REVIEW: ‘The Magic Blade’ (DVD – Image Entertainment)

By Mark Pollard | Published March 29, 2008

If you’re only interested in owning a quality DVD version of THE MAGIC BLADE then Image Entertainment’s release is the one to get. It substantially upgrades the film’s visual presentation over past releases while matching the film with an original English dub track that actually sounds decent.

On a number of their SB releases Image has included original English dubbing from the familiar team who dubbed seemingly everything that came out of Hong Kong and Taiwan in the 1970s and early ’80s. This is the only English dubbing on kung fu and wuxia movies that genre fans in the West actually consider an asset, even though from a technical standpoint these tracks are usually inferior. Call it nostalgia. Most of the tracks Image has dug up have sounded very muddy but the one for THE MAGIC BLADE is adequate. But still, viewers will miss out on some of the original soundtrack and effects that were buried by the English track. Purists should stick with the original Mandarin track, thankfully presented in a simple two-channel format.

The main appeal of Image’s release is the big improvement on the visual presentation. Finally, the film has been formatted in a 16×9 aspect ratio for widescreen displays. The good news doesn’t end there. More of the original picture can be seen on the sides and colors have been cleaned up to appear more vibrant and natural.

See how Image Entertainment’s version of THE MAGIC BLADE stacks up to versions from IVL and Siren Visual. Notice how action master Corey Yuen (far left) magically returns to the shot in one of his many unsung roles as an extra.

Limited bonus material is where this disc fails to stand up to past releases. Set unnecessarily on a background with exposed female breasts, we get a nice little collection of production stills mixed with what looks like screen caps and a huge collection of stock trailers from Image’s library.

Production Stills – Some very nice pics here, including original poster art, seem to be mixed in with a number of screen caps.

Trailers – There are 16 SB trailers that were produced by Celestial Pictures and 13 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: 97 minutes
Release Date: 2008.03.11

inframan
No one else caught your "but still" joke?

Mark Pollard
There is some slight ghosting when you freeze jump frames but it's no worse than your average DVD release.

chen lung
Seems like Celestial put it through the rounds again and whilst it does have better quality, it (unfortunately) likely it utilises their frame-cut policy (because of splices).

Very odd that Bey's commentary isn't carried over considering that it was uselessly aimed at HK audiences whilst here, it would have been perfectly ideal.

This is a film I did want to check out and if it's not got problems transfer-wise, then I might just pick it up :). If you're able to skip about 10 frames or something, is ghosting apparent?