Tuesday, December 7, 2010

The oh so never ending YUKARI OSHIMA trek



Ahhh, more cinematic goodies with everyone's fave Japanese Hong Kong darling, Yukari Oshima. This time (and like so often before) sharing the celluloid stage with another favourite from the "Girls kick ass and look cute" films from the ol'e crown colony's film production in the 1980s (damn you to Hell, Maggie, for having handed it back to China!); Moon Lee (aka Li Choi-Fung).

My "new" film is BEAUTY INVESTIGATOR which isn't really new as I've had the US Tai Seng VHS for quite some time. I was really pleased when I won the tape on eBay (at the bid of a "whooping" 8 dollars!!!) because in contradiction to Tai Seng's fullscreen and English dubbed DVD this tape is letterboxed and sports the original Cantonese dialogue with English subs. Only problem is... the picture quality looks as washed out as your favourite 10 year old Iron Maiden T-shirt!

Anyway, lucky for me a seller in Hong Kong (or Hongkong if you will) had the mega rare LD up for auction and even luckier for me that no one else wanted it (which is extremely weird since some of these films sell like cup-cakes whenever they hit the bay). The LD has Canto and Mandarin audio + English subs. I didn't bother to ask if it's lbx so I'll just have to leave that surprise for later! Even if it should turn out to be FS I'd say it's STILL an upgrade from the LESS THAN PERFECT video tape.

The same cover as on the LD was also used for the VCD release which I'm posting below and which incidentally is listed on eBay Hong Kong right now. The "buy now" price is HK$140 and as much as I'd love to buy that one too I think I'll restrain myself for now. LOL.



The cover for my Tai Seng VHS (lbx, canto, Eng subs)



And finally... the glorious poster for the film from Pakistan! Retitled "Armed For Action". xD




And finally (again) a clip (in really good quality) of Oshima as a cool leather clad hitman: