Righting Wrongs

by **Tonic** » Mon Sep 12, 2005 12:37 pm

Does anyone know if anywhere still sells the 2-sided DVD of Righting Wrongs (Yuen Biao, Cynthia Rothrock)?

Or if IVL is going to do a reissue (though I very much doubt it).

I could only find the Fortune Star VCD for it, which now too is going out of print at many places.

by **Brian Thibodeau** » Mon Sep 12, 2005 1:31 pm

One option might be eBay. I routinely search there using the keywords "DVD OOP" and a couple weeks back I came across someone selling the original Universe edition of RIGHTING WRONGS. It ultimately went for about $20 U.S., so that could be a sign that it's value hasn't skyrocketed yet.

Not sure if the VCD contains both endings, since the DVD actually included TWO complete versions of the film, but the one listing for the VCD on eBay (as I write this) seems to suggest it might carry only one of the endings, based on the description given.

by **Tonic** » Mon Sep 12, 2005 4:10 pm

I did end up getting the VCD of it a while ago, it's the HK issue of the VCD and it has the HK ending (as I read reviews beforehand).

It would be nice to have the higher quality release, I'll have to keep on the lookout on ebay!

by **Knetan** » Mon Sep 12, 2005 5:39 pm

hey,

a Malaysian vcd by Fortune Star I believe carried the edit that is accompanied by a Mandarin track on the Universe dvd, only this time dubbed in English. And before you ask, the Mandarin version isn't actually shot for shot how the int. version is so this English dubbed vcd is an oddity in that regard.

Good luck in hunting down the disc, I'm glad I got it when it was 40 HK dollars.

by **Beat TG** » Wed Sep 14, 2005 11:40 pm

here's a good site: www.dvdunited.co.uk

lots of vcds of HK movies!

by **Tonic** » Thu Sep 15, 2005 10:12 am

Ahh they have the mainland china DVD of it and the VCD I already have.

I'm still on the look out though, it would be amazing if HKL released it

by **Gaijin84** » Wed Oct 12, 2005 2:57 am

I really don't want to sound like an ad, but I wanted to let people know that www.nicheflix.com has the original 2-sided (Cantonese on one side, Mandarin on the other)(Universe?) DVD of Righting Wrongs. (Nicheflix is like Netflix but with DVDs from all different countries and regions)

I had never seen this film before and was shocked how good it was! The fight sequences are fantastic and there are scenes that literally shocked me with their outcomes.

Since it seems to be out of print, this may be the best way to check out this classic.

One quick related question... the end of the film has 1993 as the copyright date. Is that for the DVD? It looked to be part of the original credits.

by **Brian Thibodeau** » Wed Oct 12, 2005 4:23 am

If it says something like "Copyright 1993 Star TV," which I seem to recall it might, then its a blanket copyright that appears at the end of tons of Hong Kong DVDs, particularly those for Golden Harvest films. The details were once available online somewhere, but I wouldn't know where to look anymore. I believe Star TV probably renewed the rights or purchased the rights to a whole bunch of mostly Golden Harvest stuff (perhaps as GH was waning?), and it's those prints that were used for the Universe DVDs, and likely those by other companies as well. In fact, I think some of the new Fox DVDs may still bear this copyright notice at the end. Sorry to be so ambiguous here. Hopefully someone knows the exact details, but I know I'm in the ballpark.

by **Gaijin84** » Wed Oct 12, 2005 12:49 pm

ahhh - you're right...

looked again and at the end of the actual credits is says "1986 Paragon Films Limited," and the a quick black screen with the "1993 Star TV" one.

i should look more closely in the future!
thanks

by **Brian Thibodeau** » Wed Oct 12, 2005 1:23 pm

That Paragon Films copyright also appears on more Hong Kong films than I can count. It used to bother me back when I collected more VCDs than DVDs, because in addition to the inferior picture quality, the Paragon Films copyright, with all its fine print, would obscure the sequences that often ran under the closing credits - especially annoying on many 80's and 90's Jackie Chan films, where such footage is usually his stunt outtakes.

I decided to do a little searching for info on StarTV and found their website, which points out that "STAR controls over 20,000 hours of Indian and Chinese programming and also owns the world's largest contemporary Chinese film library, with more than 600 titles, featuring superstars including Jackie Chan, Chow Yun Fat and Bruce Lee. In partnership with leading companies in Asia, STAR businesses extend to filmed entertainment, television production, cable systems and wireless and digital services.":
http://www.startv.com/eng/frame_aboutus.cfm

This must mean Fortune Star, the new distributor of many HK DVDs and the Fox Video U.S. reissues, is a subsidiary of Star TV (similar logos too), which itself is a wholly owned subsidiary of News Corp, which also owns Fox...and on and on...

