Sunday, November 27

To THE DEVIL...a dollar...

.
cut, crushed, and crinkled...beautiful.
Grabbed more tapes from the same yard sale detailed in last weekend's video with this beat-to-shit big box the crown jewel. This is the 1986 big box of The Devil (Xie mo) (1981) from Video City Productions played cool-as-a-cucumber when found for one dollar. One of the rarest and most desired big boxes released in North America probably because of its irresistibly crazy artwork. Unlike the widescreen Japanese VHS (experience the past drama here and here), this tape has been cropped to full screen, but shares the same English dub.

Check out the quick video below, this release appears to be uncut just like the Japanese tape upon first glance. Although I'm unsure whether or not the Japanese release is in its full 2.35:1 widescreen ratio when comparing it to this stateside tape. There doesn't seem to be the usual amount of heavy cropping from scope to full screen going on between the two. Or maybe the film's original aspect ratio wasn't that wide to begin with like the IMDB claims? Video City's tape looks to be from a different print as well, the Japanese release has none of the wild scratch damage seen in the opening scene below (the train shots are also much bluer).      

2 comments:

DrunkethWizerd said...

Well, that intro took a while but when he smashed her face I was on it like white on rice! Probably never going to see it though, right?

K-Fleet said...

Apprehensive Films is releasing this on DVD on Dec. 20th and it's limied to 500 copies. I wonder if it's uncut?

http://www.amazon.com/Devil-Hung-Lieh-Chen/dp/B0069K5WSU/ref=sr_1_1?s=movies-tv&ie=UTF8&qid=1324254734&sr=1-1

...do you dare tread upon the staircase?

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