Tag Archives: Hong Kong 1941

You, Me, and EVIL Makes Three on “The Island” reviewed! (Eureka Entertainment / Special Edition Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

“The Island” from Eureka Entertainment and MVD Visual! Order Here!

Geography teacher Mr. Cheung faith in his student’s studies lacks encourage and their grades likely won’t improve.  He decides to take his class on a field trip to an isolated island he once visited more than a decade ago as a young man.  With the intended purpose of relaxation, Mr. Cheung refuses his students of mentioning any schoolwork and studies to try and enjoy the coasting waters and the native nature the island has to offer.  However, there’s more than just animals and plants inhabiting the island as a family of three eccentric brothers welcome them with strange behavior and creepy vibes.  When the younger brother selects one of the student girls as his bride to carrier on their lineage, the once ideal getaway traps Mr. Cheung and his students without a way of escaping the irrational whims and delusions of the three brothers.  With a retrieval boat still a day out, the cornered teacher must keep his party alive at all costs. 

Considered Hong Kong’s answer or version of the backwoods pursuers of cutoff society people, 1985’s “The Island” secludes normal kids and their acquiescent teacher on an island where inbreeding has corrupted the copies of three brothers who’ve recently interred their adamant mother to rest and who’ve been searching for mainland women suitable to be the unsterile youngest’s wife.  Leung Po-Chi, or Po-Chih Leong, director behind “He Lives By Night” and “Hong Kong 1941,” produces a Jekyll-and-Hyde contrasting tale that’s sad and bleak to the core with a script not pinpointed to one particular writer but rather to a creative team within the production company D & B Films, aimed to capitalize on the western grim nature of the deranged and callous upon the unsuspecting and innocent seen in such exploitation and other B-pictures as Hong Kong shifts from the longstanding yet now waning Kung-Fu pictures.  Dickson Poon, Sammo Hung Kam-Bo, and John Sham, the founders of D & B Films, produce the film. 

John Sham may not be the ideal looking or sounding hero with a receiving hairline close to Three Stooges’ Larry Fine, thick, round spectacles, and about as average build of a middle-aged man as they come, but for “The Island” the ‘Yes! Madam” actor and D & B Films’s cofounder is suitable and ideal to be the pliantly, run-of-the-mill geography instructor looking to leave the woes of education behind him for a chance to revisit a place from his youth.  Unfortunately, Sham’s inadvertently the head of the snake as everyone remembers the exposed poisonous fangs threateningly elongated from with out the jowls underneath the reptilian beady and glowing eyes.  No one really remembers the slithering body unless there’s a warning rattle connected at the end.  That’s how the rest of the student body reproduces in trying to portray characters to care about but not really achieving the level of sympathy needed to rise about that film of understanding.  One of the more prominent kids is Phyllis, labeled the chunkier one by youngest aggressive, the snotty-simpleton Sam Fat (Billy Sau Yat Ching, “Scared Stiff”) and she’s targeted for Sam Fat’s procreation affections.  Played by Hoi-Lun Au, Phyllis has a working but tiffed relationship with Ronald (Ronald Young, “Sex and Zen III”) and see the untimely death of Ronald sends Phyllis into seeing red, being a formidable survival combatant against the remaining Fat brothers Tai (Lung Chan, “Encounter of the Spooky Kind”) and Yee (Jing Chen, “Riki-Oh:  The Story of Ricky”).  Billy Sau Yat Ching, Lung Chan, and Jing Chen are distinctly diverse to the best possible way, and each deliver their own dish of crazy that gives “The Island” an inescapable locked inside a padded cell substructure all too familiar on its base componentry but alien enough to master a new diverging kind of terror.  Che Ching-Yuen, Chan Lap-Ban (“Hex After Hex”), Kitty Ngan Bo-Yan, Lisa Yeun Lai-Seung, and Timothy Zao (“Diary of the Serial Killer”) costar in the relatively fresh faced and unknown at the time casted film. 

