LAST BREATH finally coming home

I woke up with a blasted headache. Popped a headache table. Waited an hour. Felt fine. Got out of bed. Though I might as well log on and get it over with... i.e. look at the auction I MOST LIKELY did not win during the night. Logged on... and there is was... the ebay auto message, "You won this item, now pay up, fucker".

Gott im himmel!!! I can't believe I'm finally going to get the original Hong Kong release of the very multo mucho rare'o Taiwan film LAST BREATH. It's insane. I hardly place any money on this (in collector circles that is. Ordinary people would certainly think £45 ($71) on an auction for an old video tape is more than enough). The final bid came to £31 ($49).

The tape I won is the HK VHS in Cantonese with English subs. I have been looking for years and years and I'm only aware of one other release, the Chinatown tape from the US. However, since it's a Taiwanese film I wouldn't be surprised if there exist a VHS from Taiwan in Mandarin. The film has never been released in any other format.

There exist two different cuts of the film, one made for the Chinese markets and an English dubbed version for the international markets. I should point out the English dubbed print is an alternative version they made at the same time that has different scenes with Gwilo actors in it - BUT it's not a cut & paste film! Both versions were official versions made by the film studio simply to cater to different markets. The international version is fairly easy to come by as it's been released on DVD (unfortunately the DVDs are cut, including the German one. And beware, I've seen bootleg sellers advertising copies off the German DVD as being "uncut". Well, it's not uncut!). The video releases are uncut and the best one is the Japanese tape with is fully letterboxed.