So for various reasons I won't go into here because they're very, very boring, I'm ready to blow a chunk of change on a stack of vintage HK cinema, something I ain't done in far too long.

I have my Shaws selections picked out, pretty much, but the JoySales/Fortune Star releases are a tougher nut to crack. So much stuff only available on VCD, which is frustrating.

Anyone have any opinions on the picture quality of the VCDs in this series? I know VCDs can vary widely, as do individual's tolerance levels. I've often found them not even worth the bother of watching, no matter how cheap they are. Are these average? Better than average?

And are the subtitles new, respectable translations, or the old burned-in atrocities, or something else?

And how's Buyoyo.com? I've never heard much about them, and I'm going with DDDHouse.com for the most part. But they've got good prices on some stuff that I've had trouble finding elsewhere... like older DVDs of GUNMEN and FAREWELL CHINA that I might pick up instead of the JoySales VCDs.

But I know I'm picking up their VCD of Yim Ho's New Wave crime drama THE HAPPENINGS, which I just discovered on the list tonight.

Michael, be warned that some of these VCD offerings have no English subtitles. I'd urge you to do your purchasing down at our regular stores in Chinatown where you can see for yourself which ones have subs. and which don't. It tells you on the back of the case. (I don't know how well the on-line vendors convey that info.)

I have quite a few of the Fortune Star Legendary Collection VCDs. They're not restored prints at all, but they tend to be better than any versions I've gotten hold of in the past. The subs. are the old burnt-in kind and are often quite tiny on these discs. Some prints are better than others. I've been mostly picking up old Golden Harvest releases with Angela Mao and Jimmy Wang Yu. I've even gotten some without subs. because untranslated Angela is way better than no Angela at all.

Fortune Star has released DVD editions of Angela's two greatest classics, BROKEN OATH and WHEN TAEKWONDO STRIKES. If they're not at the top of your list, they should be. You can't go wrong with those. I reported on them in the "So What have you been watching lately" thread.

Hi there Michael --

Agree with Brian re the lack of English subs and mediocre picture quality of many of the Joy Sales VCD. At the same time, while old school martial arts fans -- like him and, albeit to a lesser extent, myself -- are happy enough with the quality of some of the films that have come out only on this format/incarnation, think that the likes of you might not enjoy them so much.

Still, while we're on the subject of Joy Sales VCDs, here's stating how very happy I am that at least one old (1975) Taiwanese Brigitte Lin Ching-Hsia movie does have English subs -- and yes, Brigitte is indeed veeeeeeeeeeeery cute in LITTLE SISTER-IN-LAW!!! :)

Well, Buyoyo's all right. Lately they've pissed everyone off when they reset everyones Buyoyo dollars back to zero at the new year (they did give notice though). To make an order worthwhile (because of shipping costs) you will need to order at least 10 items. They've usually pretty good about listing whether somethings subbed or not. Otherwise I've really never had any problems with them.

Great news that THE HAPPENINGS is out!

I find the quality of the Joy Sales VCDs to be completely dire, though. It's a shame, too, as the old Deltamac/Fortune Star VCDs were just fine! But then, I don't have many to compare -- I bought a couple JS VCDs and they were terrible, and that was enough for me.

I understand from conversation over at the asiandvdguide forum that the VCDs are in a separate program entirely from the DVD releases at Joy Sales, which means that none of the new subtitles or cleaned up prints are being used.

I miss both the price and quality of the old Deltamacs, and for titles that were released by them, I favor the old release pretty much across the board (many of which can still be found in Chinatowns, though not typically available through online retailers).

Shaw VCDs are quite lovely, though, and because of the high cost of the DVDs, have switched over entirely with no complaints.

I've used dddhouse, buyoyo, and yesasia for many years. I've not had serious problems with any. Yesasia is best for small orders, their higher prices are more than cancelled by lower shipping (free shipping for $35 or more). When ordering around a dozen, I've found little difference between dddhouse and buyoyo. When making large orders, 20 or more (my last was 40, good grief), buyoyo via courier is the cheapest and quite fast, too. I'm usually happy if the cost per item, including shipping, averages out to about $5-6 each.