Leung Po-Chi wets our whistle with an opening of an intense forced marriage ceremony involving shuddering sexual exploitation and personal space invasive mistreatment of a mainland young woman, a swimmer who swam her way into trouble with the island’s inhabitants – an elderly mother and her three disturbed sons with the goal of using her for breeding a new bloodline.  This ultimately sets up the tone for a bleaker story that tells of nihilist cruelty with a thematic division between the urban educated and the unsophisticated rural folk, in this case the rural Bumpkins are isolated island inhabitants, but then Leung switches gears with a lighthearted introduction of frolic scurrying teacher and his students as they spread amongst the island’s sandy beaches wearing brilliantly colored skin tight swimsuits and bask in the island’s natural beauty with a couple of them going tangent into their own personal secondary storylines.   Those subplots never vine out and upward to flower fully but there’s enough stem and leafing groundwork between the good old gay times and a few individual internal affairs to setup sympathy for at least a select few as the relationship between visitors and residents quickly sours with Sam-Fat’s eyes growing bigger and bigger and his drool becoming slobbery and slobbery for Phyllis.  There’s not a ton of autonomy for the brothers who do their mother’s bidding long after she expires, committing themselves to the original plan of marrying off Sam-Fat in a show of take and force that robs Mr. Chueng’s dual purpose plan of a good time of fun and nostalgia.  Leung acutely abrupt faces again, back to the cruel inklings from the beginning, that displays unsettling camera shots, dark and low-warmth lighting, and a ferocity that’s always been with the brothers now more evident and growing inside the remaining survives who must fight for each other as well as themselves.  Leung’s style feels very much like a blend between the quick editing and fast action of a martial arts production but has the lighting and chaos-laden horror of an Italian video nasty that does see and lingers onto blood spilled. 

“The Island’s” a terror-riddled getaway that has arrived onto a new Blu-ray from UK label Eureka Entertainment routed through North American distributor MVD Visual.  For the first time on the format outside of Asia and as part of the company’s Masters of Cinema series (#324), Eureka’s Special Edition release is AVC encoded, 1080p high-definition resolution, BD50 and presented in the original widescreen aspect ratio 1.85:1.  With a brand new 2K restoration scan, “The Island” has impeccable quality measure that emerges the most minute details in every frame.  Skin tones have inarguable organic quality and a true-to-form reactionary sweat-gleam look induced when the chase is on.  The textures pop through in garb, foliage, and in dilapidated structure that gives certain discernibility and depth of object.  The original print has virtually no wear or tear as well as any aging problems, appearing to be a fresh off the reel transfer with natural appeasing grain.  The original Cantonese mono track is the only track available and is really the only mix we could expect and receive without a remastering, but, in all fairness, the mono works well enough to satisfy dialogue, ambient, and soundtrack integrity in its limited fidelity box  Dialogue is clean and clear on the encoding with no damage or other verbal obstructions but the modulation favors the antiquate characteristics of the era and the paralleling ADR offers little synchronous value, both to not fault of Eureka.  The optional, newly translated English subtitles by Ken Zhang pace well and are in flawless transcription.  The special edition is encoded with a new commentary with East Asian film expert Frank Djeng, a second new commentary by genre connoisseurs Mike Leeder and Arne Venema, a 2023 interview with the director Po-Chih Leong Surviving the Shoot, East Asian film expert Tony Rayns provides an appreciation video essay Tony Rayns on “The Island,” and the film’s trailer.  The limited-edition set comes with a red and yellow pastel colored O-card slipcover with new beaitfully illustrated artwork by horror graphic artist Ilan Sheady, whose supplied extreme and gory “Terrifier” franchise artwork to European media books, and delivers “The Island” a warm glaze of trouble-in-paradise, capturing the essence of what to expect from the story.  Original poster art graces the clear Amaray façade with a sepia image of John Sham from the opening scenes on the reverse side.  The limited set also includes a 19-page color booklet containing photos of “The Island” as well as other Leong productions, cast and crew credits, To Genre and Back:  The Cinema of Po-Chih Leong program notes by Roger Garcia for a strand celebrating Po-Chih Leong at the 2023 Far East Film Festival, an interview with the director conducted by Roger Garcia All Within the Same Film:  An Interview with Po-Chih Leong, and bring up the booklet’s rear are viewing notes and release credits.  The not rated feature has a runtime of 93 minutes and is region A/B locked for playback.

Last Rites: Director Po-Chih Leong’s trip to “The Island” is beyond bleak in social commentary and in of dire situation of nothing but pure innocence being destroyed by those left forgotten on the outskirts of mainlanders and of sanity. Eureka Entertainment’s Blu-ray honors “The Island” with praise upon praise for its slick high-definition picture, solid extras, and beautifully designed O-slipcase and design.

“The Island” from Eureka Entertainment and MVD Visual! Order Here!

