Three and Three...Extremes (2002 & 2004)

Arrow are releasing a double disc Blu-ray set of producer Peter Ho-Sun Chan's two Asian horror anthology pictures, both of which contain work by some of the most famous directors working in that part of the world. But before we get started, let's clear up what might be a little confusion. THREE EXTREMES was released first by Tartan DVD in the UK, with its predecessor THREE then being released as THREE EXTREMES 2, so if you're wondering where the 'sequel' to THREE EXTREMES is in this set it's here under the correct title. OK - now let's take a look at what we get:

Disc One: Three (2002)

THREE, as the title suggests, offers us three short (ish) stories over a two hours running time. These consist of Memories directed by Kim Jee-woon (A TALE OF TWO SISTERS) in which a woman wakes up in the road with no memory of how she got there. Meanwhile a man consults a psychiatrist because his wife has seemingly left him but he has no memory of it. It's not difficult to guess how these tie together but the appeal of Memories is in an execution which offers us some atmospheric compositions and an excellent music score by Byung-woo Lee. 

        Second is The Wheel, a slightly confusing tale from Thai director Nonzee Nimibutr. Puppeteer Master Tao is dying and asks that his beloved puppets be destroyed,. They aren't of course, and this leads to all manner of mayhem and murder. A jealousy subplot is shoehorned in and by the end it's still not terribly clear why or how the puppets have caused the mayhem that has ensued. 

        Last is Peter Ho-Sun Chan's Going Home, which is essentially a love story told within the exceedingly grim environs of a tower block due to be demolished.

New extras include new interviews with Peter Ho-Sun Chan (20 minutes), Kim Jee-woon (15 minutes) and Memories DP Hong Kyoung-pyo (6 minutes). Archival material includes two more interviews with Chan (55 minutes in all), Kim Jee-woon (16 minutes) and Going Home star Eugenia Yuan (12 minutes). There's also a 16 minute making of.

Disc Two: Three...Extremes (2004)

THREE was so successful that Peter Ho-Sun Chan was able to attract even bigger Asian talent for this sequel. Fruit Chan's Dumplings offers a unique and delightfully disgusting take on youth treatments, Park Chan-Wook (OLDBOY, THE HANDMAIDEN) gives us Cut, in which a film director is terrorised by an insane actor who has wired his wife up to a piano with every intention of cutting off her fingers, and Takashi Miike concludes the film with Box, a tale about a stage show featuring two young sister contortionists and a jealousy that leads to something horrible. 

Extras include new interviews with Peter Ho-Sun Chan (16 minutes), Fruit Chan (a whopping career-spanning 43 minutes) and Takashi Miike (18 minutes) as well as archival interviews with Fruit Chan (15 minutes), Dumplings star Bai Ling (19 minutes) and three makings of for Dumplings (15 minutes), Cut (21 minutes) and Box (18 minutes). Those who still have their old Tartan DVDs may want to hang onto them as the feature length version of Dumplings isn't included here. There's also the usual booklet, double-sided poster and sleeve.

THREE and THREE...EXTREMES are out in a double disc Blu-ray set from Arrow Films on Monday 20th October 2025

The Island (1985)

"The Hill Have Eyes: Chuckle Brothers Edition"

Eureka are releasing Northampton-born director Po-Chih Leong's TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE-inspired Hong Kong comedy horror on Blu-ray.

Mr Cheung (John Sham) decides his class of geography students are so useless that the only way to get them to pass their exams is to take them on a field trip to an island he used to visit in his youth. What he doesn't realise is that the island is now home to three insane brothers whose mother has just passed away, with her dying wish being that they find a wife for the least intelligent and able of them so he can carry on the family line. Mayhem ensues. Eventually. And after quite a bit of mucking about.

The swings from horror to humour and back again are extremely broad in THE ISLAND, so broad in fact that this one isn't going to be to everyone's taste. The humour especially tends to be of the BBC children's pantomime show variety, and if you don't find the repeated use of words like dickhead funny you may find it all gets a bit wearisome.

The island location itself is quite something and the direction get creative with a number of interesting shots. The film starts off with scenes of horror and downright oddness that are pleasingly disorientating, and the climax is horror all the way, so if you want to see an interesting variation on a theme visited repeatedly and done to death by American horror cinema then THE ISLAND is worth a look.

Extras include two commentary tracks, one from Frank Djeng who, amongst other things was involved with Severin's ENTER THE CLONES OF BRUCE, and the other with Mike Leeder and Arne Venema. Both tracks offer highly enthusiastic and engaging commentators who have a lot of interesting things to say, not just about the film but its cultural context, too. Tony Rayns provides a 17 minute talking head piece that includes the history of production company D & B Films (who made THE ISLAND), influences on the film, and its curious lack of a screenwriting credit. There's also a Po-Chih Leong 'masterclass' from 2023 which is essentially a very pleasant roundtable discussion with the director. Eureka's disc also comes with a booklet with production notes and an interview and a limited edition O-card slipcase.

Po-Chih Leong's THE ISLAND is out on Blu-ray from Eureka Entertainment on Monday 13th October 2025

Mr Vampire (1985)

"Or - Pardon Me But Your Buddhist Scrolls Appear To Have Fallen Down"

Eureka are releasing Ricky Lau's highly successful Hong Kong horror comedy, which spawned several sequels, in a brand new 2K restoration on Blu-ray.

Master Kau (Lam Ching-ying), master of all things supernatural, is called onto exhume a corpse at the behest of a rich family man who has been told his late father's body needs to be moved after twenty years. Unfortunately it turns out the man died in a state of stress and unable to expel his last breath, which means he is now a hopping vampire.