I've always wondered about the story behind Paragon, and how their name came to be on the end credits of such a high number of Hong Kong pictures - again, mostly Golden Harvest stuff. Did they scoop up distribution on a whole bunch of films and then keep the rights until the Star TV deal? Doesn't seem to be much about them on the web.

by **Gaijin84** » Wed Oct 12, 2005 2:06 pm

Very interesting - maybe the fact that they own Fortune Star lends credence to the possibility of a remastered release of Righting Wrongs?

Seeing how IVL (which is assume is part of Fortune Star) just put out that Sammo Hung Collection, maybe a Yuen Biao version with Righting Wrongs included is not far behind?

We can only hope!

by **MrBooth** » Wed Oct 12, 2005 4:24 pm

As I understand it, Star TV and Fortune Star are effectively the same thing (FS is the Home Video label). They bought the rights to a LOT of HK films (mostly the GH catalogue) back in 1993 and made video masters for broadcast - which is when the (c) 1993 Star TV billboards appeared at the end. They then licensed these video masters to various DVD/VCD companies, inc. Mei Ah, Universe & Mega Star, who duly released them on DVD.

Those rights expired 2 or 3 years ago, and all the old MA/U/MS discs went out of print, worrying some people quite a lot - but FS struck up a new deal with Deltamac, which resulted in the wave of DM releases that were in most respects an improvement on the old discs, but only slightly.

Simultaneously, one assumes, Fortune Star set about producing new hi-def remasters of their catalogue, which they then licensed to IVL for release in Hong Kong, and various other companies including Spectrum (Korea) and Hong Kong Legends (UK). The very first releases from these masters were actually from Fox in the US, which (as observed) is part of the same global NewsCorp conglomerate, and must have gotten rather favourable prices for the masters since they released them so cheaply.

That's about the size of it as I understand it

by **Tonic** » Thu Oct 13, 2005 8:44 am

Rats, that rental site is only for US residents. Still got my fingers crossed for that IVL release!

by **Gaijin84** » Fri Oct 14, 2005 4:32 am

As mentioned before, on that Universe DVD there are the 2 versions (Mandarin and Cantonese) of the film - were they both released at the same time in different areas? What is the reason for the drastically different endings for each? Censors? Chinese politics? Is the much darker and violent Cantonese version the one as was originally intended?

Very interested to know if there is any background story to this.

by **Knetan** » Fri Oct 14, 2005 4:55 am

hey,

SPOILERS!

export prints at the time usually had to have some kind of punishment inflicted upon anyone who breaks the law so it wasn't enough with Yuen dying at the end, he had to be sentenced in court (explains why Rothrock lives to salvage Yuen from the sea also). The darker HK version could definitely be perceived as the intended cut as that played for that market.

SPOILERS!!

by **Brian Thibodeau** » Fri Oct 14, 2005 2:06 pm

In the case of RIGHTING WRONGS, both cuts are at least logical within the framework of the story (although Yuen surviving that last fall in the Mandarin cut is a bit much).

The alternate ending of INFERNAL AFFAIRS, shot for the mainland Chinese market, is a high profile example of how censorship and archaic moral controls lead to often-ludicrous compromises in art. Interestingly, this ending is much more entertaining than the one in RIGHTING WRONGS, as its clear the filmmakers threw it together in a very short amount of time with little regard to how it fit with the rest of the film (and rightfully so: would YOU care?). There's no way that savvy Chinese audiences couldn't smell the deception. It must have been frustrating to sit through that entire film in, say, a Beijing movieplex, only to be met with an ending that simply goes against every intuition the story has helped nurture up to that point.

I'd love to see a list of films in which endings had to be altered, especially to the degree that they are in these two films. To see them would be a real eyebrow-raiser, I suspect.

by **Tonic** » Fri Oct 14, 2005 2:22 pm

For the mainland china dvd of infernal affairs they had to include the HK ending as well as the 'other'! Or at least in the set I have.

by **Brian Thibodeau** » Fri Oct 14, 2005 3:00 pm

For the mainland china dvd of infernal affairs they had to include the HK ending as well as the 'other'! Or at least in the set I have.

That's interesting. And uncommonly fair. Was the Hong Kong ending an extra feature? I suppose the mainland censors thought it would be OK to let people see as a DVD "extra" the inferior, morally questionable ending that played in the those wayward westernized countries. :wink:

by **Knetan** » Fri Oct 14, 2005 3:47 pm

hey,

That's interesting. And uncommonly fair. Was the Hong Kong ending an extra feature?

You could choose which ending to watch the film with.

by **Tonic** » Sat Oct 15, 2005 9:59 am

Before starting the film you had the choice of:

Hong Kong Theatrical Version

Second Version With Different Ending

This is from the mainland china set that kind of looks like a document folder with the string thingy to close the cover - as far as I know its official.

Righting Wrongs

Righting Wrongs

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