So whats the skinny on Ocean Shores?

[Guest gfanikf]

I was wondering besides the infamous Ric Meyers Americans don't want widescreen, I know very little about Ocean Shores. I was wondering if some could give me some of the history of the company and why they seem to be a rare factory in terms of their catalogue.

[Guest monk sante]

I think Ocean Shores went out of business.....im not sure.

But they did have a kickass collection of films. It's too bad they ended up trashing all thier widescreen masters........that was stupid. :hat

[Guest Ninja Sinai]

If theres one person to blame why you may never ever see your fav movie kung fu movie in widescreen as long as you live.. then blame that fat ex-porn star bastard Ric Meyers!!!!

Now I hear hes presenting some show when Lo Mang visits the states this year! Why him????? I heard the organises for the Lo Mang event also want Linn on board.. I say get rid of fatty and let Linn host it!!

[Guest gfanikf]

Amen to that!

[Guest Atomic Mystery Monster]

I was wondering besides the infamous Ric Meyers Americans don't want widescreen,

Has anyone ever confirmed that rumor? I know that at least one other Hong Kong company opted to convert its films to fullscreen, English-dubbed tape masters (IFD), so it's hard to say if Meyers really influenced their decision or not.

I know very little about Ocean Shores. I was wondering if some could give me some of the history of the company and why they seem to be a rare factory in terms of their catalogue.

Here's what little I know about Ocean Shores:

-They've put out VHS tapes, VCDs, and DVDs. Ocean Shores was well known for putting watermarks that occasionally appeared during the movie's runtime.

-www.hknet.com/~osvideo was their website address, but it's now defunct.

-This website has a note claiming that "Eagle Video" had the US rights to at least some of Ocean shores' library. I don't know if it's true or not, though.

-I believe that Tai Seng had a deal with them, though. Come to think of that, that Ric Meyers/Ocean Shores story does seem to explain his connection to Tai Seng...

[Guest Dion Brother]

According to an issue of MAMA, which detailed Ric's trip to Hong Kong to work for OS, their master print library consisted of fullscreen 16mms. Letterboxing wasn't in vogue until the late 1990s, so many companies simply didn't plan ahead. Reminds me of the rumor I once heard that Warner Brothers had no widescreen print of BATTLE OF THE BULGE until a recent unearthing.

[Linn1]

Letterboxing wasn't in vogue until the late 1990s, so many companies simply didn't plan ahead.

OC were originally making widescreen masters. Quite a few of early Ocean Shores releases were widescreen. These were then released full screen the second go around. The RUMOR, and it is a rumor, that Ric was the one to blame, comes from him saying at some point that no one wanted to see widescreen films on video, which is what he told companies he worked for. This was related to a fanzine back in the day. It doesn't help that right around the time he started working for them, they started releasing everything full screen. As for when it was en vogue, there's tons of tapes from the 80s in HK that were widescreen. It all depended on what the video companies were given in most cases.

[Guest Markgway]

:evil

[Guest Dion Brother]

But Ric wasn't working for them until they had already put out a hefty number of fullscreen tapes (this would have been after the release of the FROM BRUCE LEE TO THE NINJA book). I don't think they'd junk their masters just because some hawaiian shirted goof told them so. Joe Ragus once told me Jackson Tse had so much money he didn't know what to do with it, so i'd chalk it up to the arrogance of the rich and bored. I recall Ric praising Southgate's widescreen Shaw releases, so who knows.

[Linn1]

at the time, he wasn't considered a goof. But as I said, it's a rumor. Considering that Ric has changed his story on SO MUCH over the years, I don't doubt it at all. When Ric has praised Southgate, he was pushing the tapes. He's also said repeatedly that all the Shaw films were burned in a fire. And praised Merryaxe when they released changed, cut versions of films (Fist of Legend, and Operation Condor 2 come to mind) a few years ago. Then turned around and buried them when they wouldn't hire him. When it comes to any info supplied by him, the MAMA stuff especially, I'd take it with a grain of salt.

[Guest Dion Brother]

If I were to take an educated guess, I'd say Ocean Shores threw out the prints to make room in their warehouse. Golden Harvest was also known for careless handling of prints as were many companies, simply because storage space is precious in Hong Kong and the value of those film prints wasn't foreseen. It's too easy to scapegoat Ric for these things(and he wasn't the only one spreading rumors of a fire at the Shaws, I always suspected that was spread by tape traders trying to pass off those shoddy looking camcorder copies and Ric started believing that as fact. In fact Ric never stated in print the fire happened, at least pre-1993, and I heard the rumor years before that). Ric is a bad journalist and a hack critic, but he isn't the source of all postmodern woes in kung fu movie collecting. Besides, the rumor doesn't make any sense. What company throws prints away because an American tells them to? Remember they licensed fullscreen Shaw prints in the early 90s for the Hong Kong market, even as other companies were letterboxing the bulk of their releases. This includes the PAINTED FACES laserdisc, and many of their other higher profile releases of the 1990s. Later, their focus became the growing Karaoke disc market, and they gave up their stateside kung fu vhs distribution. Their customer service at the time was nonexistent, and it was obvious they didn't care anymore. Ocean actually financed and produced EAGLE'S CLAW and LEG FIGHTERS, so if they tossed the negatives, that's out of their own stupidity. Just a dumb company that shut down their home video operation two years too early. They could have really rode the wave of the Wutang Clan's free advertising. Too bad. I could use a nice copy of FURIOUS SLAUGHTER.

Ric probably changed the stories to make himself seem more important. His napoeloen-esque ego is bigger than his S&M gear.

[Linn1]

OC didn't keep prints for films they licensed, they made copies of films and returned the prints to the original production companies. They had a small clutch of prints of they threw out years ago, but nowhere close to every film they released. The best they could do when Tai Seng got to them were full screen betas because that's all they had left. I don't know who said they threw away prints because Meyers said so, just that they quit making widescreen betas for release in the early 80s. And as I've said many times, it's a rumor that Meyers caused it when he started working for them after the Shaw deal fell through around 84.

Meyer's talked about the Shaw fire in nearly every instance when talking about the company. Considering it IS based on a real event that happened in the mid-80s, when Ric was there, it's not a crazy jump where the rumor came from. Even if he didn't create it, he told fans at I attended in the early 90s (also that Lau Kar Leung was dead from cancer), in interviews, in at least one article for Inside Kung Fu, in his Asian Cult Cinema articles, etc.He used it specificly as something that was the reason that the Shaws didn't release their films to him after the Black Belt Theater deal fell through, and as the reason for the Shaws not releasing their films nearly every year after. Even a month before Celestial debuted their plans at Cannes, Meyers did a two part article in Asian Cult Cinema about how it wasn't possible fans would ever see Shaw films because of the fire. The very next issue, he announced the Celestial launch and joked that he was responsible for the Shaws return. He may not have originated the idea, but he spread it better than anyone could have. Along with the Lau rumor, the "Billy Chong is a fat drunk" rumor, etc.