"The Blade" DVD Cover
On March 1st, 2016, Warner released three more Golden Harvest movies under their Warner Archive DVD Collection line: Tsui Hark’s The Blade (1995), Peter Chan’s He’s a Woman, She’s Man (1994) and Ching Siu-Tung’s A Terra-Cotta Warrior (1990).
The first wave, released late last year, consisted of Pedicab Driver (1989), Blade of Fury (1993), Big Bullet (1996) and Downtown Torpedoes (1997).
Note: As with all Warner Archive Collection titles, these movies are manufactured using DVD-R recordable media. According to Warner, DVD-Rs burn data patterns on an ink layer of the DVD. With traditional stamped DVDs, data patterns are molded within a texture layer of the DVD. So what does this mean? DVD-Rs are more sensitive to prolonged exposure to direct sunlight (so no leaving the DVD upside down on the dash board of your car). Also, unless you have a really old DVD player, DVD-Rs will play fine on standard DVD players.
Although exact details are limited, we’re assuming that all titles are anamorphic widescreen and in their original Chinese language with English subtitles.
All titles are currently available to order at Amazon.com.
If you guys *have* to get one of these, get Pedicab Driver. It’s one of the better Sammo movies. Though, outside of that Avenging Fist thing, I have yet to see a film with him in it which sucks.
Ok, I got my Pedicab Driver thing. And the A/V’s fine, but they didn’t separate the hard of hearing subs from the regular subs. So, yeah, it’s still a good deal, if you just wanna see it, and definitely better than anything Harvey would put out. But, I did nicely ask Warner Archive to at least to be more conscientious about this in the future.
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Back in August of 2015, the Warner Archive Instant had these titles available for streaming in HD. The cost per month was only $5, from what I remember and they had a free 30 day trial of the streaming service. I thought I would have time between Christmas and New Year’s Eve to do the trial and stream a few of these hard to find films in good quality HD. Unfortunately, it seems that now that they are available on DVDR for sale that they took them down, so I missed my chance to seem them. I have some old poor quality bootlegs of the Blade and Pedicab Driver. But, I’m past the days of spending $20 to $30 on a DVD. I don’t understand why they didn’t put this on a Blu-Ray disc at this point if they already have the HD transfer and are charging about what we would expect for a Blu-Ray anyways. This is all quite disappointing.
If they’re not properly pressing them as real DVDs, then they obviously don’t realize there’s a demand for them. But big companies like WB don’t want to take the time to properly market them either (I’m a firm believer that if marketed correctly, you can sell ANYTHING). But they have bigger fish to fry. Why try to make money off a few Golden Harvest flicks when they can makes millions more putting their full concentration on films like Mad Max Fury Road or something. But i have to give them credit… someone took the initiative to release them (and with their original poster art and Golden Harvest logo). So, that’s plus. But price-wise… yeah. Awful. Does them no good making such a low run (almost made-to-order) and sell ’em for $6 a disc.
But then again… I remember the old days: Bootleg VHS tapes for about $35-$50 a piece. At this point, we’re spoiled. 🙂
I don’t think the demand is that high for ’em, outside of the Jackie ones. Just be glad that any of these are getting a release at all, considering that *no one* outside of people who kept up with the tapes and LDs would care about The Blade. And if the demand isn’t high enough for the DVDs, I’m not sure why anyone would expect these on Blu-Ray anytime soon.
Still no Blurays and their instant service is in now way worth the price. The best things on there are the golden harvest films and after so long they remove them then take forever to add new ones.
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