A mercenary comes home

I... am... getting... THIS!!!




Arrrrgggggghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh...

This is the single best movie ever made. E-V-E-R!!! In the history of film making!!!

This is one of the RAREST tapes around!! It doesn't exist ANYWHERE!! Almost NOBODY has it!!! It's like a LEGEND!!! It does exist on dvd but only on a westernised and heavily cut German DVD!!! This is the ONLY uncut version!!! It runs 5 hours longer than the DVD!!! Yes, I'm exaggerating heavily now but, arrgghh!!! Flpff pff pff pff mouth won't work.....

This is how rare it is:

Cinehound member goblin:
"this comes close to being my fave film!!!! in 10 years of searching ive never found one"

Big thank-you's go out to Romps and Member-X of Cinehound!!!

Read Fred Anderson's review of the film here and Günter Müller's ditto here.

A few tips on Filipino tapes up for auction!!!

Some added titles

Click the titles to go to the auction page:


NO DEAD HEROES

GET THE TERRORISTS

EQUALIZER 2000

CLASSIFIED OPERATION

FINAL SCORE (awwwwesome no-holds-barred Indo flick starring Chris Mitchum in on of his most over-the-top films!!! Directed by ARIZAL!!! This is the shit!!! If I didn't already have two copies on Greek and Japanese vhs + a bootleg from trash-online there's no way I'd give you this tip!!! From Indonesia!!! Awesome!!!)

TOP TEAM

SYNOPSIS: EXTREMELY RARE Greek Vhs of a 1988 Asian ultraviolent, meganasty, absolutobloody squad vs gangs epic!! it's a BLOODBATH!!! with sorapong chatree, johnny banton and kong tao!! dir. by GODFREY HO!!

RAIDERS OF THE GOLDEN TRIANGLE
(from Thailand)

WAR WITHOUT END

SYNOPSIS: EXTREMELY RARE Greek Vhs of a 1986 philippino explosive war, with robert mason, jim gaines and nancy lee!! dir. by TEDDY PAGE!!

You can also check covers for some of the films here on the blog.

NB: These links is just me tipping you off about some rare tapes. I have nothing to do with the auctions. I'm just trying to help fellow fans of mighty entertaining Filipino flicks to get hold of them as they're not always easy to find!

Which Vietnam War movie is this???

English title: GUNS OF VICTORY (1981)


A seller on eBay has this up for auction but he doesn't know where the movie is from. Neither do I! Do any of you out there??? Is it Hong Kong as he suggests?? Please do let me know if you know about this. Cheers.

This is the only info I have:

Genre: Strong "Vietnam" War Action
Year: 1981
Country: Hong Kong (?)
Director: Howard Donald
Cast: Harris Young, Leonard Day, Jack Lai

Greek Ex-Rental PAL VHS
Asp. Ratio: Fullscreen
Language: English
Subtitles: Greek
Label: Dallas Home Video
Condition: Very good

CANNIBAL MERCENARY (Thailand) 1983

Fred Anderson just posted a review of this film on his blog and it occurred to me that I've completely forgotten to post the review of the film that I forced Günter Müller to send me several months ago. Haha. So, anyway, here it is. Günter used to run thee best site to cover Asian movies from, well, from what I like to call "Asia's backyard", i.e. not martial arts films or ordinary present day Asian cinema but the wild and crazy stuff that you've only read about in old deleted fanzines from yesteryear. 95% of those films are NON-AVAILABLE on DVD but even so my good buddy Günter tracked them down and reviewed them!

Like I said, unfortunately he decided to discontinue his site a couple of years ago and it's even the more unfortunate that he used a crappy free service to host his site on. Needless to say it's gone by now. Boo-hoo. All those tons of great reviews. Gone forever (well, unless I convince mr. Müller he should send 'em all to me and let ME reanimate his "WEIRD ASIA" but until that happens here is at least (and long last) his review for CANNIBAL MERCENARY.


For the updated post with Günter Müller's review go here.

HELL RAIDERS (Indonesia)

This is a Barry Prima film from Indonesia and shouldn't be confused with the Filipino movie of the same title. The other film is also listed here.