Along with his two bumbling assistants, Master Kau has to use all his knowledge of Buddhist scripture and sticky rice to defeat the evil spreading through the town, as well as deal with an apparently sexy ghost who has set her malformed eye on one of his sidekicks.

Playing like a Golden Harvest version of Roman Polanski's THE FEARLESS VAMPIRE KILLERS (and hence the subtitle up there for those who aren't aware), MR VAMPIRE is a surprisingly effective mix of physical comedy and supernatural horror. Much of its success is down to director Ricky Lau, who is as adept at managing the scary bits as he is all the pratting about. The cast is good too, with the leads likeable and helping to carry off a lot of the unsubtle humour. Yes there are trousers being pulled down and pratfalls aplenty but even if that's not necessarily your sort of thing there's no doubting MR VAMPIRE works extremely well in balancing its humour and horror elements.

Eureka's disc comes with three soundtrack options: Cantonese (with English subtitles), a European English dub and an American English dub. There's also a commentary track from Asian film expert Frank Djeng. There are also archival interviews with stars Chin Siu-hou, Moon Lee and director Lau, as well as textless end credits, a trailer, a collectors' booklet and a limited edition O card slipcase for this release of 2000.

Ricky Lau's MR VAMPIRE is out on Blu-ray from Eureka on Monday 20th July 2020

Zu Warriors From the Magic Mountain (1983)

"Classic Hong Kong Fantasy Epic"

The ground-breaking non-stop special effects-filled fantasy epic that inspired John Carpenter's BIG TROUBLE IN LITTLE CHINA gets a Blu-ray release from Eureka.

It's a time of civil war during the Tang Dynasty, with all the different warring factions wearing different brightly coloured uniforms to distinguish them. When messenger Dik Ming-Kei (Yung Biao) inadvertently causes the wrath of two clan leaders, he escapes to find himself in a weird desrted temple in the Zu mountain range. There he is attacked by flying demons and is eventually saved, only to find himself in the midst of an epic battle between good and evil that involves battling Buddhist monks, magic swords, an ice goddess, a man with absurdly huge eyebrows and all manner of monsters.

Featuring more special effects and wire work than it was likely thought previously possible to cram in to a single film, Tsui Hark's supernatural fantasy adventure hardly lets up for its 98 minutes, racing from one breathless set piece to another. The dialogue info dumps come thick and fast too, so fast that it's almost impossible to read all the subtitles and keep up with the onscreen action, necessitating at least two viewings to fully appreciate what's going on.

Eureka's disc gives us a new 2K restoration of the film along with ZU: TIME WARRIOR - the export cut of the film shown in European cinemas that also includes a time travelling wraparound sequences. Both Cantonese and English soundtrack options are included. Asian cinema expert Tony Rayns provides a commentary track, and there's an in depth and exclusive interview with director Tsui Hark recorded for this release.

Other extras include the episode of Jonathan Ross' Son of the Incredibly Strange Film Show dedicated to the director, alternative opening credits and a set of srchival interviews with stars Yien Biao, Mang Hoi and Moon Lee.

Tsui Hark's ZU WARRIORS FROM THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN is out on Blu-ray from Eureka on Monday 20th April 2020

Dream Home (2010)

Splatter meets subtext in this fairly ambitious Hong Kong offering from director Ho Cheung-Pang and producer-star Josie Ho.

What would you be willing to do to secure your perfect dream home? Sheung (Josie Ho) is prepared to kill, repeatedly and graphically, as she slaughters her way through the inhabitants of the Hong Kong apartment block in which her ideal residence is located. DREAM HOME isn't 96 minutes of ultra-violence, however. In between the deaths we get to see flashbacks explaining how Sheung ended up in this situation. Working for a bank in the daytime, she also works an evening job at a shop to help repay her debts and save for the flat of her dreams. The flat just happens to be located in a plush apartment block opposite the rundown tenement where she currently shares a room with her brother. With their parents they grew up in slums which were demolished to make way for the kind of over-priced housing she now wants to live in.

        There's a heavy political and socio-cultural edge to DREAM HOME, but it never gets in the way of the story. The opening caption puts into context the vast gulf between housing prices in Hong Kong and the average working wage, and numerous references are made to the banking and credit card systems that are designed to keep people in debt. Nobody is happy, everyone seems to be having joyless affairs, or is on drugs. Teenagers indulge in empty, meaningless, drug-fuelled group sex, and everybody seems to be using somebody else for their own selfish reasons. No more is this lifestyle typified than by its cental character, who is willing to let others die (including her own family) to fulfil her materialistic dream. The film ends with hints of financial crashes to come, and the suggestion that despite all her extreme efforts, Sheun may still not be able to have what she wants.

       Of course, you don't have to watch DREAM HOME for its barely-concealed subtext. It's also a rollickingly entertaining splatter movie, with a number of creative deaths, some seriously cringe-inducing moments, and a healthy sense of knockabout humour to some of the gore sequences. In fact, if there's any criticism to be levelled at DREAM HOME it's that Sheung's final bloody rampage is almost too popcorn-movie-entertaining when compared to the lengthy and serious backstory we finally become party to. It's a minor quibble, though. DREAM HOME is a pretty decent stab (sorry) at a splatter movie with subtext, which isn't something we get to see a lot of.

        Network's new Blu-ray release makes all the gloss of yuppified Hong Kong look extra shiny. You also get an interview with star and producer Josie Ho and a trailer.

Network are releasing Ho-Cheung Pang's DREAM HOME on Region B Blu-ray on 25th May 2015