, cheap, exploitative and wild films! LOL. So it looks just up my alley. I would certainly love to see THE BIG BOSS PART 2 but unfortunately that's most likely not going to happen any day soon.





In the 18 months since I found the trailer I have come up with this info about a release: There is none! There's never been any!! And there may never be one!!! It's almost a lost film ... well, if it weren't for the fact that I'm aware of the existence of ONE cinema print!

It seems that back in the apartheid days of the 70s and 80s a lot of wild HK and other Asian films played in the South African cinemas. One big cinema had a lot of these prints and when the owner died his son-in-law took over. That guy formed a video label called Global and he started to put out a lot of these rare films on DVD.





Crude cinema prints were used for the DVD's without any form of restoration but at least it means you can get to see these rare films. I have some Filipino films from Global that haven't been released anywhere else on DVD and altho the DVD's in question are direct off 16mm film prints they're cool enough (one of the films is THEY CALL HER... CLEOPATRA WONG which has also come out from Dark Sky recently). If you're into spaghetti westerns you've undoubtedly come across the odd Global release.

Anyhoo, to make a long story short the Global guy had a print of THE BIG BOSS PART 2 but didn't wish to release it (despite heaps of fans bugging him about it) and in the end he sold the print to a cinema in Zambia. I don't have the name nor location of said cinema.





I wrote to him and bugged him about a DVD-R but he was adamant; no DVD-R! However, and get this, because some fans on Kung Fu Cinema forum doubted that he even had a print he uploaded 10 minutes from the film to YouTube! So even tho he never intended to release the film or make DVD-R copies he let everyone see what they couldn't have. Boo-hoo. I wish I were in Zambia. :(

Anyway, check out the trailer and the 10 minute clip. The picture quality of the clip is pretty good (but I fear it may not even look this good anymore if it's been shown 50 times at a run down cinema in Zambia). As with most Asian films that ran in the South African cinemas it's dubbed into English.












These magazine scans are nicked from HKMDB so thanks to whoever uploaded them.

Click scans for bigger size.









Notice how the article writer misspells Bruce Lee's name as Bruce "Li". Ironic as one of the Bruce Lee clones that was "invented" after his death was none other than Bruce Li.