VHS/Puerto Rico/English dub/fullscreen probably

Here's a review I "borrowed" from an ebay seller who has the movie listed at the moment. He doesn't have a name but I thank him wholeheartedly for this cool review. :o)

Here's Hell Raiders 1985 Puerto Rico Productions VHS.......VHS tape in original case in very good shape.... This Indonesian war epic from Rapi studios, the people who brought us THE DEVIL'S SWORD, plays, at some times, with the slanted melodrama of a vintage American WW II pic, and, at others, with the irony and emotional intensity of Sam Fuller on top of his game. It tells the story of a guerrilla army from an Indonesian village during the war with the Dutch in 1945. It has the highest production values of any Rapi film I've seen, which isn't saying much, but what it lacks in resources, it more than makes up for with its crackling energy and genuine heart. The initiated will note that this is true of any Rapi film available in English, most of which are lore-heavy horror or martial-arts fantasy tempered with a weirdness that's never been exceeded by films made anywhere else in the world. What sets this one apart is its realized ambition. This is no B-movie diversion; this is a sweat-dripping labor of love. It has an ensemble cast which includes, but in no way defers to, the best-known action star of Indonesia's film boom of the nineteen-eighties, Barry Prima. It's notable that Prima played the comic-book folk-hero fighting the Dutch colonials in the early nineteenth century crowd-pleaser THE WARRIOR. Here he fights them a century later, with guns and grenades, rather than sorcery and swords. He gives a fine performance as a character, not a hero. The heroism in this film is shared by many, including a thief reformed by his thirst for revenge and at least two women who fight, in completely credible roles, with at least as much grit as the men in the film. The characters' weaknesses are likewise shared, and that's just one of the things that gives HELL RAIDERS its surprising ability to haunt the viewer long after it ends. Another is a bloodless image of the effects of torture created by an actress and an up-close camera. Another manifests in arresting moments of the aforementioned irony, which work due to the skillful cohesiveness of the complex script that sets them up. Despite an understandable and certainly not unique tendency to villainize the enemy, HELL RAIDERS possesses humanity, honesty, and insight that place it far above, say, a MISSING IN ACTION film. Despite the transcendence, there's plenty of gore, shock value, and pulse-pounding action to enhance the other elements, thanks, in no small part, to art director El Badrun, the special-effects master of Indonesia. This guy can create, in a hut in the middle of a freaking jungle, more interesting and creative spectacle than ten-thousand art-school key-jockeys in Hollywood. The film's roughly two-hour running time, much like its budget, far exceeds that of the usual Rapi film. I highly recommend investing that time, as well as the time and/or money it takes to find a copy of this precious little piece of obscure world cinema. .....

WARCAMP (1988)

aka POW DEATHCAMP



Dir: Jett C. Espiritu
Cast: Rey Malonzo, George Estregan and Charlie Black

RAIDERS FOR VICTORY (1981)

Dir: Jun Gallardo
Starring: Bembol Roco, Phillip Salvador, George Estregan, Philip Gamboa and Beth Bautista

RAIDERS PLATOON (1988)

Another one for the collection! xD




Seller's description:

SYNOPSIS: VERY RARE Greek VHS of a 1988 Filipino ultra bloody and mega nasty war [movie], with tons of atrocities, tortures etc! highly recommended!! with Jerome Leo, Frannkie Catas and Doris Mann!! dir. by FEDERICK MOSES!!

However, I haven't been able to dip up anything on this film so if any of you have got any info I'd appreciate it a lot. Like is the year of production correct? What else has the director done? Cheers.

UPDATE: I found something! It's the absolutely ONLY thing that turns up when I google for the film (other than THIS HERE BLOG!! Haha) and obviously it had to be from the seller's (Onar Bill) website:

SYNOPSIS: Super obscure film, ignored by imdb AND google!!! It's an 80's Filipino Marines squad vs evil guerrillas! And the latter are the nastiest and most sadistic scumbags I can remember! Check the intro sequence with the villains torturing their captives. they chop hands, slash necks, pull out intestines etc, in a gruesome opening sequence. The rest is equally brutal... check what they do to a woman they just killed over her killed husband! While I was checking this out, my wife in the next room commented ironically: "such a quality film... just bang-bang bang and aargh!!"

NO BLOOD NO SURRENDER

VHS/Holland/fullscreen/English dub/NL subs

[click scan for bigger size]


VHS/Greece/fullscreen/English dub/Greek subs


VHS/Germany/fullscreen/German dub

DYNAMITE JOHNSON (1978)

aka DYNAMITE JOHNSON: BIONIC BOY 2

VHS/Japan/fullscreen?/in English/Japanese subs

DOUBLE EDGE (1986)

THE LONGEST BRIDGE (Taiwan, 1976)

Taiwan war action directed by Shan-si Ting in 1976! Starring Carter Wong, Brigitte Lin, Chun Hsiung Ko !!
Big budget Chinese retelling of the Japanese invasion WWII is a grand war film of the sort they don't make any more !!

BEAUTIFUL LETTERBOXED PRINT !!!

NB: I'm fully aware this is indexed in the "Non war Filipino films" category altho it's not from the Philippines at all, but I try and keep this page as simple as possible and I already have one section for non Filipino war films, and yet another section of "Non Vietnam war non Filipino films" section would be juuust too much!! LOL.