The Extras - Hong Kong Cinema, Golden Harvest, and Drunken Master 2

Episode Date: February 14, 2022

Warner Bros executive George Feltenstein and Hong Kong Cinema expert and Warner Bros archivist Jeff Briggs join the podcast to discuss Hong Kong Cinema and the Golden Harvest library of films owned by Warner Bros.  Jeff Briggs provides a brief history of Hong Kong Cinema, starting with the Shaw Brothers and then the development of Golden Harvest in the 1970s and 1980s.  George Feltenstein provides background on the partnership between Golden Harvest and Warner Bros with Bruce Lee’s “Enter the Dragon” in 1973 and how that later led to the purchase of a portion of the Golden Harvest Library.  He also discusses the release of some of the Golden Harvest films on DVD and on the now-defunct Warner Archive streaming service, FilmStruck, before diving into a review of the two films that have been released on Blu-ray, the Jackie Chan films “Mr. Nice Guy” and “Drunken Master II.”  George details the restoration that went into these films and Jeff corrects the misperceptions that have surrounded the “Drunken Master II” subtitles and language selections.  And finally, George briefly discusses some of the future release plans for the Golden Harvest titles through the Warner Archive.Purchase on Amazon: https://amzn.to/34UOzVEVisit our website:  www.theextras.tvThe Sitcom StudyWelcome to the Sitcom Study, where we contemplate the TV shows we grew up with and...Listen on: Apple Podcasts   Spotify Warner Archive Store on Amazon Support the podcast by shopping with our Amazon Affiliate linkDisclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.The Extras Facebook pageThe Extras Twitter Warner Archive & Warner Bros Catalog GroupOtaku Media produces podcasts, behind-the-scenes extras, and media that connect creatives with their fans and businesses with their consumers. Contact us today to see how we can work together to achieve your goals. www.otakumedia.tv

Hi, I'm film historian and author John Fricke. I've written books about Judy Garland and the Wizard of Oz movie, and you're listening to The Extras. Hello and welcome to The Extras, where we take you behind the scenes of your favorite TV shows, movies, and animation, and they're released on digital, DVD, Blu-ray, and 4K, or your favorite streaming site. I'm Tim Allard, your host. And today I'm sitting down with George Feldenstein of the Warner Archive to discuss Hong Kong cinema, and more specifically, some of the Warner Arch Warner Archives releases from the Golden Harvest Library.

George, we also have another guest joining us today for the first time. Maybe you could introduce him to our listeners. Well, it's my pleasure to do so. I would say without a doubt, the company has a treasure of a longtime colleague in Mr. Jeff Briggs, who's an archivist that's been with the company for a very long time. And his knowledge is vast on so many subjects. And he's especially responsible for our photo archive. But he is my go-to guy whenever we want to do things that involve the Golden Harvest library films that we own.

And Golden Harvest, Jeff will talk about, is a Hong Kong-based film production company. And we own not all, but a large chunk of the films they were involved with producing. I would say it's over 150 films. And Jeff probably knows all 150. So we've released some on DVD through the Warner Archive and two

really major ones on Blu-ray and hope to do more on Blu-ray. So I thought it would be great to talk about what we've done previously and things related to that. So what better way than to bring Jeff

onto your podcast, Tim, to have him be on the extras and speak with his eternal wisdom and amazing knowledge. Thank you very much, George. Thank you, Tim, for having me here. I'm so happy to be here. And as both of you know, this is a subject that's near and dear to my heart.

So I'm very happy to talk about this. Well, Jeff, before we get into the kind of the meat of the discussion, maybe you can take us back a little bit to talk about your background and how you became a fan of Hong Kong cinema. Sure. Well, it started basically I've been a fan of Hong Kong cinema? Sure. Well, it started, uh, basically I've been a fan of movies all my life. It's, it's in my blood. Um, my, my mother and my father too, uh, were both movie fans and we used to go to a lot of films growing up. I grew up in the Los Angeles area, as did my parents. And, um, I think my mom is the one who had the real movie bug when she was young. Uh, she told me that my grandfather used to take her out of school to go see movies.

