Wholesale and Distribution Movie Reviews

This is a very engaging movie. The story itself is alright. It's about an orphan named Xiao Hai, played by Ting Wa-Chung, who is raised by a crime boss played by Lung Fei, and begins to learn the Chicken fist when he falls for a girl who is a mantis fist expert, played by Kam Yin-Fei.

The reason to get this film is the fight coreography. While it kind of looks undercranked, it's not obvious, unlike some of those Alexander Lo Rei 'Ninja' films during the 80's. And the treat is watching Kam Yin-Fei. She is AWESOME. Not only does she have a lot of power, reminiscent of Michelle Yeoh's on-screen fighting, but she's also very acrobatic. She does as many flips and leg sweeps as the lead character Xiao. Xiao is not a very sympathetic character, but he is a great on-screen fighter and verry acrobatic. He does multiple flips in one spot, not unlike Li Yi Min in some of his films. Lung Fei is also great, but there is some body doubling when his character does some flips.
The downside of this DVD is the picture quality. It is full screen and looks like it was taken from a VHS source. I also had a problem with the sound effects during the fight scenes, but I think that was more a fault of the original makers of the films. Some of the body blows, for instance, had the same sound effect as the 'slap' sound made when one guy blocks a hit with his arms. You realize how important proper sound effects are to making a fight work in a kung fu film.
The special features are interesting, but nothing special. Gordon Liu's interview isn't very enlightening. It's rather distracting that the voice doing the translating only picks out every other sentence (it's like he only had one shot at translating), he translates for both the interviewer AND Liu, and in his British accent, he sometimes throws in British terms, like 'bloke'. The demonstration of Hung Gar is interesting, but is more for show than actual learning value.
Overall, the film deserves a 5. The fight coreography is well paced and top notch. And watch for the girl. It's a wonder why she didn't do any other kung fu films of note. She could have been another Moon Lee or Michelle Yeoh if she was doing her thing in the late 80's. 'Death Duel Of Mantis' - a film you shouldn't pass up on.

in this dvd, i find the first guy, Kenny Howell funny as hell. Bill Bellamy is funny in this one too. Oh yeah, Eddie Griffin is funny too. i find these three guys funny in this series. The rest of the people in this dvd were ok.

In 1963, the movie audience had already experienced the new kind of psychological horror movie born with the great PSYCHO. Francis Ford Coppola's attempt at matching that horror is greatly inferior, of course, but as an exercise in mental terror, it works on its own subliminal level. The wonderful Luana Anders starts out the film virtually murdering her rich husband, and then tosses his body in a pond, telling the family he's off on a business trip. She wants his Mama to change the will to include the in-laws. As in PSYCHO, Anders is dispatched early in the film in a very surprising way, and although it can't touch Janet Leigh's demise in PSYCHO or Angie Dickinson's in DRESSED TO KILL, it packs a wallop. From there on in, it's time to figure out who the nasty killer is. It's fairly easy to pick the killer out, but there are some wildly frenetic scenes before getting there. Bart Patton and Patrick Magee provide excellent support and one can detect the future genious of Coppola in this atmospheric thriller.

Desperate Dan is a lot funnier than the Jackass kids. This DVd has some hot babes naked doing different things from wrestling to flashing. Funniest part was when "DD" was clad in a thong jogging in a mall with a male groupie. I think these dudes did a pretty cool DVD called AMERICA'S WILDEST BACHELOR PARTIES too.

This might not be the very best Dragnet DVD available on the market today, but it does feature four good episodes, including:

1. The Big Show
2. The Big Shoplift
3. The Big Hit-Run Killer
4. The Big Crime

Dragnet focused on the methodical procedures used by the police to solve cases and employed a documentary film approach to tell its stories. The 1950s black & white version of Dragnet is generally recognized as being superior to the color version that appeared in the late 1960s and was largely based on the radio version of Dragnet that began in the late 1940s. Although Sgt. Joe Friday (Dragnet creator Jack Webb) had several different partners in the 1950s series, all episodes on this DVD feature Ben Alexander as Officer Frank Smith, arguably Friday's best known partner, and certainly the best known of the 1950s version.

All of the episodes included are in the public domain and so you will find them on other Dragnet DVDs. However, the episode "The Big Crime" is tougher to find than the others and deals with the crime of child molestation, which is somewhat surprising to see in a 1950s television series.

The video images and audio from this Alpha Video release are generally good, though the episode "The Big Show" has some print damage in the early goings. Expect to see some film speckles and the occasional scratches on each of the episodes. That said, this is a decent release for fans of the original Dragnet television series.

