Soul of Chiba (1977) & Fighting Fist (1992): Rarescope Sonny Chiba Double Bill

[Fist of the Heavenly Sky]

1 minute ago, DragonClaws said:

Wonder if the Gemran release I mentioned is a public domain release?, if thats the case I dont wanna pay a great deal for it. Amazon claims its UNCUT and in widescreen, according to thier page for the release.

I think @One Armed Boxer could chip into this topic. I'm not sure what scenes they could've cut from the movie, since even the youube cut contained lots of brutal and intense scenes as it is.

[One Armed Boxer]

16 hours ago, Fist of the Heavenly Sky said:

Considering the Thailand setting, he could've settled for doing a Japanese pseudo remake of Big Boss/Duel of Fists/The Tournament instead.

Reading this felt like my brain was being prodded with a fork.

I'd say 50% of my enjoyment from 'Soul of Chiba' came from the craziness of the story, had it been a remake of the standard plot tropes found in the movies mentioned, for me it wouldn't have been half (literally, based on my percentage) as enjoyable.

15 hours ago, DragonClaws said:

Amazon claims its UNCUT and in widescreen, according to thier page for the release.

15 hours ago, Fist of the Heavenly Sky said:

I think @One Armed Boxer could chip into this topic.

The version I have is the one being alluded to in the thread title.  As mentioned in an earlier post, it contains 2 versions of the movie (both from different prints), one is the English dubbed version, and one is the Japanese language version, which runs 5 minutes longer (I assume this has to be the same version being referred to by amazon).  What the additional scenes are though I couldn't tell you, as I only watched the dubbed version of it.

 

[Fist of the Heavenly Sky]

39 minutes ago, One Armed Boxer said:

Reading this felt like my brain was being prodded with a fork.

I can understand you not being into Bruce Lee, but not Sonny Chiba? Golly gee, you're so hard to please! 

[Takuma]

7 hours ago, DragonClaws said:

Which version do you own?.

I've searched for the title on Amazon, and there's a UNCUT Widescreen German release, anyone know what the audio options are like on this release?.

The screencaps in my review are from the German dvd. The aspect ratio (1.66:1) should be the same as the US ENG Dub Rarescope version (1.66:1 but sometimes mistakenly claimed to be 1.78:1 or 1.85:1... it isn't! And the JP language version on Rarescope is even tighter, around 1.56:1. The original should be 2.35:1... but I'm not 100% sure), however, the German disc is anamorphic and the quality should be a bit better. Audio is English and German only. The English audio sounds rather muffled, the German track is clearer but obviously useless for being in German. I don't have the Rarescope disc so I can't do direct comparison, though. It's most likely the same cut and source (the ENG version) though.

 

[DragonClaws]

9 hours ago, Takuma said:

The screencaps in my review are from the German dvd. The aspect ratio (1.66:1) should be the same as the US ENG Dub Rarescope version (1.66:1 but sometimes mistakenly claimed to be 1.78:1 or 1.85:1... it isn't! And the JP language version on Rarescope is even tighter, around 1.56:1. The original should be 2.35:1... but I'm not 100% sure), however, the German disc is anamorphic and the quality should be a bit better. Audio is English and German only. The English audio sounds rather muffled, the German track is clearer but obviously useless for being in German. I don't have the Rarescope disc so I can't do direct comparison, though. It's most likely the same cut and source (the ENG version) though.

Thanks for the reply @Takuma, much appreciated.

[Fist of the Heavenly Sky]

20 hours ago, One Armed Boxer said:

I'd say 50% of my enjoyment from 'Soul of Chiba' came from the craziness of the story, had it been a remake of the standard plot tropes found in the movies mentioned, for me it wouldn't have been half (literally, based on my percentage) as enjoyable.

Even craziness needs to have some rhyme or reason behind it, but that's just me. I can appreciate SOC for the fact it boils down the martial arts genre to it's barest essence, but that's about it. It's hard not to consider the movie a misguided project in the absence of a basic plot, characterization and purpose behind the action. Chiba could've filmed the same exact movie had he stayed in Japan. Yeah, you could say I'm quite fanboyish in regards to him 

[One Armed Boxer]

I recently decided to subject myself to the other movie in this release, 'Fighting Fist'.  Despite the negative comments, when you have Sonny Chiba, Chin Kar Lok, Ken Lo, and Sibelle Hu in the same flick, I figured how bad could it really be?  Check out my full review below -

http://cityonfire.com/fighting-fist-aka-lady-cop-in-fury-1992-review/

[saltysam]

Soul Of Chiba

Completely batshit crazy Sonny Chiba romp makes little sense, instead it's probably best to just sit back and let the madness unfold. Sonny sees his parents murdered as a child, he's taken in by a kindly master (the same wise owl who advised Bruce to go into hiding for 10 years in Man,The Myth) master gets bumped off by a traitorous student who then kick's  Chiba's butt. He swears revenge, from there the plot moves on to a drug dealing story involving Krung Srivilai (another Man,The Myth actor) as a debonair dealer who is aided by undercover cop Tadashi Yamashita. Later on Shiomi Etsuko joins the fun for an all too brief time.German dvd is ok but cropped at 1.78.1, english dubbed.