So priorities were straight back then. And then just grew up loving film. And then I think my horizons on movies, I tended to see a lot of stuff, you know, in the 70s and 80s. And when I was in high school, my horizons kind of expanded a bit towards the end of high school and then going into college, discovered foreign films, mostly, you know, European and Japanese films as well. But then I around, you know, 1990 or so, I started hearing these rumblings, especially in Los Angeles newspapers, both the like the Los Angeles

Times and the free papers like the LA Weekly, these rumblings about how great Hong Kong cinema was and how exciting it was and how new. And it's funny, unlike a lot of people who are into the Hong Kong movies and, you know, specifically martial arts movies as well, I didn't really grow up with them. A lot of friends of mine who have similar interests used to watch Black Belt Theater on television when they'd have the dubbed versions showing them on an independent television station. I missed all that. I didn't, for some reason, it just totally skipped me. I'd seen, of course, the Bruce Lee films growing up, probably saw Enter the Dragon on Z Channel back in the 70s.

Z Channel back in the 70s. But it wasn't until this time that they started to get into my consciousness. And I still remember the date. And as friends, I have told my friends many times, it was March 6, 1991. I went to the New Art Theater in West Los Angeles to see John Woo's The Killer. And it essentially, it changed my life. I'd never seen anything like that. I just sat stunned watching it. Couldn't believe what I was seeing. It was exciting. It was passionate. And that was the door, opened the door. And then two weeks later, I returned to the same theater to see a double feature of Swordsman and A Chinese Ghost Story 2, which is two other early 90s Hong Kong classic films, and it was cemented there. After seeing those films, the new art,

I slowly discovered that there were not only video stores that had these films, but also there were Chinese language movie theaters in the Los Angeles area, essentially all in the San Gabriel Valley. There were some in LA's Chinatown, but by the time I think I started watching them, those theaters were almost gone. So there were trips to Pasadena, Alhambra, San Gabriel.

Those started around the late 1991 and regular trips out there to rent laser discs, to rent videos, to watch the films. Also a nice side effect was eating some great Chinese food. Right. And even better, there was a great, one of my college roommate of mine and a good friend of mine still to this day, my friend Martin Wong, who would venture out with me to see a lot of these films. And he ended up co-founding the magazine Giant Robot, the independent magazine,

which is all about Asian and Asian American pop culture, which was a fairly big magazine for its run, about 20 year run. And thankfully, I got to contribute some to that. So I was writing articles and eventually I was able to do some interviews. And thanks to the magazine, I got a press pass and I was able to go to Hong Kong. I went three times in the late 90s and was able to go to the Hong Kong Film Awards and do a ton of interviews with actors and directors and producers over there, most of which got published in Giant Robot. So I'm eternally grateful for that opportunity. So the 90s was, you know, my great passion in the entire decade was Hong Kong films.

Jeff, that was a golden age of Hong Kong cinema that you were just getting introduced to there. What do you know about the Golden Harvest library itself? Well, I'll start with the simple history of the studio. Golden Harvest was founded in 1970 and their first film released in January of 1971. As a little background, by the end of the 1960s, the main player in the Hong Kong movie production scene and all of basically all of Chinese language filmmaking was Shaw Brothers, which people of the 60s were all not quite a monopoly but a semi-monopoly at least in the Mandarin language cinema of Hong Kong there was another company called Cafe

but they had fallen almost into the point of irrelevance by the end of the 60s and there were also Cantonese there were Cantonese films being made as well but those were very small usually much lower budgeted than what Shaw Brothers was able to produce. So the roots of Golden Harvest are there were three people who

worked at Shaw Brothers, Raymond Chow, Leonard Ho, and Leung Fong, who I believe got just dismayed with the way Shaw Brothers was working. It was a very insular environment working there. So they decided to break out into their own and start their own production company. And as I said, in the early 70s, Golden Harvest was founded. Right off the bat, they were extremely successful and their importance can't be understated, especially as the 70s went along. Main reason was they had the foresight to sign Bruce Lee to a contract. And as we all know, Bruce Lee's films were just incredible, monstrous hits at the Hong Kong box office and in Asia and then eventually throughout the world. And they also, at the end of that, they had the foresight to sign a deal with Warner Brothers

to co-produce Enter the Dragon. And we all know what happened there. And thankfully, I'm happy that Warner Brothers was the studio that they chose to co-produce with. One other thing I want to mention that makes Golden Harvest important was the switch, the gradual switch over from Mandarin films to Cantonese films in Hong Kong. Now, it's funny that Hong Kong, where about 90% of the language spoken, at least back then, was Cantonese. But there was almost in the early seventies, almost all the films were produced in Mandarin. There was actually a, there is a gap of about two, almost two and a half years where there were zero Cantonese language films produced in Hong

