'FATAL NEEDLES FATAL FIST (1980)' Fan Restoration Project

[TheKungFuRobber]

Hello guys. As you guys may know, I have been absent from the community for a very long time, I have not posted anything on here and have had many significant issues to deal with, including a massive hard disk failiure in which I lost 75% of my things including many custom projects I was working on. However, as a positive update I have been working on a new custom project; a complete fan restoration of the classic 'Fatal Needles vs Fatal Fist' AKA Kung Fu Hercules, an independent production directed by Taiwanese director Lee Tso Nam (Exit the Dragon, Fist of Fury 2) and starring Wong Tao in his prime along with Lo Leih (Five Fingers of Death).  This custom project will have lots of awesome special features including;

* Remastered 1:85.1 Anamorphic Widescreen progressive version from HD master (best available print, not 2:35 but better transfer than Arabic VHS based custom);

* Mandarin mono audio with removable English subtitles;

* English Dub mono;

* Audio commentary from Hong Kong Film Expert Ric Meyers and martial artist Bobby Samuels;

* Drunk humorous audio commentary from myself (TheKungFuRobber);

* Deleted Scenes from Taiwan print;

* Interview with star Don Wong Tao;

* New DVD artwork (need help with this if any skilled graphic artists would like to help out).

This custom DVD will be availible on Asian DVD Club when the work is done, and hopefully I will be able to trade phyisical copies of my custom DVD's when I get my shit together, which will be authored on the best quality DVD-R's availible complete with Criterion DVD cases and complete artwork, fully tested using high end equipment.

If anyone has any other things they would like to see on this DVD, such as different language audio tracks and possibly French subtitles do tell me, because I really want to give this film the release it deserves. Love you guys (no homo). x

[DragonClaws]

21 hours ago, TheKungFuRobber said:

Hello guys. As you guys may know, I have been absent from the community for a very long time, I have not posted anything on here and have had many significant issues to deal with, including a massive hard disk failiure in which I lost 75% of my things including many custom projects I was working on.

Great to see you back on the forums, sorry to hear about your technical failure. Nice to see it hasnt stopped you trying to give these old school movies a decent/better release.

 

Wong tao fights of Cheng Fu-Hung and friend, in a scene from Fatal Needles Fatal Fists(1978)

[TibetanWhiteCrane]

Love that movie. 

[De Ming Li]

Awesome, I'd buy it just for your commentary 

[TheKungFuRobber]

New transfer is ready. Picture quality is absolutely pristine, other than the blemishes and scratches visible on the print. Extensive colour correction has been carried out to restore the film to it's original color. Transfer is uncompressed and stored on it's own hard drive, as it is over 500GB in size. Will upload a 5 minute preview to YouTube with English dub tonight. Now to work on making some artwork

Kind regards, and thanks for all the positive feedback.

[TheKungFuRobber]

What would be absolutely awesome is if I can get into contact with Wong Tao over Skype, so we could do a commentary on the film together. That would be really sweet.

[TheKungFuRobber]

 

[TheKungFuRobber]

Made a draft of the DVD cover today. Took a while, but I'm impressed enough for one day's work. I have appended a high resolution JPEG version of the cover below for you folks to have a gander at for yourselves, so feel free to offer any advice or constructive criticism.  

[bigrogie]

1 hour ago, TheKungFuRobber said:

Made a draft of the DVD cover today. Took a while, but I'm impressed enough for one day's work. I have appended a high resolution JPEG version of the cover below for you folks to have a gander at for yourselves, so feel free to offer any advice or constructive criticism.  

Very nice work.

[De Ming Li]

I think the cover is perfect, any date estimated for release?

[TheKungFuRobber]

39 minutes ago, De Ming Li said:

I think the cover is perfect, any date estimated for release?

Thanks. *GRUNT* I'm not entirely sure when release will be ready to be honest. I still need to write out a subtitle script for the film, which will take a while, then I just need to animate some menus and other things. Maybe a couple months at most given the amount of work to be done and the little spare time I have, but should be done putting it together by February hopefully. BUT STILL, it's an excellent film, in my opinion the best film which Wong Tao has starred as a lead (not counting films where he was a co star with more well known actors such as 'Secret Rivals' or 'Hot, Cool and Vicious').

[TibetanWhiteCrane]

Love the cover, but maybe I'm missing something here... how is that clip widescreen? It's the same frame as the all the fullscreen clips on Youtube.

[TheKungFuRobber]

6 hours ago, TibetanWhiteCrane said:

Love the cover, but maybe I'm missing something here... how is that clip widescreen? It's the same frame as the all the fullscreen clips on Youtube.

That's because I was working with a transfer which had been pan/scanned to 1.66:1 in the telecine process, which is about equal to 16:10. The image has been matted to 1.85:1, sacrificing about 5% of the image on the top and bottom of the transfer. If you would like me to I could put the film in unmatted 1.66:1 on disk 2, but the image will be a 4:3 letterbox.

[sifu iron perm]

great job my man! i hope to see it soon.

