Member TheKungFuRobber Posted April 24, 2021 Member Share Posted April 24, 2021 (edited) Alongside my other projects, I have been quietly working away at a fanproject of the 1976 martial arts giallo 'The Hot, The Cool and the Vicious' which is one of my favorites. I did a custom a while back, and I will admit, I had made some terrible inroads upon the sources I used without paying much attention, including crushing the blacks, messing up the colours and stretching the picture, and authoring the disc in a way in which the subtitles never leave the screen until the next ones come along on most DVD players. I am frankly disgusted with this project and, and thus have decided to revisit it. The subtitles are copied straight over from the Eastern Heroes VHS tape line for line, and are pretty good. But this is one of those movies which I feel is better watched dubbed. The Widescreen video source is taken from the Eastern Heroes DVD release, which has had several odd hours of work done to it to make it presentable, which includes an overall cleanup of some of the more severe damage, some colour and contrast adjustment in scenes, upscaling the film to 1080p and reapplying filmstock grain to the film. Overall, whilst not perfect it looks much better. The aspect ratio has also been adjusted for 2.20:1, eliminating the horizontal stretching as seen on the EH DVD and VHS versions. The film is also presented at 23.976FPS. For the English audio, the Eastern Heroes DVD has a lot of low pass filtration which leaves it sounding rather flat, and there is a lot of high frequency noise which can't be removed, so I have opted to use the cleaner, albeit damaged audio from the Ocean Shores DVD, with segments taken from the Eastern Heroes DVD to fill in the blanks. Special features included on the custom project when released are planned to include a 1080p upscale of the sequel Challenge of Death in Mandarin with Hardcoded subtitles and optional English audio, the original theatrical trailer for HCV, a 16mm theatrical trailer for HCV and a newly commissioned trailer I put together myself. All in all, making this the ultimate presentation of the film until it does indeed get rescanned at 2K. I plan on also making new artwork for the film to compliment it. If anyone has any features they would like included or would like to even work on a commentary for the film, please don't hesitate to ask. I will post my blu ray encode copy complete with the artwork on Internet Archive free of charge to download in the public domain as soon as possible. I do not do these projects for the purposes of profit, this is purely a hobby for the sake of preserving these neglected films. This will be availible within a few weeks after the film has been posted to my store, where you can support future releases by ordering a physical copy of the film. Challenge of Death is going to be taken from Jamal's VHS custom, but it has been converted from NTSC back to PAL, and then to a proper 23.976FPS rate using an AVISynth script and cleaned up to remove a lot of the damage in turn as well. It's still naturally quite rough looking but improved. Screenshot from Challenge of Death which is still being worked on. Edited April 24, 2021 by TheKungFuRobber 9 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Member saltysam Posted April 24, 2021 Member Share Posted April 24, 2021 (edited) I picked up your release with the messed up subs on standalones,it was immensely frustrating. Will pick this up from your store when it's available. Edited April 24, 2021 by saltysam 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Member TheKungFuRobber Posted April 24, 2021 Author Member Share Posted April 24, 2021 9 minutes ago, saltysam said: I picked up your release with the messed up subs on standalones,it was immensely frustrating. Will pick this up from your store when it's available. yeah it was horrible, sorry you had to suffer that nonsense. 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Member ShawAngela Posted April 24, 2021 Member Share Posted April 24, 2021 So, there won't be the Mandarin language with the English subtitles in addition to the English subbed, or did I misunderstand what I read ? 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Member TheKungFuRobber Posted April 25, 2021 Author Member Share Posted April 25, 2021 1 hour ago, ShawAngela said: So, there won't be the Mandarin language with the English subtitles in addition to the English subbed, or did I misunderstand what I read ? There will be Mandarin audio. Sorry I forgot to mention. 