I was in Chinatown last night and on my way out of the last store I was in, I noticed VCDs of a new line called "Legendary Collection" from Fortune Star, all early '70s classics from Golden Harvest.

I didn’t see DVD editions of any of these, so I quickly picked up six VCDs (total cost: $36) and here are the titles:

THE HURRICANE (1970) with Nora Miao/dir. Lo Wei

KUNG FU GIRL (1973, aka ATTACK OF THE KUNG FU GIRLS, aka NONE BUT THE BRAVE, its actual onscreen title) with Cheng Pei Pei / dir. Lo Wei

THE TATTOOED DRAGON (1973) with Jimmy Wang Yu

THE SKYHAWK (1974) with Carter Wong, Sammo Hung and Kwan Tak Hing as Wong Fei-Hung

STONER (1974) with Angela Mao and George Lazenby

A QUEEN'S RANSOM (1976) with Jimmy Wang Yu, Angela Mao and George Lazenby

The good news: All are letterboxed and subtitled. The prints of HURRICANE and SKYHAWK look very nice, from a spot check. I don’t know if they’re new, but the colors were sharp and they showed less damage than the others. Or maybe the transfers were just better on these.

The bad news: the subs. on all are small, barely readable, white type burned-in on the print—those old typed subs. that spread across the entire widescreen frame because they were photographed non-anamorphic and projected anamorphically which widened the type and made them less readable (and is also why the old full-screen VHS tapes routinely cut them off on the sides). Also, when there are white backgrounds, forget about reading them. In one of them (TATTOOED DRAGON), the subs were touching the very bottom of the frame.
Also, the prints for the other four are clearly not new or restored prints. Much scratching and signs of wear.

I remembered seeing ATTACK OF THE KUNG FU GIRLS on the big screen (33 years ago!) so I was happy to find it among this bunch. Looking at the first few scenes, I notice that it’s not terribly well shot nor does it have anywhere near the budget Cheng Pei Pei’s Shaw Bros. films had. But it does have Cheng fighting in a more traditional kung fu style, using fists, hands and feet. Nary a sword or whip in sight. It’s another side of her for fans to enjoy.

So, given the subtitling issue, I don’t know that upgrading to DVD on these will actually improve them. But given that I have four of these in other formats/editions--two in English dubs, one without subs and one full-frame VHS, these VCDs do represent an improvement.

These are all part of the Joy Sales Legendary Collection(s) non-digitally restored re-issue. Has as been noted elsewhere previously, they're releasing most of these, initially, on vcd, with (in theory) a dvd release sometime in the future.

Has anyone seen a dvd release of a NDR Legendary title that was initially released on vcd? I guess they might be waiting to finish releasing the initial list of DR titles to dvd, before the get around to the NDR titles.

The reason why these titles are delayed for so long (for the DVD release) is because they're all supposed to undergo a complete English re-translation. I am part of the Joy Sales Legendary Collection project. I think there was a Golden Harvest 70s kung fu film that we actually did release on DVD. I can't recall the title of the film but I remember that it starred Angela Mao. Something about her taking revenge for the parents she never knew. I've edited and re-translated that film. The DVD was also released a while ago.

Yeah, that was BROKEN OATH, one of Angela's best, if you ask me. It owes a certain debt to LADY SNOWBLOOD, IIRC. That DVD is one of the Fortune Star Legendary Collection and I picked it up last August (2006).

For those with an interest in these titles, it strikes me that waiting around for a possible future DVD release might end up in disappointment, with an out of print VCD and no DVD release at all. Given the amount of VCDs they've released vs. DVDs, it would take many years before the DVD arm could catch up. And hey, maybe they are your last chance to see the original theatrical release subtitles!

I feel like at least picking up the George Lazenby titles...

A number of these are coming out on vcd without subs as well so be careful. The logic of first releasing them on vcd and then later on dvd kind of escapes me. Do they expect people to buy both? If anything, I would imagine it will diminsh their dvd sales - and if they are really remastering and retranslating them that would be rather silly. At any rate I've picked up a bunch of them but only watched The Hurricane so far - not a bad little swordsplay movie actually - lots of action - basic plot - but though Nora is the headliner her film time comes in far behind the male lead - Patrick Tse.