 

 

[TheKungFuRobber]

Well, I have decided to make a basic promotional trailer with clips of the film set to '80s music for you guys to look at. Enjoy.

 

[DragonClaws]

18 hours ago, TheKungFuRobber said:

Made a draft of the DVD cover today. Took a while, but I'm impressed enough for one day's work. I have appended a high resolution JPEG version of the cover below for you folks to have a gander at for yourselves, so feel free to offer any advice or constructive criticism.  

Nice to see you made use of the image I posted

 

[TheKungFuRobber]

5 hours ago, DragonClaws said:

Nice to see you made use of the image I posted

 

Indeed, although my use of your poster scans was minimal to say the least as they are only small images on the back of my cover. I wanted to create something new rather than just doing a standard clean up of the original poster scan and making a DVD cover around it.

[KUNG FU BOB]

 @TheKungFuRobber first of all, welcome back to the forum.

I'm very sorry to hear about you losing so much stuff, especially your hard work. That sucks! I've been there myself man.

As far as this project goes, it sounds great, and lots of extras!

If I can throw my vote in about the aspect ratio, I'd definitely prefer to see it un-matted. If there's extra picture info, then why not? Some of the fights in this are filmed kind of tight, so I think it would only improve the action to be able to see more.

I really like your cover design. Very nice. My only suggestions would be to add "English Dub" under the "language" slot, as it currently only says Mandarin. Also, if you made the top photo and/or the title on the back cover smaller you could list the "Special Features". Since there's a nice selection of them, it would be good to have them noted there.

[TheKungFuRobber]

6 hours ago, KUNG FU BOB said:

 @TheKungFuRobber first of all, welcome back to the forum.

I'm very sorry to hear about you losing so much stuff, especially your hard work. That sucks! I've been there myself man.

As far as this project goes, it sounds great, and lots of extras!

If I can throw my vote in about the aspect ratio, I'd definitely prefer to see it un-matted. If there's extra picture info, then why not? Some of the fights in this are filmed kind of tight, so I think it would only improve the action to be able to see more.

I really like your cover design. Very nice. My only suggestions would be to add "English Dub" under the "language" slot, as it currently only says Mandarin. Also, if you made the top photo and/or the title on the back cover smaller you could list the "Special Features". Since there's a nice selection of them, it would be good to have them noted there.

Gotcha. I actually have a VHS rip made by thuglife of an Arabic print with a much wider aspect ratio of 2.20:1, which has burned on French and Arabic subtitles. It needs some work but if I can get it cleaned up and you'd prefer to have a wider version along with my restored version, I can put it on Disk 2 along with the custom subtitles and other audio tracks. I'll even replace the opening credits with the ones from the Chinese version.

[KUNG FU BOB]

8 hours ago, TheKungFuRobber said:

Gotcha. I actually have a VHS rip made by thuglife of an Arabic print with a much wider aspect ratio of 2.20:1, which has burned on French and Arabic subtitles. It needs some work but if I can get it cleaned up and you'd prefer to have a wider version along with my restored version, I can put it on Disk 2 along with the custom subtitles and other audio tracks. I'll even replace the opening credits with the ones from the Chinese version.

Yes please! Damn, so cool of you.

[DragonClaws]

 

Ditto what @KUNG FU BOB said, it would be great to have a WideScreen version on their.

On 27/11/2017 at 8:45 PM, TheKungFuRobber said:

New transfer is ready. Picture quality is absolutely pristine, other than the blemishes and scratches visible on the print.

I dont mind a few scratches of blemishes on these old movies, it adds to the character and reminds you they were put on film, long before digital formats.

[Asmo]

The widescreen version would be great to have, as an option.

Curious to the provenance of the HD master, if you can comment on it.

[TheKungFuRobber]

On 03/12/2017 at 2:06 AM, Asmo said:

The widescreen version would be great to have, as an option.

Curious to the provenance of the HD master, if you can comment on it.

The 2:35 version will be on Disk 2, and the other "new" master is from a Laserdisc capture so it's not HD. Sorry for the mistake in the description. Both versions are of high quality, but the 2:35.1 version is from a badly damaged VHS transfer with lots of film rolls so it's an extra.

[Asmo]

4 hours ago, TheKungFuRobber said:

The 2:35 version will be on Disk 2, and the other "new" master is from a Laserdisc capture so it's not HD. Sorry for the mistake in the description. Both versions are of high quality, but the 2:35.1 version is from a badly damaged VHS transfer with lots of film rolls so it's an extra.

No worries. A well done laserdisc transfer would still be a nice upgrade.

[TheKungFuRobber]

Well time for another update. So, it is with regret that I must inform you, as it turns out that the VHS transfer from thuglife that I thought to be 2:35.1 is cropped and not 2:35.1, as well as being of truly shit quality, and is actually also cut by about 40 second. Given the poor quality of the transfer, it will not be going on my DVD anymore.

Sorry folks, I'm actually embarrassed. I had only had a small glance at the VHS transfer and due to my poor vision I never noticed. The only real advantage to having the print is it does have French hardsubs, so if anyone wants me to write French subtitles for the custom DVD please let me know.