Make Mine Neon Eagle!

When Jared Auner of Mondo Macabro posts about a new label devoted to Asian Cult cinema, MMC! takes gleeful notice!

With the announcement below, Auner and his partners Jesse Nelson and Brian Izzi of Cauldron Films launch Neon Eagle Video, a new home video boutique imprint dedicated to Asian cult cinema, and reveal their first release, the Taiwanese revenge-fest Kill Butterfly Kill. This inaugural edition will offer multiple cuts of the film and promises a stacked, double-Blu-ray, limited edition release. Needless to say, MMC! is intrigued by Kill Butterfly Kill’s cartoonish violence and its Pinky Violence meets Turksploitation sensibility (not to mention that cover image which appears to include appropriated Kamen Rider V3 masks!). NEV promises future releases including a title from Japan – just take MMC!’s money already!

NEW ASIAN-FOCUSED LABEL ‘NEON EAGLE VIDEO‘ MAKES DEBUT WITH DELUXE BLU-RAY EDITION OF THE TAIWANESE EXPLOITATION MOVIE ‘KILL BUTTERFLY KILL’

Cauldron Films’ Jesse Nelson and Brian Izzi, in collaboration with Mondo Macabro’s Jared Auner are proud to announce the formation of a new home video boutique imprint, Neon Eagle Video (NEV),that will focus on the trashier side of Asian cinema, highlighting exploitation, action, horror, and other ‘cult’ films that have been neglected in the High Definition era.

Each disc will be lovingly curated and produced by Jared Auner, with restoration, authoring, manufacturing, and distribution handled by Cauldron Films. Each release will be sold through the Cauldron Films site and DiabolikDVD.com.

SFFF Day 1 Report – Ghosts of SFFFs Past

The Saskatoon Fantastic Film Festival has reached its landmark tenth iteration this year and Festival Director John Allison and his team have ensured that this is the Fest’s biggest and brightest year yet by expanding it to six days, hosting a Drunken Cinema screening of A Nightmare on Elm Street, hosting another Saturday Morning All You Can Eat Cereal Cartoon Party, and bringing in as special guests director Joe Dante and actress Belinda Balaski for a three film retrospective. The SFFF kicked off with something of a soft-open with another new addition – a five film virtual reality experience held preceding the theatrical film program each weekday. Attendance was sparse on Day 1 so let this be a warning to those content to let the VR program pass them by – miss the SFFF’s Virtual Reality Experience section and you will certainly be missing out on some of the Fest’s most intriguing aspects.

Master of the Flying Guillotine (Jimmy Wang Yu, 1976)

IT’S A MEAN MACHINE – CUTS YOUR HEAD OFF CLEAN!

This classic martial arts death match pits two wuxia icons against each other – the famed One-Armed Boxer (Hong Kong superstar Jimmy Wang Yu) versus a blind assassin (veteran character actor Kam Kong) and his legendary Flying Guillotine. Set in 1730, during the early part of the Ching dynasty, ethnic Chinese Hans formed bands of rebels to fight their Manchurian oppressors. After the One-Armed Boxer, a stoic kung fu expert and Han revolutionary, disposes of two would-be assassins, their master, a formidable blind emissary of the Ching posing as a Buddhist monk, swears revenge, searching out every one-armed martial artist and snatching their heads with his tethered decapitation device called the Flying Guillotine.

Arguably the most famous Hong Kong martial arts film of the post-Bruce Lee, pre-Jackie Chan period, this independently-produced classic is more popular than ever, with a legacy extending to films like Kill Bill and video games like Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat. With its wild, fantasy face-offs and its cosmic Krautrock soundtrack, Master of the Flying Guillotine is undoubtedly a film worthy of losing your head over!

Special Features:

• New High Definition digital transfer
• High Definition Blu-ray (1080p) presentation
• Original Mandarin version and English dub track (uncompressed on the Blu-ray Disc)
• New optional English subtitle translation
• Audio commentary with film critics Andy Klein, Wade Major, and Alex Luu
• Interviews with star/director Jimmy Wang Yu
• Spinning Vengeance – director Quentin Tarantino on Master of the Flying Guillotine
• Design for Decapitation – Grant Imahara on the mechanics of the Flying Guillotine
• Trailers
• Reversible sleeve featuring newly commissioned artwork
• Illustrated collector’s booklet featuring new writing by Craig Lines