Kirk Wong's THE CLUB

[gordo]

Hi everyone! New here. Just wondering if anyone on here has seen this film as I recently viewed Cinema of Vengeance and saw where this was Kirk Wongs first film. Ive tried to locate it, but I missed my chance on ebay. Anyone seen it?

[Mike Thomason]

I saw this one many, many moons ago when Eastern Heroes released it on VHS in the UK -- it was quite superb (as Michael Chan Wai Man was fresh off the street, out of the triads, and this was one of his first starring roles where the character he was playing reflected his lifestyle).

However, the EH tape was inadvertedly cut (they had an option to go with a widescreen Mandarin version, or a fullscreen Cantonese [original language] edition; they went the Cantonese option). The master they were supplied was trimmed of all its brief sexual content and nudity -- a sequence in a strip-club was completely removed (which probably had more to do with the unlicenced use of Fleetwood Mac's "Tusk" than anything else); the violence, some quite graphic, was intact however. The "club" of the title has a dual meaning, as it refers to both the club that Norman Tsui and Michael Chan run as well as the "club" (triad) they belong to. Years later, in the dusty back corner of a local (Perth, Western Australia) Chinatown video outlet I found the uncut version...in Cantonese no less (so an uncensored Cantonese print does, or did, exist)!

It's quite a good film, but very grounded and gritty ala much of the new wave material that came out of the late seventies/early eighties and well worth tracking down if you can find it. I had hoped some enterprising HK DVD distributor would one day release it -- but being an independent production as well as, from what I read, triad funded it may be some time before rights issues are cleared for it to resurface, if at all. There is a distinct possibility that all that may be left of it are sub-par video masters? It seems unlikely, given its pedigree, that negatives may still exist...unless they turn up in a foreign territory where it was sold in the eighties.

Hope this helps,
Michael

[mcmoinsen]

"where life is cheap and the violence bloody"

[Mike Thomason]

Yep...that's the old cut version as released in the UK! Oh gawd, if there was one thing I hated about EH (even when I used to write for them) it those godawful catch-phrases and bylines they used to come up with! Complete and utter rubbish!

[mcmoinsen]

Found another tape on orientalfilms which is advertised as FULL UNCUT VERSION. I never heard of this shop though, as I'm not collecting VHS tapes.

[Mike Thomason]

Same version -- different cover. It's still the UK Eastern Heroes tape...and it's still the cut version (which is missing around 4m of footage). EH, like a lot of UK distributors, could get away with advertising films as "uncut" because when a film is pre-cut, or simply missing footage as THE CLUB was, before censorship submission and is passed without further cuts upon submission then "technically" under British law the film is "uncut". Fact of the matter was -- the film on the EH tapes was cut in every version they released. They never got a hold of the uncut print.

The only uncut version I ever saw, I think, was put out by Ocean Shores (?) on VHS literally donkey's years ago...

[fartbubble]

I've got a boot of this somewhere around here from my tape trading days. Don't know it was cut or not. Now if only I could afford to upgrade my collection of 516(last time I counted) tapes, I would be in heaven. But man do i miss the old days of collecting, where I would read a Far East Flix catalog or Asian Trash Cinema looking for new movies to find. Since DVDs, I sure have gotten spoiled getting new releases with in a month instead of a year or two.

oh Dragon, what movie is you pic from? Seems familer, but I can't place it.

[gordo]

Thanks guys I do have a question though....I don't have a PAL vhs deck or I would jump on those. Anyone know where to find one in NTSC?

[Brian Thibodeau]

But man do i miss the old days of collecting, where I would read a Far East Flix catalog or Asian Trash Cinema......

--shudder--

I too was one of the many who used to use ATC as one of my early sources for finding this stuff. When it's publisher released a book of collected reviews, I could then use my growing collection of tapes and, especially, VCDs to try and correct all the glaring errors.

But that's a story best reserved for another thread.

Oh wait, there already is one.

All in all, though, I really CAN'T say I miss those days. I did for awhile, because the sense of "discovery" had passed somewhat once I found massive Chinese malls stocked to overflowing with VCD shops (and then DVD shops). And yet, every time someone posts a link in these threads for some old gem like THE CLUB, I'm very tempted to order the darned things just to be a completist - at least until I see the prices (5-10 POUNDS for a VHS tape? HA!)

[ebonysbud]

Amazon.com has it cheap. I buy most of my kung fu movies through them. Hope this helps.

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/searc ... +Vengeance

Ebonysbud

[Brian Thibodeau]

The link only brings up various copies of the so-so documentary Cinema of Vengenace plus a couple of horrid Crash Cinema boots. I can't find THE CLUB at Amazon.com, unless it's been retitled. Amazon's not bad for the more suspect American releases, if you're comfortable with those, but most of the cheaper stuff, from companies like Crash, Xenon, Brentwood, are shoddy transfers of full-screen dubbed U.S. Shaw Brothers prints or old Taiwanese martial arts stuff. As such, many of the titles are much better served by the Hong Kong companies like MegaStar, MeiAh, Fortune Star and Celestial/IVL (the company behind several hundred Shaw brothers remasters over the past couple years). And they're often just as cheap at place like www.dddhouse.com, www.hkflix.com, www.yesasia.com and others. As you're working on a book, I'd strongly recommend sourcing titles from the countries of origin whenever possible: there's usually significant differences between the original Chinese versions and the U.S. bastardizations.

[gordo]

Thanks guys. If by some chance anyone on here has on old VHS copy they want to get rid of, or come across one(ntsc), please let me know or post it. My luck on finding it is just not good.

But while where on grim violent 80's triad films, can someone offer some similar reccomendations?

[Mike Thomason]

oh Dragon, what movie is you pic from? Seems familer, but I can't place it.

Oh, that...it's Kwok Choy's little known half-brother Bok Choy in a scene from the even lesser known 1976 Malaysian martial arts film "Miracle Son of the Rainforest" (hence the greenery in the background). Maybe one of the rarest martial arts films known to mankind...










...Maybe.

[fartbubble]

Hmm, could of sworn I've seen that shot. I dunno, Pot made movies blend into each other for me.

[Mike Thomason]

Oh, that...it's Kwok Choy's little known half-brother Bok Choy in a scene from the even lesser known 1976 Malaysian martial arts film "Miracle Son of the Rainforest" (hence the greenery in the background). Maybe one of the rarest martial arts films known to mankind...

I kid! I kid!
It's Ronald Cheng from DRAGON RELOADED!
(I thought "Bok Choy", or Chinese cabbage, would've been the dead giveaway! )

[fartbubble]

I knew Bok Choy sounded familiar, but didn't connect the two. Hmm a sequel to Dragon Loaded, slipped right by me. Going to have to track down a copy.