Well, re-translatiions take plenty amount of time and it is very time-consuming. Let it be known that I also have occasional commitments with Diskotek Media and am currently in negotiations with Jet Li and his crew (I'm trying to get a deal with Megastar & Media Asia through a referenced recommendation personally from Jet Li himself to work on translating the special features for next year's DVD release of "The Warlords".). As I've been notified that Jet Li is very well aware about me and will see what he can do for me. Besides, I'm willing to do this for a low price (which is, imho, really in their favor). Nothing's concrete or confirmed about the Jet Li thing but hopefully, I'll get this gig.

But from the list of films that Joy Sales has given me to finish within the next 2 months, most of the projects are either 80s or 90s movies. (I'm also trying to convince them to include an all-new exclusive interview with one of the stars of "Sea Wolves" whom I kinda know personally in Toronto.) Quality over quantity is alwys a good thing.

The tragedy is that there are 100's of HK movies that desperately need subtitles, but have none, but those companies (Pearl City, etc.) seem to have no interest in doing anything about it; while the company that is taking advantage of your talents has a catalog of already subtitled movies that it is trickling out at a snail's pace to re-sub - a marginal value add, but nowhere near the value add of subbing a movie that never had any to begin with. I do wish Joy Sales would focus on their Golden Harvest titles that haven't seen DVD yet (I seem to recall there were a few on the list, way back in the day), and not so much on the ones that have already been given excellent Deltamac releases.

I was actually really hoping to redo "To be number one" and i know i am capable enough to do a killer job on this like i did with last year's re-release of "Robotrix", one of the few films that I was actually satisfied with. "to be number one" has been delayed and delayed over and over again. i don't even know the current status of it. and putting Fortune Star's insistance of using their subtitles for the remastered titles, who knows if I'll ever get to deal with this movie. If i polish up the subs for this movie, chances are, it will get the non-remastered treatment. If i don't, it'll be a remastered release. sometimes, companies oughta get things right, remastered and redone subs is the way to go for a film like this.

Joy Sales also has me translating the special features on the dvd. that's how i got the job in the first place. by volunteering to translate the audio commentary on their dvd release of "The Myth". i never received money for my work on "The Myth" but the JC Group did a nice gesture by having Jackie Chan sign his autograph on a free copy of the boxset dvd (one for me and one for my editor in hawaii).

Whilst I really do appreciate the work of adding new and improved subtitles (I bought the Heart To Heart Trilogy & a couple of Do Do Cheng's other comedies, Rouge, Who's The Woman Who's The Man, and some others) I really, really am upset with the picture quality of PAL to NTSC DVDs. Remastered? Bah! Are there PAL HD Masters? Were they done at 1080i, or done properly at 1080p?

I am pretty sure a lot of my older DVDs were NTSC pure, and certainly most (if not all) of my Laserdiscs were (although I have probably only watched Mr Coconut, A Chinese Ghost Story and Burning Paradise recently) and look all the better for it! Telecine has, of course, improved a lot since then as well, making these modern DVDs all the more frustrating. Could they be released in PAL like some of the VCDs - I know they wont be, but how did all this get started? Was it because AV was so NTSC in the old Laserdisc days, and it just stuck?

I am now actually holding off buying more of these so called remastered product, as the simple 16/9 enhancements are totally offset by the poor PAL to NTSC conversions. Can we expect some of these films very soon on HD-DVD or BluRay in a pure 1080 format? Anyone wth their ear to the ground about these things in HK?

>I am now going to hold my breath until I get an HD-DVD of The Heroic Trio< :rolleyes:

i don't think any of Joy Sales remastered titles were PAL to NTSC conversions at all.
only the non-remastered "Legendary Collection" releases were PAL to NTSC conversions. all the remastered titles looked and sounded fine but they do not seem to have any of my re-translations. Ringo Lam's "School on Fire" might be the only exception because it was planned for a non-remastered release but plans was changed due to the bad video quality for its initial non-remastered release. So be on the lookout for that.