Buddha Assassinator (1979) Fan Restoration Project

[TheKungFuRobber]

For the last few months, on the side I've been working on another fan restoration project of the 1979 martial arts classic Buddha Assassinator. Working on the film has been rather tedious, the source used is a the scan of a German 35mm cinema print as found on the German megamax DVD, this means that the project is going to be based on an upscale.

I have used Video Enhance AI to upscale the film to 2K, which first had to be graded and denoised using an AVISynth script. This is a delicate process as I wanted to guarentee no detail loss.

Next I used the scene detect function in DVD Pheonix tools to help with the process of automating the process needed to remove as much of the print damage as possible from the film. The examples of the CONTINUOUS DAMAGE from the screenshots don't even show half of it. In places the print has some very nasty looking damage on it.

Here are some examples of the results.

If you can or would like to help out with this project in any way or would like to provide high quality audio sources, translation help, or artwork to help finish the project please let me know. This is going to be offered for free as a FAN PRESERVATION PROJECT on internet archive and on my store in the form of a blu ray disc.

Edited March 2, 2021 by TheKungFuRobber

[Super Ninja]

I'll be getting the blu once it's out.

[TheKungFuRobber]

Edited March 2, 2021 by TheKungFuRobber

[TheKungFuRobber]

 

[TheKungFuRobber]

You'll have to excuse the low audio pitch in the video. The audio you're hearing won't be in the final version, it is the audio from the PAL DVD which has been pitch corrected after having been sped up, and there is no way to reverse that without quality loss. As such, I will be using the Mandarin audio from the VCD.

[TheKungFuRobber]

To give you an idea of how badly the VCD is cropped, which for now is the only way to watch the film with Englisb subtitles.

[venom10463]

Awesome work as usual @TheKungFuRobber

[TheKungFuRobber]

Looking for someone who has good editing skills to cut together a trailer for the project when I'm finished putting it together and getting it subtitled. If anyone would like to help, just for something to do, please get in touch.

[TheKungFuRobber]

 

[thundered mantis]

That looks much better than the German DVD!! Will be on the line for sure!!