Come Drink With Me (1966)
Director - King Hu
DVD Released by : Celestial Pictures
Player reviewed with : Cyberhome 500
Receiver reviewed with : Sony 925
 
Features:
Mandarin Soundtrack
English, Chinese, Bahasa Malaysia, and Bahasa Indonesia Subtitles
Not Enhanced for 16 x 9 TVs
Old and New Trailers
Behind the scenes, Interviews, Color stills, Original Poster, and Production Notes
Audio Commentary By Bey Logan
Running Time : 91 mins.
Region 3
COME DRINK WITH ME opens with a group of bandits capturing a Governor's son in hopes of having their leader released from prison. The Golden Swallow (Cheng Pei Pei who you may recognize as Jade Fox from CROUCHING TIGER, HIDDEN DRAGON) is dispatched to either negotiate a return of the son, or rescue him, whichever is needed. Golden Swallow finds this task is slightly more difficult than she expected. She begrudgingly befriends a drunken beggar who has his own reason for fighting the bandits, and the Monk who assists them.

If you are only familiar with more recent Kung Fu movies, than the fights in COME DRINK WITH ME may seem slow. There is also some wire work and you will notice that many of the editing techniques used for the fights are still used today. You have to remember that if it wasn't for movies like COME DRINK WITH ME paving the way, movies would be very different now. I just wanted to mention this because sometimes expectations are raised too high. COME DRINK WITH ME is definitely a classic and continues to influence movies made today.

Celestial gives a decent but not perfect release of COME DRINK WITH ME. After viewing THE HEROIC ONES, I am slightly disappointed with this DVD.

The picture quality is pretty good even though dark scenes are sometimes a little too dark. The colors overall are very rich and vibrant. The transfer shows off the famous Shaw Bros. cinematography seen here in it's original aspect ratio. The condition of the film print that is used is free of specs and damage and looks incredible for its age. Unlike THE HEROIC ONES, I didn't see any of the distortion in the picture during quick camera pans. The image holds up well on the 47 inch TV but it would have been wonderful if it was anamorphic.

The sound mix, is a 5.1 remix and the original mono track is not included. There is an option for the Mandarin soundtrack as well as one with a commentary by Bey Logan, Cheng Pei Pei, and her daughter. The Mandarin track is mixed well. The dialogue is never drowned out by music or sound effects. The soundtrack is very clean for a movie of this age. No hiss or pops anywhere. The commentary could have been mixed much better. Cheng Pei Pei's voice is a little low while her daughter is much louder. Logan's voice is a good volume but in order to hear everybody, you need to put the sound up a bit. The problem with this is that you have to lower the volume every time Cheng Pei Pei's daughter laughs because it's very loud.
The subtitles while readable and just about free of grammatical and spelling errors, they have a unique problem. Lines of text repeat every so often. This does not seem to be player dependent and It appears that these duplicate lines replace what should have been appearing next. Once or twice this would be forgivable but it happens several times. The problem is tolerable but annoying. Occasionally the characters "!K" appear in the text but it's not too distracting.
There are a lot of extras on this DVD. The commentary is interesting and it's great to have somebody who was actually in the movie be involved for a change! Logan as usual give good insight into the movie. He seems to learn as much from Cheng Pei Pei as I did! There are also interviews that are sometimes pretty lengthy and a lot more interesting than I would have imagined. There are also two trailers. One is old and the other is a new one that shows what a difference the restoration made on the presentation of the film.

COME DRINK WITH ME is a classic movie and I would hesitantly recommend this DVD only because some may have a lower level of tolerance for those subtitles than I do. Much has been said on the various DVD forums about replaced sound effects and music on some of the Celestial Shaw Bros. movies. I did not notice that to be the case hear. The sound effects did not seem out of place. These are just some things to keep in mind if you are considering a purchase. Also, like all the Celestial Bros. DVD's, COME DRINK WITH ME is coded for Region 3.

Reviewed 2/13/2003