Which is why all these elaborate special edition DVDs coming out of HK these days are making me weep, or roll my eyes, or both, but that's another story.

-- Peter

Well, I guess, but given what you say about the low quality of the VCDs...

Sigh. The Joy Sales Legendary Collection is turning out to be a bit of a disappointment, sounds like to me. All this great stuff I've long wanted to see, on cruddy VCDs only, while a lot of the high-quality DVD editions are stuff we've all seen many times and often owned in at least one previous version. For example, I've been salivating for a while for a long rumored, restored and more-complete SCHOOL ON FIRE on DVD, with new subs and everything, but I'm doubting now it'll ever materialize. Well, at least I finally have an acceptable PEKING OPERA BLUES disc in my possession.

Thanks for the purchasing tips, everyone, especially to Peter for his detailed breakdown.

And thanks to Brian for nudging me towards the Angela Mao classics. I'd been vaguely aware of them, and vaguely curious about Golden Harvest's alternate take on the old school martial arts trend that's so closely associated with Shaw Brothers. You, aided by a couple online reviews I googled up today, convinced me to add BROKEN OATH to my order. But if I don't like it, you'll get a taste of my Lemur Fist style. Anyone have other recommendations out of what looks like numerous kung fu and wuxia chestnuts in the Joy Sales collection (most on VCD, granted)? Brian? Yvonne?

Ouch.

And another thing... Buyoyo has all these "China Versions" of Shaws/Celestial discs, that are about half the price of the HK versions. Are those legit? How's their quality?

They're legit. The major difference is that they're PAL. This would probably be considered a positive, since all the Shaw masters are PAL the discs wouldn't be plagued with all the issues the NTSC discs have had because of conversion. I suppose that might be a reason why they're quite a bit cheaper than the IVL discs too. I don't own any, but from what I've read the people that have hadn't had any major complaints.

I've bought many more than I've had a chance to watch. :rolleyes: But I haven't encountered any problems with any yet.

Some of you may already know that I work on some of these Legendary Collection DVD series. Particularly with the English subtitles. If there's any hint you need, I'd suggest y'all to wait out a bit for the "Black Cat" movies. I can't be certain for sure that the DVD is fully uncut but after comparing the VCD which Joy Sales have provided to me and the subtitle script I was given to work on, the DVD subtitle script certainly has scenes that were not in the VCD release. Make a note of that. I have already completed the redone English subtitles for the first and second "Black Cat" films so they should be coming out within the next month or so.

Tin-lun, I have a question about BLACK CAT II. In BLACK CAT, English-speaking characters spoke English. I have two different editions of BLACK CAT II and both of them are dubbed entirely in, I believe, Mandarin (I'm not at home so I can't double check this). The English-speaking characters don't speak English nor do the Russian characters, not even "Yeltsin," speak Russian. Is there a version where everyone speaks the right languages and, if so, is that the one that will be released?

Thank you.

Tin-lun - AHA! You were the person posting at the DVD Maniacs forum about your subtitle work on the Joy Sales discs. In fact, you are singlehandedly responsible for my hankering for the never-seen SCHOOL ON FIRE DVD I wrote about above. I seem to recall that your (quite exciting) posts about that were as long as two years ago, although I could be exaggerating. Is that disc just not gonna happen? I might break down and get the VCD of the old cut - I've never seen it in any form.

I've picked up a bunch so far but have not had time to watch them. In fact I picked up some yesterday at Lai Ying - $7 and they have about 30-40 titles in stock. Picked up The Devil's Treasure with Nora Miao, Magic of Spell with the wonderfully diminutive but acrobatic Lin Hsiao Lan, Slaughter in San Francisco with Sylvia Chang and Chuck "Huckabee" Norris, The Angry River - Angela's first film I think and The Tattooed Dragon with Sam Hui and Sylvia Chang. I just have to get down and watch these.

Okay, within the last 24 hours, I’ve been on an Angela Mao kick and re-watched the Fortune Star/Legendary Collection DVDs of BROKEN OATH and WHEN TAEKWONDO STRIKES and, for the first time, the Fortune Star VCD of THE ANGRY RIVER, Angela’s first film. The DVDs look and sound awesome. High quality stuff. Probably the best we’re ever going to see these films. The subs on the DVDs are removable, not burned in.