A Young Man Has to Become Someone Else to Exact Revenge on EVIL! “The Adventurers” (Eureka Entertainment / Special Limited-Edition Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

Limited Edition “The Adventurers” Now on Blu-ray from Eureka Entertainment!

A Cambodian boy’s family is brutally murdered by the family friend and covert colleague Ray Lui, in front of him.  Alone and distraught, Wai Lok-yan is taken under the wing of his Uncle Shang, a CIA operative living in Thailand, and grows up to be a military fighter pilot still haunted by the violent death of his family.  When a newspaper headline names the now wealthy-by-gun-smuggling Ray Lui is to attend a public event, Wai Lok-yan is hellbent to kill Ray Lui at any cost, despite his career and his life, but a horribly failed assassination attempt puts his life in danger.  Uncle Shang strikes a deal with the CIA, who also want Ray Liu dead, to allow Wai Lok-yan in the United Staes in exchange to be an undercover operative named Mandy Chan, a gang boss seeking to kidnap Liu’s estranged daughter Crystal to get closer to the murderous arms smuggler.  However, what Wai Lok-yan didn’t expect in his mission was to fall in love.

The 1995 Ringo Lam gun action-thriller “The Adventurers” starring Andy Lau is in no way related to the 2017 Stephen Fung gun action-thriller “The Adventurers” also starring Andy Lau.  I just wanted to get that out there and over with.  Moving on.  Ringo Lam, director of the Jean-Claude Van Damme films “Maximum Risk,” “Replicant,” and “In Hell,” cowrites what is known in Hong Kong as a heroic bloodshed feature with “Supercop 2’s” Sandy Shaw and Kwong-Yam Yip.  Heroic bloodshed is a popular subgenre stemmed and coined from the 1980s that surrounded themes of duty, honor, and violent gunplay while embroiled in a web of drama and plot complexities that make it seem almost impossible for the hero to come out alive.  The internationally filmed production, spearheaded between China Star Entertainment and Win’s Entertainment Ltd., is produced by “Black Mask’s” Tiffany Chan and Charles Heung.

As stated earlier, Andy Lau stars as the protagonist lead playing a dueled dual life as the orphaned Woai Lok-yan seeking vengeance through the pseudonym of Mandy Chan, criminal boss infiltrating as a spy and assassin against his family’s murderer Ray Lui, played by the longstanding actor Paul Chun (“In the Line of Duty III,” “Hong Kong 1941”).  The “Internal Affairs,” Hong Kong action star Lau seizes and harbors his character’s plotted difficult choice:  to do whatever it takes to get within arm’s length trust of the man who killed his family versus falling gradually in love with that same murderer’s innocent daughter.  There’s plenty of back and forth for Lau to engage in both footsteps that teeter a line between duty, responsibility, and the heart but one side does swallow the other and in a negative way as the romance with love interest Crystal (Chien-Lien Wu, “Beyond Hypothermia”) is sorely underplayed against the Ray Lui mission and a competing love interest in Lui’s arm candy flavor of the month Mona, played by Rosamund Kwan (“The Head Hunter”).  Mona’s desperation to leave or kill Ray Lui, and subsequently be with Wai Lok-yan, is to the point of letting the mission and the love between Mandy and Crystal burn to the ground and that greatly built up and infringes upon the lack of genuine connection provided to give Mandy and Crystal a sympathetic understanding, especially when Ringo Lam’s storytelling isn’t scene successive and time is basically nonexistent.  Less detrimental to story, Mona’s subplot also does take a bite out of the whole operative mission itself, as it creates more complexities for Mandy when a gun smuggler’s woman wants out and will reluctantly do anything to achieve that goal, even backstab the Mandy who she wants to be with.  As the zippy story hits all the highlights, one downside aspect is also zipping through interesting supporting roles from David Chiang (“Murder Plot”), Ben Ngai-Cheung Ng (“The Eternal Evil of Asia”), Victor Wong (“Big Trouble in Little China,” “Tremors”), George Cheung (“Robocop 2”), Van Darkholme, Ron Yuan (“Godzilla 2000”), Phillip Ko (“Cannibal Curse”) and Andy Tse (“Naked Ambition”).

