FILIPINO A BETTER TOMORROW (1992) - dir: Willy Milan, Philippines

aka Dalawa Man Ang Buhay Mo, Pagsasabayin Ko (original title)

Today, Jesus Manuel mention to me that a Filipino remake of John Woo's awesome breakthru film, A BETTER TOMORROW, had been made back in 1992 and had been posted on YouTube. Needless to say, A BETTER TOMORROW is the film that kicked off a thousand movies in that genre a lot of us came to love as the "heroic bloodshed" genre.

I've just finished watching the movie and, wauw, just... wauw!!! It's not just a remake of the first film, it remakes BOTH #1 and 2 all in one! The film runs for 109 minutes and it's just as explosive and shoot-em-out'ish as the Hong Kong original versions! And altho the film is spoken in Tagalog there's enough English dialogue to follow the plot (which we know already anyway).

A lot of the well known scenes from the original films are copies frame by frame but there's also minor differences; Chow Yun Fat's character isn't the brother of the younger policeman but his dad, and there's quite a few scenes with the young policeman's mum and his girlfriend. And of course half way thru, Chow Yun Fat's character's brother arrives from the States (and does an over the top rendition of a Filipino having been brought up in the USA. OVER THE TOP I tell you!!! LMAO). The one thing that probably stands out as being different it's the fact that the Filipino version isn't as stylish as John Woo's masterpiece; it's a more crude film.

The well known music score from the original film is used all throughout this remake as well. Actually, the few times they used some different music I wish they hadn't as it's just bland rock music.

The version posted on YouTube is from a video tape but it looks great most of the way thru. There's some unfortunate drop-outs half way thru and towards the end but nothing serious, and this may very well be the only way to watch this film anyway. I downloaded the film with the Firefox downloader which gives you the option to DL in different formats and qualities. I downloaded it in the best possible quality and made a dvd-r of it (as I much dislike watching films on a computer, I'm old-skool I wanna watch my films on a TV set!!). The quality of the dvd-r is actually better than most HK VCD's so I can recommend downloading it (who knows when YouTube will remove these films again). Highly recommended!


Recognise this scene? Yes, the "Chow Yun Fat walks into restaurant and shoots everyone" scene. Just in this film the gunman is slightly older.

The full film:




PS: I should point out "Filipino A Better Tomorrow" is our own fan-title, not the film's real title. Duh!

mihk's THE KILLER ltd edition sell-thru vhs box set finally coming home

When I discovered the HK movie there was only one way to get the films; thru tape-trading with other fans. Some of those fans would live in cities that had Chinatown video stores; They'd rent films and dupe them onto a blank video tape. This was a time when you couldn't just BUY original tapes cos they didn't sell them anywhere. At least not the HK movies that some of us had wet dreams about. Feverish wet dreams.

Then something quite wonderful happened; In the UK two labels sprung up to distribute these films. One label was the (notorious? Infamous?) EASTERN HEROES label run partly by Toby Russell. The other label (and in my view the better one of the two) was MADE IN HONG KONG. Out of a sudden you could chuck out your 4th generation vhs dupe of A BETTER TOMORROW, THE KILLER or A CHINESE GHOSTSTORY. Now they came out on letterboxed and subtitled sell-thru vhs with cool box art and for the most part great info written on the inside of the sleeves.

Most of the films have since then been granted DVD (and now blu-ray) releases (altho some of these tapes are still the only/best way of watching the films!). But in contradiction to most other collectors I haven't got rid of the old MIHK tapes to make room for dvd's. To me they have value! These were the tapes that kind of SAVED the UK and Euro Hong Kong film collectors.

Anyhoo, quite a number of the tapes I never got hold of back in the day and so I'm actually buying them now. And one of the coolest releases that I never got hold of was the limited collector's editon box set edition of THE KILLER!! I got the ordinary (but still highly cool edition as it was subtitled and letterboxed!) MIHK release of the film. And before that I'd bought the fullscreen, English dubbed vhs (also from the UK). But now... a couple of decades down the line... I have finally got hold of said box set. Or at least I have won it on eBay UK and will hopefully get it soon - but of course you never know with mail these days. Let's cross our fingers and hope that I also actually RECEIVE the fucker! Hah!

PS: Check out the response post over on A hero Never Dies.

Screw the dvd, hd and blu-ray. I want the VIDEO-CD!!

Someone over on ADG posted THIS scan today!! The Hong Kong VCD release of John Woo's masterpiece BULLET IN THE HEAD.

Rats!!! Why didn't I find this!! Yeah yeah I know; envy is an ugly thing but still!!!

- In case you're not familiar with the background for my desire to own this VCD (a desire I share with tons of fellow HK movie/John Woo collectors) let me just point out that this is the only release that contains the original version of John Woo's amazing movie BULLET IN THE HEAD. All other video tapes, DVD's, laserdisks, TV recordings, and what have you, do NOT contain the original version but altered versions!

Yes, unfortunately the only way to watch John Woo's original idea for this movie is via this low-quality format. And in addition to that it's close to impossible to find! Congrats to the guy on ADG who finally tracked it down.

NB: As a response to this post Phantom Of Pulp did another post here where he showed proper scans of the VCD and gave some more incisive info on the different versions. Check it out.