Though undoubtedly best known for his horror works, in 1986
John Carpenter decided to do something different, and brought us this tale of
oriental sword and sorcery, albeit in a modern day setting. Producing, what is
arguably, his most bizarre film to date and Arrow films are bringing it to UK Blu-Ray.
Teaming up with Kurt Russel, who’d previously starred in Carpenters
“Escape from New York” and “The Thing”, Russel plays gruff truck driver Jack
Burton, who’s making a delivery in San-Francisco’s Chinatown district, when his
friend, Wang Chi’s, Fiance is abducted
by a Chinese street gang.
Agreeing to help get her back, they subsequently get
embroiled in a bizarre battle between the gang and a group ancient Chinese
sorcerers who suddenly appear and proceeds to wipe them out, taking Wang’s
fiancé with them.
With the help of some friends, they discover that Wang’s
girlfriend is needed to help one of the sorcerers break some ancient curse and
to get her back means infiltrating a series of underground caverns, leading to
climatic final battle between Burton, Wang and his friends and the sorcerer
minions in an extremely outrageous martial arts battle.
Co-starring Kim Catrell and character actor James Hong, the
film was originally a huge flop at the box office, but later proved a huge
success on home video and has remained a cult favourite ever since.
This new Blu-Ray release from Arrow films is available in
both standard packaging and in a special limited edition steelbook release. As
with all arrow releases, the disc comes chocked with special features.
The first of these are a series of interviews with Director
John Carpenter, star Kurt Russel, Director of Photography Dean Cundy, Producer
Larry Franco, Stuntman Jeff Imada and special effects man Richard Edlund, which
run 10-15 mins each.
There’s a selection of deleted scenes, most of which are
just extended versions of existing scenes and there’s an extended end scene
showing Kurt Russel ramming a car full of Chinese punks into the river.
Also included is a vintage making of feature from 1986, a
rather bizarre music video featuring John Carpenter, Nick Castle and Tommy Lee
Wallace performing the films main theme, a selection of trailers and TV spots
and a photo gallery of production stills.
The film also gives you the option of listening to the
isolated music score, or a feature length commentary track, in which John
Carpenter and Kurt Russell exchange amusing anecdotes about their time on set.
The film is released to BD
December 16th, from Arrow films.
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