Mike Thomason wrote:Brian Thibodeau wrote:I watched the entire LEGEND ABOUT HUNTING GHOST series...These are Malaysian...
When I saw this, I immediately show my wife this thread and asked her if she'd heard of them -- the answer was a big, fat no. Malaysian TV is pretty conservative, so if there's scantily clad women in the series I very much doubt it would have been produced for television (we're talking about a country that pixelates images of women's
cleavage so as to obscure such images in its various media outlets -- Malaysia is VERY conservative!). But she did tell me that the title on the box you have pictured above is
"Scared to Death".
I was actually hoping you'd chime in here! Kinda figured our Malaysian correspondent(s) would be able to add some thoughts! I was fairly certain they weren't made for TV, but wanted to float that one out there just to cover the bases. I've heard you mention (perhaps at another forum?) that the Malaysian home video market is a little more open (or perhaps harder to enforce with all the boots?), so perhaps these were made for that market? Heck, they could have been made for export only for all I know.
The women in parts 1-4 are most definitely scantily clad, though I'm certain
non-Malaysian viewers might find it rather par-for-the-course since we're much more used to such images in everyday life. The swimsuits are all one-pieces until that third episode where Tim Tam reads the complaint mail, and then all the sudden they're wearing bikinis!
The girls in episode 4, however, are back to the more conservative one-pieces and their shorts ensembles now include those long, colourful Indian-style scarves draped around their necks and shoulders. That's why I had to wonder if Tam had maybe taken some heat for episode 3.
Just out of curiosity, and since you're likely to know, would the conservative attitudes towards media portrayals of scantily-clad women also apply in the "real world" of Malaysia? I mean, I know some of the country's censorship issues from what I read in papers and online (including the recent brouhaha over the rather tame version of Playboy put out there), but I assume women are at least free to wear swimwear under the appropriate conditions (like a day at the beach, etc.) if they're not forbidden to do so by religion etc.? I can't imagine Tim Tam and his crew were actually running afoul of any laws in taking the girls to what seem to be remote but public spaces without a lot of clothing, but then again, there really didn't seem to be any people visible for miles in some of those scenes!
But she did tell me that the title on the box you have pictured above is "Scared to Death".
Crap! Which one? I found subtitles for all of them on a retail website today and added them as aliases, but if there's room for something more accurate...
Hey! If they're Malaysian titles...why are they in the DB?
I'll take 100% full responsibility for this, but hopefully I can be given the benefit of the doubt—and there was a LOT of doubt about these.
At first, I only had the second installment on VCD (picked up at a local Chinese video shop) and to be honest, with so much of it set in graveyards and derelict buildings at night, it was very difficult to figure out where, exactly, the action was taking place. Everyone was clearly speaking Cantonese (regional dialect of it, perhaps? Not sure), so I had little choice but to assume it was from Hong Kong (for the time being) as I could find absolutely
nothing about any of these programs on the web. Most of the retailers who still sell them oh-so-helpfully list them as just "Chinese" which also hobbles attempts to regionalize them. In fact, our best bet to do so probably would have been you or your wife (and even then, there still aren't very many visual clues), but I think the odds of you folks even bothering with programs like these were pretty slim!
It wasn't until I watched the third one yesterday that I picked up the mention of one of the sites being in Kuala Lumpur, and then noted the credits (the longest of any in the set, strangely) made additional references to Malaysian companies.
Part 5, which is different in style to the other four, is the most easily identifiable with it's mix of faces, pan-religious mysticism and languages (the host speaks Cantonese to the camera, but in Malay [correct me if that's an improper term!] to the rural men with guns). But of course, I watched that one dead last.
Naturally, by this time, all five films had long been in the database thanks to our screenshots, so yes, we now know they don't
really belong there, but since there seems to be no Malaysian Movie Database forthcoming anytime soon where I can place all the screenshots and reviews, I'm hoping the work of Mr. Bearserk and myself will not be in vain.
I like to think that somewhere in this world there's another curious soul who might stumble across these in a bargain bin somewhere, and we can at least save him the frustration of a long and fruitless search for information!
(yes I have this too and watched all extras including commentaries). Hmmm, another influence to Evil Dead.
: dumb title aside, I LOVE MARIA is a blast. It's the kind of science-fiction that could only come from Hong Kong, but then again, so is AVENGING FIST, which is not without merit (and tonnes of computer effects), though it's probably best viewed with more modest expectations; under such circumstances, it's fairly fun.
