With the responsibility of bringing 50 remastered Shaw Brothers classics to North American home video, Image Entertainment has been doing a fine job and their release of SB’s exploitation thriller THE KILLER SNAKES is no different.

The Killer Snakes (DVD - Image Entertainment)

While it lacks the bells and whistles of a feature-rich release from Dragon Dynasty, this disc still manages to get the job done with an original English-dub track for the grindhouse purists and a small collection of original stills. The print looks great and the optional 2.0 Mandarin audio track is crisp. In contrast, the English dub track sounds quite murky and doesn’t seem to feature the usual voice team that old school kung fu movie enthusiasts enjoy hearing.

This release also scores points for having very eye-catching cover art that captures the flavor of the film very well. One minor frustration is how the disc menu requires you to mouse over the left side of the text to select an option if you’re watching the movie on a computer.

Stills Gallery – A slideshow gallery contains a handful of original production stills that are just shy of full screen. As befitting a film like THE KILLER SNAKES, some of them are intentionally tawdry in presentation.

Trailers – The trailer presented THE KILLER SNAKES is the new one produced by Celestial Pictures. There are sixteen other SB trailers in Image Entertainment’s lineup and another dozen or so original trailers for other Asian action releases.

Format: Region 1 NTSC DVD
Aspect Ratio: 16×9 Widescreen (2.35:1)
Audio: Mandarin (DD 2.0), English (DD 2.0)
Subtitles: English
Length: 99 minutes
Release Date: 2007.12.04

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  • chen lung

    Cantonese is odd, sure it’s not Mandarin? I’m curious to know if this is another very shoddy transfer.

    English dub could be a new one if it’s not the usual crowd, or maybe you got to a part where the original was incomplete and temporarily reverted.

    Artwork is usually refreshing from Image, but not entirely my favourite.

  • Mark Pollard

    Actually, it is Mandarin. I had to go back and listen to it again. Thanks for the suggestion.

    As for the transfer, it looks decent on my player. I don’t have the import version to compare to.

  • chen lung

    lol Cantonese is still in the paragraph ;).

    Anyway, the only thing Image have gotten right are subtitles (they fix them up).

    If you skip frame-by-frame on your player, is there any ghosting?

    I was disappointed in reports that ‘Shaolin Intruders’ is Mandarin and has a ropey transfer. I sold my IVL off in preparation!