War Of The Shaolin Temple

[Winfred]

Thanks for the info. I wonder why he is obscure despite his excellent kung fu.

[kungfusamurai]

I don't know why. There are so many movies out there where a fighter shines, but they never do much beyond a few movies. Maybe he retired, maybe the films he did just haven't made it overseas. Who knows.

I got the DVDs today. Nice and quick, no problems. They are packaged in those thin DVD cases, so no fears of rattlers. And they're dual layered, but they are strangely translucent gold. By that, I mean, you can see right through them, through the painted picture on the top side of the disc.

4 discs for $24 US (including shipping) not too shabby. Here's the run down:

1. War Of the Shaolin Temple (DVD name 13 Poles...) - A little too squeezed. Maybe it's my TV, but even after enabling 16:9, the characters still look thin. They've taken a 2.35:1 and squeezed it into a 1.66:1. Image quality is as good as the Joy Sales stuff, and I didn't see much pixelation when people moved. The cantonese audio sounds like a recent-canto dub where the dubbers are in a small room with minimal echo. Subtitles can be turned on and off

2. Holy Robe Vs Evil Dead - 1.85:1, crisp picture. I couldn't detect any pixelating when people moved. Original cantonese audio. Subtitles can be turned on and off

3. Martial Arts Master Wong Fei Hung - 1.33:1, although everything is perfectly framed, so I can't tell if that was the original aspect radio. Crisp picture and I couldn't see any pixelation when people moved. Original canto audio and subs are optional here too.

4. Angel of Vengeance - total crap, and you should avoid this. It was a bad sign when the Universe video logo showed up for a brief second after selecting to play the movie. The image is blurry, the motion is jerky, it looks like a second generation rip from a DVD taken from a VHS source (i.e. someone did a bad author from a VHS source onto DVD, then ripped it, then made this DVD). And the subs are burned in (english and chinese). This was the second DVD I viewed, so I was worried the others would be the same but as you can see from my above review, this is crappy disc was an exception.

If you guys get other DVDs from Dragon Jester, please do post the reviews of the quality. Most of their titles are late 80s to mid 90s martial arts movies. I hope they put out some more old school flicks, but I won't hold my breath.

KFS