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Member saltysam Posted April 25, 2021 Member Share Posted April 25, 2021 This is in my top 10 , lot of nostalgia value for me as i saw the original language version in a UK Cinema circa 1980. Hopefully available for order soon. 6 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Member Ninja Sinai Posted April 25, 2021 Member Share Posted April 25, 2021 17 hours ago, TheKungFuRobber said: Alongside my other projects, I have been quietly working away at a fanproject of the 1976 martial arts giallo 'The Hot, The Cool and the Vicious' which is one of my favorites. I did a custom a while back, and I will admit, I had made some terrible inroads upon the sources I used without paying much attention, including crushing the blacks, messing up the colours and stretching the picture, and authoring the disc in a way in which the subtitles never leave the screen until the next ones come along on most DVD players. I am frankly disgusted with this project and, and thus have decided to revisit it. The subtitles are copied straight over from the Eastern Heroes VHS tape line for line, and are pretty good. But this is one of those movies which I feel is better watched dubbed. The Widescreen video source is taken from the Eastern Heroes DVD release, which has had several odd hours of work done to it to make it presentable, which includes an overall cleanup of some of the more severe damage, some colour and contrast adjustment in scenes, upscaling the film to 1080p and reapplying filmstock grain to the film. Overall, whilst not perfect it looks much better. The aspect ratio has also been adjusted for 2.20:1, eliminating the horizontal stretching as seen on the EH DVD and VHS versions. The film is also presented at 23.976FPS. For the English audio, the Eastern Heroes DVD has a lot of low pass filtration which leaves it sounding rather flat, and there is a lot of high frequency noise which can't be removed, so I have opted to use the cleaner, albeit damaged audio from the Ocean Shores DVD, with segments taken from the Eastern Heroes DVD to fill in the blanks. Special features included on the custom project when released are planned to include a 1080p upscale of the sequel Challenge of Death in Mandarin with Hardcoded subtitles and optional English audio, the original theatrical trailer for HCV, a 16mm theatrical trailer for HCV and a newly commissioned trailer I put together myself. All in all, making this the ultimate presentation of the film until it does indeed get rescanned at 2K. I plan on also making new artwork for the film to compliment it. If anyone has any features they would like included or would like to even work on a commentary for the film, please don't hesitate to ask. I will post my blu ray encode copy complete with the artwork on Internet Archive free of charge to download in the public domain as soon as possible. I do not do these projects for the purposes of profit, this is purely a hobby for the sake of preserving these neglected films. This will be availible within a few weeks after the film has been posted to my store, where you can support future releases by ordering a physical copy of the film. Challenge of Death is going to be taken from Jamal's VHS custom, but it has been converted from NTSC back to PAL, and then to a proper 23.976FPS rate using an AVISynth script and cleaned up to remove a lot of the damage in turn as well. It's still naturally quite rough looking but improved. Screenshot from Challenge of Death which is still being worked on. Your excellent work is much appreciated my friend!! I always found the English dub very tinny and lacking any Bass from the Eastern Heroes DVD. Another blunder was that EH forgot to include the English subs on their DVD! By the way is it possible for you to use your special Kung Fu Robber remastering skills to make Sword of Justice and Choi Lee Fat Kung Fu look like Celestial releases? 😁 5 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Member MobFu1972 Posted April 27, 2021 Member Share Posted April 27, 2021 Tommy Lee is one bad as villian! I Can't wait to get a Blu-ray of this. I have had my Tai Seng DVD forever. I will be a great upgrade!!!!! I have never seen the sequel, that sounds like an awesome bonus👏👏👏👍👍👍❗ 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Member sifu iron perm Posted April 27, 2021 Member Share Posted April 27, 2021 Oh My! I can't wait for this, absolutely needed a better print! 5 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Member TheKungFuRobber Posted April 27, 2021 Author Member Share Posted April 27, 2021 20 minutes ago, sifu iron perm said: Oh My! I can't wait for this, absolutely needed a better print! sorry mate it's the same print from the eastern heroes disc unfortunately, but I've done some stuff to make it a bit more palletable 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Member saltysam Posted May 19, 2021 Member Share Posted May 19, 2021 Really looking forward to this, one of my favourites, any update KFR? 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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