The VCD of ANGRY RIVER doesn’t look so great and it’s got tiny burnt-in subs. that don’t always read well. Plus, it’s not a very good movie at all. First time I’ve ever seen it. Angela has a couple of good fight scenes at the beginning and then “loses her powers” for most of the film. Very frustrating. A weakened and vulnerable Angela is not what I look for in my Golden Harvest entertainment. I should write more about it in another thread. There were some interesting things in it. It WAS, after all, the very first Golden Harvest production, so I should cut them some slack.

I compared the subs. on the two TAEKWONDO editions—DVD and VCD. The translations are roughly the same, but the wording changes at times and the spellings of key names differ. (The subs on the TAEKWONDO vcd are not burned in.)

I’ve been picking up the VCDs simply because many of these are films I’ve never seen and have been wanting to for a long time. E.g., ANGRY RIVER. So it’s a good way to preview them. If ANGRY RIVER had been good, I’d upgrade when the DVD comes out.

Another point I want to make about BROKEN OATH and TAEKWONDO: They’re made from original film prints that are very sharp, with good color values. They’re not restored—the prints have scratches on them, but that’s okay with me. I prefer transfers like these to the total digital restorations we see on the Shaw Bros. discs. I’m not knocking the digital restorations, since I’m quite sure surviving prints of so many of the SB films probably don’t look anywhere near as good as those of BROKEN OATH and TAEKWONDO. But I like to see these films as close to how they looked in a theater as possible and not "improved" beyond recognition.

Yeah, I don't even know what happened to the "School on fire" dvd. i even asked the other workers at Joy Sales and even they are wondering about it. it really relies on when my boss decides to release the dvd. it will happen but we just don't know when it will or if the remastered dvd will even use my re-translations at all. (fortune star wants their remastered releases as intended by them. meaning i can only deal with their non-remastered releases)

Tin-lun, thanks for sharing info at the various forums. It was your comments that first made me realize that the VCD and DVD branches of Joy Sales are not necessarily aligned.

Brian raises the other problem: ANGRY RIVER is bad, WHEN TAIKWONDO STRIKES is fine, basically, it's a crap shoot.

I did a search on buyoyo.com for joy sales, found a Golden Harvest title, and clicked on Raymond Chow in the Producer field, which yielded about twenty Joy Sales VCDs released so far in the Golden Harvest line. Not sure if that is accurate or not. These look interesting and are ones I'd be most willing to buy despite quality issues to see the films: IRONSIDE 426, BADGE 369, CHINATOWN CAPERS, SLAUGHTER IN SAN FRANCISCO, THE TOURNAMENT, etc., etc. Brian - and anyone else who gives them a try - let us know whether they are watchable or not!

Now that it's been pointed out that they've released THE HAPPENINGS and MAGIC OF SPELL with subs (I think my tape was unsubbed on that one), I may have to place an order as well sooner rather than later...

-- Peter

Going to the source will (presumably) lead to better results. Searching Joy Sales specifically for 'Legendary Collection' and 'Raymond Chow' returns 65 results. Their advanced search is still kinda primitive so I couldn't filter out the dvds or narrow it down to just Golden Harvest titles.

Joy Sales search results

Careful, the product descriptions are total spoilers.

Thanks Terry, much better. Though now I see discrepancies. For example, THE BEDEVILLED is listed as having English Subs on the Joy Sales site, but is without subs according to yesasia and buyoyo! Hard to say who to believe.

-- Peter

I had a duh moment...here's the previous search results split into dvd/vcd:

VCD

DVD

All NDR Legendary Collection dvds

All NDR Legendary Collection VCDs

Now, those last two were enlightening and depressing... 348 VCDs vs 59 DVDs; what is that, almost 6 to 1?

currently working on the "happy ghost" films. from what i understand, we own 4 of them. parts 3 and 4 were done by me over a year ago while i had never touched on the first 2 films until now. i'm now working on the first film. hopefully, they will be released by first quarter 2008.