[NoKUNGFUforYU]

9 hours ago, saltysam said:

Soul Of Chiba

Completely batshit crazy Sonny Chiba romp makes little sense, instead it's probably best to just sit back and let the madness unfold. Sonny sees his parents murdered as a child, he's taken in by a kindly master (the same wise owl who advised Bruce to go into hiding for 10 years in Man,The Myth) master gets bumped off by a traitorous student who then kick's  Chiba's butt. He swears revenge, from there the plot moves on to a drug dealing story involving Krung Srivilai (another Man,The Myth actor) as a debonair dealer who is aided by undercover cop Tadashi Yamashita. Later on Shiomi Etsuko joins the fun for an all too brief time.German dvd is ok but cropped at 1.78.1, english dubbed.

Saw this in the grindhouse back when it came out in the USA at the Lux theater in Oakland. 3 movies for a dollar. This one was worth about 35 cents, LOL! Still decent mayhem in a few parts and the Kung Fu villain Sam Wat played by Luk Chuen left an impression as one of the high points. Yamashita was one of the big self promoting masters back then and all over Black Belt magazine with his Nunchaku and Tonfa. I found it strange that a guy that was barely 30 and claimed to be a Japanese fighting champion wound up doing kata and demos when he got here. I have to say, Byong Yu was a dirt bag (star of the Association) but he was always up for a match, up into his 40s.

 

[Killer Meteor]

On 1/17/2019 at 2:23 PM, saltysam said:

Soul Of Chiba

Completely batshit crazy Sonny Chiba romp makes little sense, instead it's probably best to just sit back and let the madness unfold. Sonny sees his parents murdered as a child, he's taken in by a kindly master (the same wise owl who advised Bruce to go into hiding for 10 years in Man,The Myth) master gets bumped off by a traitorous student who then kick's  Chiba's butt. He swears revenge, from there the plot moves on to a drug dealing story involving Krung Srivilai (another Man,The Myth actor) as a debonair dealer who is aided by undercover cop Tadashi Yamashita. Later on Shiomi Etsuko joins the fun for an all too brief time.German dvd is ok but cropped at 1.78.1, english dubbed.

I've just watched this. The action is a lot better then Chiba's usual as the camera stays still so you can appreciate the action! It feels more like a HK movie then a Japanese one.

[DrNgor]

Soul of Chiba (1977) - aka Soul of Bruce Lee - Apparently, this is Sonny Chiba's only Hong Kong film from the old school era, and boy it's a doozy. I like how the tragic backstory regarding Chiba's character takes all of 10 seconds to unfold on film. The plot is a wacky mishmash of several different stories that eventually meet up, albeit incoherently. Adult Chiba is studying martial arts in Thailand when his master is stabbed to death by the school's top student, played by Luk Chuen (aka Yashiyoshi Shikamura, of Ninja Over the Great Wall). Chiba challenges him but gets whooped, retreating to the boondocks where he's nursed back to health by a Thai karate master/herbalist/seamstress, played by Etsuko Shihomi.

In the other plot thread, a Japanese drug dealer of Thai extraction(!), played by Krung Srivilai, has just taken over the HK market and is doing business in Thailand. The Thai drug runners try to screw him over, while Krung is screwing his vendor's woman. Krung is injured and saved by Chiba, who just shows up for no logical reason whatsoever. Krung is directed by the Thai drug enforcer, played by Tadashi Yamashita (The Octagon and American Ninja), to a house where he can recover from his wounds. It turns out that Krung and Tadashi are long lost brothers--their father was a Japanese man who fell in love with a Thai woman, but ended up going back to Japan and taking one son with him. Tadashi is captured and tortured for letting Krung get away, and Krung vows to save his brother.

Meanwhile, Chiba is electrocuting himself in order to improve his karate, while ingesting large quantities of narcotics to forget the pain of losing his master. Krung saves Tadashi, but is killed himself in an escape attempt that involves a speed boat and a parachute. Tadashi finds Chiba in his forest shack--don't ask me how--and the two team up to fight Luk Chuen and his band of killers, including Bolo Yeung in a goofy hat and a bunch of men possessed by monkeys.

I'm going to assume that Luk Chuen choreographed his, as he had been choreographing films in Hong Kong since the early 70s, most notably The Golden Connection and Jackie Chan's The Magnificent Bodyguards. Because of this, the fights are actually better than many of Chiba's Japanese movies. Chiba's moves look crisper and more varied than they do in some of his Japanese movies. This is probably the first film to use the technique of slowing down the action and then speeding it up for the blow, like what Zack Snyder did in 300. It looks great here. Tadashi Yamashita is full Bronson Lee mode here, but even imitating the Little Dragon, he looks like an inferior fighter next to Chiba. He comes alive briefly during his fight with Bolo Yeung at the end, but this is largely Sonny Chiba's show.

The movie is goofy and frequently just outright bonkers: Where else can you find a movie where the hero drops dead of withdrawals from his cocaine addiction after defeating the main villain in a martial arts battle?

[Takuma]

On 2/4/2022 at 3:01 AM, DrNgor said:

This is probably the first film to use the technique of slowing down the action and then speeding it up for the blow, like what Zack Snyder did in 300.

It was already in full use in Chiba's earlier film Karate Warriors (1976). It was also later used in Shogun's Ninja (1980).

[shukocarl1441996347]

Soul of Chiba 1977 OMG even the great Chiba-san couldn't save this smelly pile of doo doo. He probably only did it for the trip to Thailand. The scene with him training with the muscle-pulse/twitch outfit was hilarious! Especially the shots of his arse. Must have been Holidays for Bolo, Tadashi Yamashita and Luk Chuen too. I sometimes can't believe it when great artists (like Chiba) agreed to appear in stuff like this.