| DVD Released by : 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment/Fortune Star | ||
| Player reviewed with : Malata 520 | ||
| Receiver reviewed with : Sony 925 | ||
| Features: | ||
| Cantonese and English Soundtracks | ||
| English and Chinese Subtitles | ||
| Enhanced for 16 x 9 TVs | ||
| Running Time : 102 mins. | ||
| Region 1 | ||
Sammo Hung stars in this Kung Fu/Comedy/Horror flick. He is known throughout the land as a brave, courageous man. His wife is cheating on him, so her lover plots to have Sammo killed. The plot entails having Sammo stay in a crypt overnight while a priest raises a dead body to take care of Sammo. Unbeknownst to the priest, his own friend alerts Sammo because he does not believe the power should be used to perform evil.
I really like this movie. If you aren't used to Hong Kong's take on the reanimated dead, you'll have to unlearn what you know from other zombie movies you've seen. This movie was probably the first to marry all these genres into one and it was certainly groundbreaking at the time. There are some laugh out loud moments as well as some creepy ones. This is classic Sammo Hung and one of his best.
Video - The source print is immaculate. There are no specs, rips, or damage at all. It's difficult to believe the movie is as old as it is. There is a lot of detail in the print and the skin tones and other colors look good. The transfer is anamorphic and looks great on the 47 inch TV. I was impressed with the Hong Kong Legends release of this movie at the time it had come out but I like the picture on the Fox/Fortune Star release better. It doesn't look "smoothed out". This is definitely up with the better of the Fox/Fortune Star transfers.
Audio - There are plenty of audio options on this DVD. There 5.1 Dolby and DTS English and Cantonese Tracks,as well as an "original Cantonese track". I watched this one with the original track. Fortune Star releases have sometimes had issues with the mono tracks going out of sync. I noticed that this happened very infrequently and I would really need to compare it against another version to see if it was always like that. The original mix sounds good and better than I had expected. The dialogue is set very well in the sound field and isn't as tinny as the HKL version. With all the sound options, I don't think anybody could be disappointed.
The subtitles do not match the English dub as the have on some releases. They are timed well and are free of spelling and grammatical errors.
The extras consist of trailers for this wave of Fox's martial arts releases.
Once again, Fox/Fortune Star puts out a quality release. If you are a fan of this movie it is probably worth the upgrade based on the picture and sound quality even if you have the HKL version. While short on extras, the presentation of the movie itself is more than enough reason to pick this one up.
Reviewed by Matt
2/12/2005
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