Announcement
Collapse
No announcement yet.
Secret Rivals, The
Collapse
X
Collapse
-
Secret Rivals, The
Released by: Crash Cinema
Released on: 3/23/2004
Director: Ng See Yuen
Cast: Hwang Jang Lee, Don Wong Tao, John Liu Chung Liang, James Nam Gung Fan, Yuen Biao, Tong Kam Tong
Year: 1976
Purchase From Amazon
The Movie:
Secret Rivals focuses on two main characters - Sheng (Tao Wong) from the South part of the province and Shao (John Liu) from the Northern part. Both men are after the notorious and sinister Silver Fox (Jang Lee Hwang), but for different reasons. One wants Silver Fox for killing his parents, the other wants him for the purposes of serving justice.
The two inadvertently end up tracking him down to the same small town, and once they're there, they find that Silver Fox isn't the only interest that they share! It seems that they've both fallen for the same girl, a citizen of the local town, and when they discover this, of course a rivalry between the two fighters is sparked.
Once the rivalry is established, of course Sheng and Shao are going to throw down, and throw down they do in a pretty solid brawl that is unfortunately broken up all too quickly by the lovely lady who they both seek to woo.
Eventually Shao, who suffers from a few flashbacks to when Silver Fox killed his parents, squares off against the villain, but Silver Fox is way tougher than Shao first thought and it doesn't look like he's going to be able to take him down on his own. In order to do it, he's going to have to team up with the other solid fighter in the area, his rival, Sheng.
One of the more interesting and colorful characters that rounds out the cast (aside from the leads) is a big Russian guy with monster sized sideburns, a perfectly triangular patch of chest hair, and Chiba-style Street Fighter wristbands. Watching him square off and then drown his sorrows in booze makes for pretty entertaining fare, and every movie can only benefit from a sideburned man in leather wristbands.
Hwang Jang Lee steals the show as the high kicking and fast footed Silver Fox, who is more than a match for both Wong and Liu until the end, where they team up and work together to take him down. As a villain, he's everything that we want him to be - clever, foreboding, sinister, and extremely agile in the martial arts department. The resulting fight scene between him and his two rivals is a blast - relentless, fast paced and choke full of the kind of hard-hitting action that fight fans crave.
Director Ng See Yuen helmed the 1972 film Bloody Fists (a. k. a. Bloody Beach) and met with some success, and after the success of Secret Rivals brought him some recognition, he followed it with a sequel entitled Secret Rivals 2. He's probably best known though for producing two of Jackie Chan's best films, Snake In Eagle's Shadow and Drunken Master.
Corey Yuen served as assistant fight choreographer and would go on to play starring roles in way too many Hong Kong films to list, but has been seen in some of Jet Li's better films like Fong Sai Yuk II and High Risk. Yuen Biao also worked on the film and did some of the stunt work in a few of the fight scenes.
Video/Audio/Extras:
This is an odd one. The film starts off, for the credits sequence, in 2.35.1 widescreen. Watching the credits in this ratio, it's probably a safe assumption that this is the correct ratio for the film. Once the credits sequence ends though, the film tightens up and switches to an odd ratio that looks roughly 2.00.1 and it stays this way for the rest of the movie. After seeing the credits at 2.35.1, it sure looks like the 2.00.1 ratio is missing some information and it does appear to be a bit truncated. Why this shift occurs, I have no idea but I'd guess it would have something to do with the elements that Crash had to work with on this release. Image quality overall though, aspect ratio weirdness aside, is quite pleasing. Colors are strong, and print damage, while present throughout (most notably as scratches on the print), isn't overly distracting save for a few minor instances. I don't know how much restoration went into this release, but Crash has stated that 'This release has been color corrected and audio corrected to eliminate/minimze screen noise and hiss, and to adjust volume levels. This is the best available print as of street date: 3-23-2004' so obviously some work went into it. For the most part, this release does look pretty nice though - it was taken from a film print and not from a VHS source and is overall a pretty solid transfer. The previous Mei-Ah release was fullframe and looked like a VHS transfer (plus it had burned in Chinese and English subs) so you can see how this would be an improvement over that DVD.
Seeing as this is the U.S. version, it shouldn't surprise anyone to find that the film is dubbed into English. Some background hiss can be detected from start to finish and as is common with a lot of dubs from the period, the entire thing sounds a bit canned. Those issues aside though, dialogue is pretty clear and despite the scattered moments of mild vocal distortion and a couple of instances where the effects and music are a bit too high in the mix, things are easy to understand and this track gets the job done well enough.
