"From an academic perspective, ATROCITIES OF THE ORIENT is a prime example of the way the exploiteers re-cut, re-titled, and re-packaged their footage"

GEE-WHIZ!!! At the end of my last post (written about an hour ago!) I speculated whether the mishmash that the Americans made out of mixing the two 1953 Filipino war flicks BEAST OF THE EAST and OUTRAGES OF THE ORIENT into ATROCITIES OF THE ORIENT was available on DVD - and an hour later I incidentally discover that Something Weird Video ALSO has the latter for sale!! I definitely wanna get that one too if nothing else to see how well (or crappily) the cut & paste edit works. Most fans of Godfrey Ho's cut & paste HK films acknowledge that those films are pretty crappy - but they often keep coming back for more simply because once in a blue moon Godfrey Ho did actually hit the mark and create something completely entertaining. Not very often mind you. LOL.

PS: the headline is a quotation from SWV's info about the film and their DVD-R. I'll re-post it below or you can read it on their page.

From SOMETHING WEIRD VIDEO's website:

Now here’s a film that really lives up to its title: it’s from the Orient and it’s an atrocity.

What do you if you have two old Filipino World War II pictures originally released in the United States by producer RAY FRIEDGEN? Well, if you’re Social Service Pictures, you graft the best of Beasts of the East onto Outrages of the Orient and throw in additional footage of vicious soldiers ravaging semi-naked, nubile young women from God knows where. The result: Atrocities of the Orient, an Oriental exploitation atrocity epic that thrives on the post-war hatred of the Japanese while simultaneously making a buck on the violence and torture the film both condemns and wallows in. War is hell, kids, and so is the exploitation game….

One minute the happy Filipino people of a mountain village all gather for a carefree musical number, the next they’re being slaughtered by the Japanese in an orgy of screams and flames: “They don’t have any respect for women and children!” True! We see lecherous Japanese soldiers chase topless women out of their homes who then jump to their death over cliffs rather than submit to being raped by the Japs.

Amidst this, one guy goes crazy after seeing his wife roasted alive and wanders around searching for his dead son. And two brothers, Antonio and Carlos, fight each other over the death of a woman they both loved. In fact, their mother even shows up at the battlefront to try and referee a truce between them!

Things get worse when Carlos and his outfit are captured by the Japanese after refusing to surrender. The Evil Japs promptly kill the only American in the group, then behead a Filipino soldier and bayonet another simply for the fun of it. Antonio, meanwhile, runs smack into a sexy female guerilla fighter named Colonel Eve – first seen skinny dipping (!!?) in an obviously added insert – and together they team up with Captain Corregidor to fight off the insidious forces of the Japanese. That they also fall in love but can’t admit it to each other until it’s too late is considered poignant.

But the plot is less important than the violence, and Atrocities of the Orient is chuck full of wartime killing, punctuated by the Japanese torturing various prisoners, so as to not disappoint the grindhouse audiences that were lured inside. Yeah, it’s all barely coherent but, hey, there’s a war on, goddammit!

From an academic perspective, Atrocities of the Orient is a prime example of the way the exploiteers re-cut, re-titled, and re-packaged their footage. Something Weird also offers Beast of the East and Outrages of the Orient in their original U.S. release versions as a special double-feature for those who just can’t get enough.

And remember: “This story of the heroic peoples of barrios and mountains is based upon fact!” -- Eric Schaefer, Bold! Daring! Shocking! True!



Product Details

SKU: 35931
Weight: 0.25 lbs
Format: DVD-R
Year: 1959
Color: B&W

Price: $10.00

BEASTS OF THE EAST (PH, 1953), OUTRAGES OF THE ORIENT (Ph, 1953) & ATROCITIES OF THE ORIENT (PH/USA, 1959)

Now, this is a little out of the ordinary on this site; here's a couple of war movies alright ... and they ARE from the Philippines ... but they're not like the trashy Vietnam War films from the 1980s and '90s that we usually deal with here. They're from 1953 and are set in the Second World War. Oh, and one more thing: I don't actually own these films!!