A powerfully engaging opening, heighted for full empathetic effect and visceral distress, of little Wai Lok-yan’s family being mercilessly slaughtered right before his eyes immediately has audiences on his side, especially when the boy, whose no more than 6-8 years old, bawls and collapses right into the arms of Uncle Shang shortly after the bloody aftermath.  What ensues is a flash forward to years later with Wai Lok-yan, now a grown man and a Thai fighter pilot, haunted by his past when his family’s killer Ray Lui surfaces in the paper.  At this point is where the story begins to snowball downhill, gaining speed at an inconceivable rate and growing bigger and bigger by the scene.  The action is pleasingly palatable with excellent gunplay and hand-to-hand fight choreographies that’s squib-tastically bloody and hard-hitting.  Where the story struggles typically reside, perhaps on a more subjective level, is the pacing that’s aimed to fly through the Wai Lok-yan/Mandy Chan timeline at a breakneck speed in order to capture the loops and hoops the hero has to jump through to reach Ray Lui but the way he infiltrates the public ceremony to assassinate Ray Lui, being integrated into the San Francisco Asian street gang, and even his sudden marriage to Crystal without the imprinting buildup of romance shocks the critical thinking system, tricking the brain into a stagnant state by time lapsing forward not in days or in weeks but in months or in years of time passed without the ease of a better transition to work into the time and space in-between.  Also, “The Adventurers” severe lack the motorized mayhem in the land, air, and sea, and despite the film’s select advert one sheets of Wai Lok-yan in full fighter pilot gear and his soaring adult introduction, hurts the image the film portrays that’s more grounded in melee combat or in a barrage of bullets with only bookend combat jet and helicopter sequences and a brief car chase in the middle that impress just above the par bar. 

UK label Eureka Entertainment brings to North American shelves, and audiences, a special, limited-edition Blu-ray edition of “The Adventurers,” stored onto an AVC encoded, high-resolution, 1080p, BD50.  Visual aspects on the Eureka’s brand new 2k restoration release is impeccable with a clear delineation, a sharp detail-driven style, and a clean, desaturated color scheme that’s hard, gritty, and muted, catering extensively to the intense violence and fast-paced action themes of the heroic bloodshed subgenre film.  Lam’s Dutch angles are dramatically harnessed in the Hi-Def scan with additional pixels emphasizing every element in the frame that makes the scene that more dramatic and a concentrated actioner in the anamorphic widescreen 1.85:1 aspect ratio.  Even the jetfighters are clearer and distinct with the camera and object movements that render the plane as a fighter plane rather than the vague blur that maybe is a plane or could be bird.  There are three Cantonese audio tracks, including a restored LPCM stereo, a restored DTS-HD MA 5.1, and the original unrestored stereo.  The unrestored stereo is quite indelicate with plenty of flawed rudiments that have a hard time sustaining with “The Adventurer’s” range.  The restored stereo is an efficient, effective, and adequate exaltation of the original audio track but A/V enthusiast will definitely be pleased with the surround sound DTS-HD 5.1 that completely is immersive where it counts, such as the bookend aerials and channel diffused gunplay that brings the action’ to your ears rather than your ears trying to capture the action.  The 5.1 absolutely feels more robust without being artificially broached.  Newly translated English subtitles are optionally available for an inhouse dialogue that’s clear and present at all times throughout the story.  Special features include a new audio commentary by film critic David West, a new interview with Asian Journal’s editor-in-chief Gary Bettinson Two Adventurers, unearthed archive interview with writer and producer Sandy Shaw, and the theatrical trailer.  What’ makes Eureka Entertainment’s release a limited edition is the cardboard O-card slipcase overtop the clear Blu-ray Amaray case with new artwork by Time Tomorrow, which is a composition of stills bathed in yellow and shadowed in black.  The Amaray has the more egregiously misleading original poster art of the protagonist in jetfighter attire and the New York City’s twin towers in the background for the pre 9/11 film; however, Andy Lau is only briefly in the gear during his adult character’s introduction and his character does not end up in New York City, but rather San Francisco.  A collector’s 19-page booklet resides in the insert section with color photos, more misleading promotional stills, an essay by Hong Kong cinema scholar Aaron Han Joon Magnan-Park from the University of Hong Kong, film credits list, Blu-ray credits list, and tips and tricks for viewing the film properly according to your cinema setup settings.  The release is not rated, has a runtime of 110 minutes, and is encoded with a region A and B playback.

Last Rites: Eureka Entertainment brings Andy Lau back into the spotlight with a slick new transfer for “The Adventurers,” action-packed revenge bottled to be less romantic and more fervid in nature.

Limited Edition “The Adventurers” Now on Blu-ray from Eureka Entertainment!