Kung Fu guru extraordinaire Linn Hayes provides some interesting liner notes that detail the background of the film and it's lead actors. They're well written with some nice information contained inside, though the layout isn't the most eye-catching design ever composed. A few trailers round out the extra features - one for Dubbed And Dangerous and one for the upcoming Anime Crash line. The menu also has a scene selection option.
The Final Word:
Secret Rivals was a favorite of mine as a kid when I used to watch Kung Fu movies with my dad on Sunday afternoons. I loved the movie then and I was really happy to find that it still holds up admirably well. Crash has done a pretty solid job on this release, and despite the weirdness involving the aspect ratio switch, this DVD is still worth checking out for old school Kung Fu fans.Posting comments is disabled.
Categories
Collapse
article_tags
Collapse
- album review (218)
- album reviews (274)
- arrow video (272)
- blu-ray (3225)
- blu-ray review (4162)
- comic books (1392)
- comic reviews (872)
- comics (988)
- dark horse comics (484)
- dvd and blu-ray reviews a-f (1969)
- DVD And Blu-ray Reviews G-M (1711)
- DVD And Blu-ray Reviews N-S (1757)
- DVD And Blu-ray Reviews T-Z (878)
- dvd review (2513)
- idw publishing (216)
- image comics (207)
- kino lorber (391)
- movie news (260)
- review (318)
- scream factory (279)
- severin films (300)
- shout! factory (537)
- twilight time (269)
- twilight time releasing (231)
- vinegar syndrome (497)
Latest Articles
Collapse
-
Released by: Kino Lorber
Released on: February 22nd, 2022.
Director: Gianfranco Parolini
Cast: Lee Van Cleef, Jack Palance
Year: 1976
Purchase From Amazon
God’s Gun – Movie Review:
Directed by Gianfranco Parolini in 1976, quite late in the spaghetti western boom years, God's Gun (Diamante Lobo in Italy) introduces us to a bad, bad man named Sam Clayton (Jack Palance) who, along with his gang of equally bad, bad men, start wreaking...-
Channel: Movies
04-17-2024, 12:10 PM -
-
Released by: Kino Lorber
Released on: October 8th, 2019.
Director: Mario Bava
Cast: Christopher Lee, Reg Park, Leonora Ruffo, Gaia Germani
Year: 1968
Purchase From Amazon
Hercules In The Haunted World – Movie Review:
Directed by Mario Bava in 1961 and featuring a screenplay by Bava (and Sandro Continenza, Francesco Prosperi and Duccio Tessari), Hercules In The Haunted World (also known as Hercules At The Center Of The Earth and...-
Channel: Movies
04-17-2024, 12:08 PM -
-
Released by: Cinématographe
Released on: March 26th, 2024.
Director: Jack Nicholson
Cast: Jack Nicholson, Mary Steenburgen, Christopher Lloyd, John Belushi
Year: 1978
Purchase From Amazon
Goin’ South – Movie Review:
Made at the height of his career as an actor, 1978’s ‘Goin’ South’ sees Jack Nicholson once again in the director’s chair, seven years after his directorial debut, ‘Drive, He Said,’ failed to set the...-
Channel: Movies
04-17-2024, 10:29 AM -
-
Released by: Radiance Films
Released on: April 20th, 2024.
Director: Noburo Nakamura
Cast: Miyuki Kuwano, Mikijiro Hira
Year: 1964
Purchase From Amazon
The Shape Of Night – Movie Review:
Directed by Noburo Nakamura for Shochiko in 1964, ‘The Shape Of Night’ follows a young woman named Yoshie Nomoto (Miyuki Kuwano). In the opening scene, she’s working as a streetwalker on the outskirts of town and soon enough, she’s picked...-
Channel: Movies
04-17-2024, 10:26 AM -
-
Released by: Universal Studios
Released on: April 22nd, 2024.
Director: Bryce McGuire
Cast: Wyatt Russell, Kerry Condon, Amélie Hoeferle
Year: 2024
Purchase From Amazon
Night Swim – Movie Review:
The feature length directorial debut of Bryce McGuire, a collaboration between James Wan's Atomic Monster and Blumhouse, 2024’s Night Swim opens with a scene set in 1992 where a young girl looks out her window and sees a toy boat floating...-
Channel: Movies
04-17-2024, 10:24 AM -
-
Released by: Film Masters
Released on: April 23rd, 2024.
Director: Bert I. Gordon
Cast: Richard Carlson, Juli Reding, Lugene Sanders, Susan Gordon
Year: 1963
Purchase From Amazon
Tormented – Movie Review:
The late Bert I. Gordon’s 1963 horror film, ‘Tormented,’ is an effectively spooky ghost story made with an obviously low budget but no less effective for it.
The story revolves around a professional piano player...-
Channel: Movies
04-17-2024, 10:19 AM -