When the tornado is in fact a tiger

VHS/Denmark/letterbox/English dub/Danish subs
[click scan for bigger size]

As you might remember I won the Japanese VHS release of Antonio Margheriti's TORNADO a little while back. On Saturday I finally received my parcel that contained a handful of tapes ... and none of them were TORNADO!! However, the (always reliable) seller hadn't shortchanged me but had simply put the wrong tape in the parcel by accident. Now, this could be a bad thing, I could be headed for a long stretch of dealing with the seller, having to send back the tape, have him bother with a refund, or in case he still had the other tape I'd have to wait even longer to finally receive it. Luckily none of that applied for the situation cos the wrong tape was in fact the Japanese release of Antonio Margheriti's second trashy war flick: TIGER JOE!!! And when I checked the tape I discovered to my utmost and complete happiness that the print they used is a beautiful FULLY letterboxed print! In fact it's just sooo outstanding I'm willing to give it the award for best looking Japanese version I've got! Don't get me wrong, most Japanese tapes look great (and certainly better than most Greek tapes!) but even so they are also mostly fullscreen. This letterboxed print is so crisp clear and knife sharp that you'll cut yr fingers if you touch the screen while the film is playing!!! I'm not even kidding, haha.

The only worry was of course what about the tape I'd actually won; TORNADO? Did the seller confuse the TIGER JOE tape with TORNADO when he found it? The two video covers are quite identical, in fact it seems as the Japanese title for TIGER JOE indicates that it's a sequel (it has a #2 in the title). Anyway, fortunately the seller did indeed have the right tape. I wrote him about it and he said: "I'm holding the Tornado video in my hand now. I was wondering why I had another one", haha. Anyhoo, I offered him the same amount as I had originally won the tape for to which he agreed. Good thing as this meant I didn't have to fight over it again. So all in all this is very good; TIGER JOE and TORNADO is awesome letterboxed versions! Yay! Spiffy!!

I couldn't be arsed to bother with a photo or scan of the Japanese cover as it is so bloody UGLY anyway. So instead I'm posting here the cool VHS cover for the Danish video tape. The scan comes courtesy of my mate Diabolik from Uncut.dk and Cinehound message boards. Thanks buddy!!! I actually have the Danish tape which is nicely letterboxed altho it's not fully lbx and it has a weird slightly yellow tint to it. But if nothing else... the cover is heaps better than the crappy Japanese cover, LOL.