I stumbled over them on SOMETHING WEIRD VIDEO's site. Although the headline promises THREE movies we're actually really only talking TWO original movies here. BEASTS OF THE EAST and OUTRAGES OF THE ORIENT were both filmed in the Philippines in 1953. Then in 1959 the Americans apparently wanted to release ONE movie but instead of just choosing one of the two they took them both, spliced them together and probably threw a lot of footage away. The result is what Something Weird Video's reviewer describes as "one glorious (and barely comprehensible) anti-Japanese epic". Haha. And needless to say it would probably be easy to think all three titles are alternative titles for the same film. Well, they're not and if you need proof I urge you to get hold of the SWV DVD; both of the original films are included.

The "DVD" is a DVD-R and it's only available thru SWV's site. Go here. If you're outside the USA you'll need to order thru email and yes they do take PayPal. The DVD is $10 + postage. Here's a trailer I ripped from their site; The quality sucks (they REALLY don't want you to copy their trailers!! And I'm scratching my head here: Why the hell not!!?? Trailers are adverts for films. It's not like a reviewer posts the FULL movie for free when he posts a trailer. If anything, people get to get a glimpse of what they'll get if they buy the DVD. Very strange attitude).

I would assume some kind of DVD of the edited version is available, maybe as a boot or PD (same thing really) in the US. Screen grabs and a brief reference to a DVD is mentioned on Andrew Leavold's site.

From SOMETHING WEIRD VIDEO's website about their DVD:

Hot on the heels of World War II came these two Filipino-made war movies – bubbling over with hatred for the Japanese invaders and full of home-grown patriotism for the heroic Filipino soldier – which were re-edited by producer LLOYD FRIEDEGEN for release in the U.S. in 1953. Both films take cruel delight in portraying the Japanese as particularly vicious and, in fact, both films were categorized as “Atrocity Films” when sold on the grindhouse circuit.

Beasts of the East (released in the U.S. by Classic Pictures) cuts right to the chase by starting the story in the late summer of 1944, just prior to the landing of American troops, and stressing how “the Japanese persecution and torture of the people grew worse and more unbearable day by day.” It also opens with a musical number. Yes, happy Filipinos work the fields by singing a happy song until they’re interrupted by stock footage of the Japanese shooting down an American plane flying overhead. Though the plane crashes, the American pilot is saved and hidden in a jungle village where everyone works as guerilla fighters against the Japanese. The American, Tom Clark, is so appreciative, he gives them his remaining cigarettes: “Oh boy! The real McCoy! Genuine stateside Camels!” Tom also falls for Lydia, a Filipino Florence Nightingale who nurses him back to health. But the Evil Japs find his downed plane and search for the missing American by thugging their way through the local populace, torturing the men and carrying off the women. Tom quickly joins with his Filipino comrades and everyone is soon busily slaughtering everyone else. Happy ending? Nope, not in this one…. (Beasts of the East also comes with a second musical number as well as an apology for the heavily-accented English the cast speaks throughout.)

Outrages of the Orient ups the ante immediately with the Japanese seen attacking Corregidor by killing old men and ripping the clothes off young women. In the midst of this war, two brothers carry on a personal war of their own by fighting over the woman they both love, made instantly more complicated by her death: “Yes I killed her! I’d rather see this woman dead than be a victim of those savages!” And “savages” is exactly how the Japanese are portrayed here: bloodthirsty bastards who take particular delight in bayoneting and beheading their Filipino prisoners: “There is only one God, the Emperor of Japan!” All of which is punctuated with a man driven insane by the death of his wife, a sexy female guerilla fighter named Colonel Eve, the brothers’ mother popping up at a most inopportune moment to sob, and another grim ending.

There’s been much confusion over Outrages of the Orient and the similarly titled Atrocities of the Orient to the extent that most sources assume they’re different titles for the same film. Not so. The above Outrages of the Orient is the originall version of the film. Atrocities of the Orient combines footage from Outrages of the Orient with footage from Beasts of the East and elsewhere into one glorious (and barely comprehensible) anti-Japanese epic.
And remember, kids: “They died so that we may live!”



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Product Details

SKU: 34553
Weight: 0.25 lbs
Format: DVD-R
Year: 1953
Color: B&W

Price: $10.00