Kong. And that just seems, I mean, for someone, you know, like me, that seems unfathomable. Imagine if there was a whole industry in the United States where films were not made in English. For mainstream films were not made in English. But Mandarin was even the Bruce Lee films were all released originally in Mandarin. They didn't get Cantonese releases until the late 1970s. Well, after Bruce Lee had passed away, the end of the dominance of Mandarin began with actually Shaw Brothers released a film in 1973 called The House of 72 Tenants, which was a comedy drama based on a play actually that became a monstrous hit in 1973 and actually outgrossed Into the Dragon by almost two to one. Wow. almost two to one.

Wow. And that set the stage for Cantonese coming back and how Golden Harvest did this was, was a big part of this was they signed the, the television comedian, Michael Hoy, who actually had been at Shaw Brothers making some films in Mandarin, of course. And then he came to Golden Harvest and started to make a series of five

comedies between 1970, 1974 and 1981, all of which were probably the biggest hits of that era, even bigger than any martial arts films or Bruce Lee films. And those were all done in Cantonese. And that was the return of Cantonese being, you know, they were able to include local jokes, wordplay that the Hong Kong audience could really relate to. And again, that's how Cantonese came around. And at the same time, at the end of the 1970s, Jackie Chan released his film Drunken Master, which we'll address a little bit later.

And by that time, Cantonese films were becoming the dominant force. And Golden Harvest, of course, was able to nurture talent in ways that Shaw Brothers could not. I mean, if you signed Shaw Brothers, their talent studio was more like the old Hollywood of the 30s and 40s. You signed a contract and you did what you were told. Golden Harvest was able to attract independent talent, a lot of whom did come from Shaw Brothers initially. Jackie Chan's an example. They signed him in 1980. John Woo, actually, his early, after working a little bit as an assistant at Shaw Brothers, he came to Golden Harvest as a director and directed some

martial arts films early on, but also some very successful comedies. So Golden Harvest became more known as the filmmakers' friends or maybe people who wanted to do something beyond you know what the limited vision at shaw brothers allowed them to do so golden harvest uh you know especially with jackie chan you know throughout the 1980s was the dominant force jackie made some of his greatest films during that time. How it comes to Warner Brothers is that in 1993, they sold, because of piracy concerns, Golden Harvest sold a ton of its library to a company called Star Entertainment. And then in 1998, they sold another portion of their library to Warner Brothers. And I like to think it's because of the previous relationship that Raymond Chow and Golden

Harvest had with, because of Enter the Dragon, that they, that we were, you know, able to purchase these films. Great Witch of the library of this, the library that Warner Brothers has now, a lot of 1990s films and then, but also some earlier films that Golden Harvest, if they didn't produce, they distributed. It's stuff going back to the 1970s. A lot. Yeah.

Most of the 90s material is a lot of, there's some martial arts films, of course, but a lot of comedies and dramas, some gangster films, and a great portion of those, probably the majority of those 1990 films I used to see, I actually have already seen because I saw them when they played the Chinese language theaters in the Los Angeles area back at that time when they came out. So George, when does the Warner Archive start getting involved in releasing some of these? Is this in the early days with some of the DVD releases? Stay with us.

We'll be right back. Hi, this is Tim Millard, host of The Extras Podcast. And I wanted to let you know that we have a new private Facebook group for fans of the Warner Archive and Warner Brothers catalog physical media releases. So if that interests you, you can find the link on our Facebook page or look for the link in the podcast show notes. Show notes. I would guess, you know, in terms of putting a chronology, I had known about the purchase of this library and that we had materials. And I kept bringing it up to people saying that this is there's a strong subgroup of fans that really are interested in these films. And we're really missing out on an opportunity to connect with them by having them not in release. And every time I brought up the subject, the lawyers and the clearance people and various other individuals would like, you know, just roll their eyes.

It's like I think over 170 features, maybe more that we have, although we may not have all rights in all media to every one of them. Some of them may have been pre-sold in this territory or that territory. There are some very famous ones that we have limited rights to, and I wish that wasn't the case. But nonetheless, after years of trying to get people to make a concerted effort to get behind this, it finally started to take shape around 2014 when we started going through the titles. consulted Jeff because it's an area that I'm aware of the enthusiasm and film interest, I should say fan interest, but I don't have the knowledge of these films the way I do for Hollywood films. So when, you know, for example, when we were going into classic Western B movies, that was something that I learned a lot about in subsequent years. But when I first was pursuing them, we had several hundred that we own that weren't in distribution, which I thought was ridiculous. So I went to someone who his expertise was that and got learning and guidance from him. Accordingly, when I said, okay, we're going to start bringing Golden Harvest out to the market through Warner Archive on DVD, you know, there was no question.