Watching Edgar Winter play reminds me of why I started playing and loving the blues in the first place. Just the pure soul of it.He reminds me of the kid in school that never had to study for the math exam. It just comes so naturally to him it's like he's always been playing.
This performance is from 1988 and features guest Leon Russell on
piano and vocals.Anytime you're featured as the primary performer in a concert,you'd better be good, and Edgar doesn't disappoint.
It's pure energy from the beginning as the band launches into the blues standard "Key to the Highway" and turns in classics like"Dixie Lullaby"(a Leon favorite),"Lady Blue","Fly Away" and
"Free Ride". The band does a good job supporting the two artists, but it's Edgar that really steals the show. The man can
play saxophone!
The only flaw I can find here is that the sound could have been mixed a little clearer, but hey, why would you get rid of a classic Picasso because of a ding on the frame?
All in all it was a pleasant suprise from Edgar and Leon. I would recommend that any aspiring saxophonist listen to and absorb as much Edgar Winter as possible. You'd be hard pressed to find a better teacher.

If you survive the first half with his delicious absurdity, your reward is the second half, on the scenes when he teams up with his "carnal" Marcelo singing American, Cuban and Argentinian music, but ending with a very Mexican serenade. If you ever saw Jorge Negrete singing in a movie you'll laugh to tears when Tin Tan sings. And with the lighting effects, you can see actual flashes of Jorge Negrete until you hear him singing. Just that scene was worth to buy the DVD, which by the way is a great work of digital restoration, (Sorry didn't have subtitles) I hope they restore more of the good old "40's and early '50's Mexican movies .

Take the hard-boiled resourcefulness of a wrestling blind sleuth and his canny canine sidekick, stir in a stew of diverse supporting characters, and the result is the recipe for this wartime noir mystery. Donna Reed is delicious as a precociously hard-edged seventeen-year-old, and Mantan Moreland and Allen Jenkins add just the right dash of comic relief.

Released in 1968 as part of a triple-horror-feature for the drive-in crowd, "Fangs" came and went without notice in this country. Supposedly, this is the "American" version. Retromedia--whom I admit I have no respect for due to their poor quality offerings--has done an OK job with this Italian-Spanish vampire mish-mash and I rather enjoyed it. 50's sex bomb Anita Ekberg is miscast as Sylvia--a Rome "bathing suit model"--who is notified she has inherited a castle. On her arrival, it turns out she has inherited it's alleged vampiric/witchcraft legacy as well. The strangely effete and thin "Uncle" who has sent for her has other cards up his sleeve. What follows is a campy Euro effort at atmospheric horror replete with beautiful girls, a dungeon tomb, sinister caretaker, Euro-style barmaids at a local inn and , of course, "vampires" that may or not be real. It's all very "PG" with no gore or nudity but LOTS of cleavage on the girls. There's a typical stiff-as-a-board hero and his comic-relief friend who dash about saying "We've got to save her!" and one line I truly loved from a barmaid to the hero/scientist, "Would you mind having a look at a girl who's not well?" The dubbing is so-so, the acting the pits (but so bad it's a riot) and the photography is typically European style atmospheric but rather endearingly low-budget. Miss Ekberg is a LITTLE too long-in-the-tooth to be a damsel in distress with an obviously younger leading man, but she is still beautiful and displays, in one outfit, some astounding "assets" that are truly eye-bogglers. All in all, not bad if you're in the mood for something like this and especially if you like low-budget "Euro-shockers". The color is good with one shady spot in one scene and the soundtrack has what sounds to be the original continental jazz flavored pop score along with the appropriately creepy stuff. I liked it---maybe you will too.

Two decades before he boldly went where no man had gone before aboard the U.S.S. Enterprise, DeForest Kelly starred in Fear in the Night, a vintage dark noir film (not to be confused with the 1972 Hammer film of the same name). Kelly plays a humble bank teller named Vince Grayson who awakens from a horrible dream, only to find that his nightmare may have been all too real. In the dream, he struggled with and then killed a man inside an odd octagonal room of mirrors. His relief upon waking up is dashed when he looks in the mirror and finds thumb marks on his neck. A quick self-inventory also reveals dried blood on his wrist and, most disturbingly of all, a key and button in his pocket, the very same items he grasped during his struggle in the dream. Naturally, he is both bewildered and horrified, and his need to talk about the situation leads him to his brother-in-law. Given the fact that his brother-in-law is a homicide detective, this doesn't strike me as the ideal plan. In any event, the guy doesn't believe him. A week later, Vince accompanies his sister and her cop husband as well as his own would-be sweetheart on a picnic. They seek shelter in a house at the beginning of a rainstorm, and wouldn't you know it, it's the same house as the one in Vince's dream. Things suddenly aren't looking too good for Vince, especially when he learns that a man was murdered in the house a week earlier. There's really only one fairly predictable way to explain these confusing events, yet the film still manages to maintain a significant amount of suspense up through its final moments. I found Fear in the Night to be quite a good film noir movie, complete with all the voiceovers and crescendo-happy music you would expect to find in this type of film.