Most impressive remastered Kung Fu classics!

[TheFlyingPanda]

I was watching HKL's Hapkido on DVD again and thinking "what a great print" I remember watching my VHS cropped, blurry version of it I've had since I was twelve. Celestial's "Five Deadly Venoms" puts a smile on my face every time I watch it on a big screen TV. The thing is, aside from the big SB collection that got lucky to be remastered. What old school classics like Legend of A fighter and Hapkido has received the most impressive remastered print to date?

Any opinions?

[mpm74]

I was really surprised in the Blu-ray release of the BIG BOSS.

And, basically, any Celestial/IVL/Whatever release. Those are all top.

Most of HKL's prints are flawless, but most are out of print, too. The best places to find HKL discs are amazon.co.uk and chaos.com out of Australia. The Australian HKL discs are distributed by Magna Pacific. They are PAL, R4 discs.

Joy Sales/Fortune Star also does an excellent job with their Legendary Collection releases. Their prints are beautiful and they've released a lot of classic kung fu movies, especially Angela Mao movies. The best source for these discs is at dddhouse.com. These are all NTSC R0 discs.

[TheFlyingPanda]

The legendary collection dose have some great prints. I recently ordered "The Challenger" and "The Loot". I've never shopped at DVDhouse, but I'll try it out. I usually go to buyoyo or Sensasian, if I don't find it in Chinatown NY. Cantonen Iron Kung Fu looks fantasic and I don't think it was remasterd! The Bruce Lee HKL films are the best I've seen so far, haven't seen the Blue Ray Big Boss yet.

[David Rees]

HK Legends are great, most are OOP but as mentioned above many of the same releases can be found in Australia (REGION 4 / 2 PAL)...
Found the very rare Hapkido here...HKL DVDS EBAY

[TheFlyingPanda]

By-tha-way, thanks wuxiaFan for the info, I just shopped at "chaos.com" and got myself a copy of HKL's Fearless Hyena! This is one of many HKL releases I never got around to buying unfortunately. Still missing Shaolin Wooden Men and Dragon Fist amongst others.

[dionbrother]

The JoySales' classics don't really look that great, but they are consistent, 16X9 and they don't screw with the sound effects. Despite the sometimes worn condition of the prints, I've enjoyed the JS rereleases I've bought.


The Celestial catalogue has impressed me the most, because in every case I'd only scene the SB movies in butchered, cropped form. Enough to overlook enhanced sound, alternate Taiwanese and Singapore cuts, and missing footage.

[Killer Meteor]

Bad remixes, cropping, distoration and standards conversions hamper many "remasters" for me, so kudos to Media Blaster's DVD of 7 Grandmasters, the many Media Blasters Shaws, HKL's Encounters Of The Spooky Kind, and the German DVD company MIG's release of Angela Mao's The Tournament.

[The Dragon]

WB's Enter The Dragon DVD remaster was not bad. The re-edit, re-score, lack of good commentary (How do you have Michael Allin there and not speak honestly of his conflicts with Bruce?!) and John Little's dubbing brought it down a few pegs.

... Oh yeah, and the Blu-Ray terribly begs an HD-audio format!!!

[kungfusamurai]

WildSide Project in France has done a great job, too bad they're region 2 and no english subs.

Even though Bach Films have strangely dark transfers, maybe they're shooting with a camera at a projected image on a screen, they're at least getting out some really rare Korean kung fu flicks. Since they're french, they only have french audio, but their transfers are all 2.35:1 which is nice. They get big points for digging up some rares (at least rare in widescreen).

KFS