I had to talk to Jeff and get some guidance. Which are the best films? What are the ones that we need to pursue? And then, of course, the only thing that I was familiar with were the American versions of the Jackie Chan movies. Aside from the fact that I knew they had a very big role in the development of Enter the Dragon, which we think of as a Warner Brothers movie, not as a Golden Harvest movie, although Golden Harvest was involved in the production. But Enter the Dragon is one of the most important films in the Warner Library. Right.

And has probably made more money than most of the films in the Warner Library and continues to almost 50 years later. But the other films I didn't have a familiarity with that I would be comfortable with. So I got together with Jeff. We went through a list of titles. He would point out the benefits. This is good. This isn't. This is worth looking at. Maybe you want to look at this. Maybe you want to look at that. And then I went through the process of establishing whether they were clear for release and whether the music was clear for release. So between 2015 and 2016, we released a bunch of very, very important films on DVD because I didn't think that the market for releasing them on Blu-ray was there yet. But in subsequent years, I realized that it really had to be on Blu-ray because around the world, there are other companies with either like films or maybe even there are some of these films that

are licensed to other companies already overseas in certain markets where they're out on Blu-ray or they've been out on Blu-ray. And I thought we needed to pursue that. At the same time, I thought we needed to pursue that. At the same time, the company basically came up with an edict that anytime work was to begin on a Golden Harvest production, the film elements have been, they were very poorly cared for before they came under our ownership. So as a result, anytime we work on a Golden Harvest film, the original negative gets scanned at 4K 16-bit for the raw scan, and we start from there. And this way we have a preservation file that can be used later on, and that just gives us extra insurance.

So the first Golden Harvest title we put out was a Jackie Chan film, Mr. Nice Guy, which was filmed in English. But it is, Jeff, how would you describe that film in the pantheon of Jackie Chan and Golden Harvest? Well, that was one of his last films for Golden Harvest. And I think because of the huge success of Rumble in the Bronx internationally when it was released by New Line, they were maybe looking forward because it's interesting if you look at after Rumble in the Bronx, which was filmed partially in English, even the original version, just a small amount. First Strike was his next film, which had more English in it and more actually multiple languages

and had much higher budget. Mr. Nice Guy, I think by the time of Mr. Nice Guy and then his next film, which was Who Am I? Those were filmed almost entirely in English. But what's interesting is that in Hong Kong, Mr. Nice Guy, to the best of my knowledge, it only was released in a dubbed Cantonese version. Because I remember renting the LaserDisc at the time and it was in it was dubbed completely in Cantonese. What's ironic is when New Line released it theatrically, they did the film was in English, although some of the dialogue had been dubbed yet again, even though the original actors were recorded,

you know, it was recorded sync sound in English. So that's a very, and I think Golden Harvest was thinking more of an international appeal, obviously, by shooting the film in English. That has to be part of it. I don't think Rumble was filmed that way. Rumble in the Bronx was filmed

with that in mind, you know, explicitly. But as time went on, especially by the time of Mr. Nice Guy, I think that was in the forefront of people's minds. So we we decide to pursue release of Mr. Nice Guy. Which had never been released in its original version. I just want to add that. Yeah, it was the original version because the version that was released theatrically here in the U.S. was edited and it was not the film that the filmmakers intended to make. It was the film that the American distributor, which just happened to be New Line, it was the film that they wanted to make

out of it. And we wanted to release the Golden Harvest version. And we did that a few years ago. It was very successful. And the next film we wanted to approach was Drunken Master 2. to approach was Drunken Master 2. Now, at the time we were working on Mr. Nice Guy, we didn't have rights in this country to Drunken Master 2 because in the U.S., Drunken Master 2 was made in 1994, but not released in the U.S. until 2000 and was licensed to Miramax. It was released as The Legend of the Drunken Master. And there are differences in the version of the film, different music. Jeff can probably get into even more details than I can. Yeah.

But the point was, with the rights coming back to us, we were enthused to be able to bring the film to Blu-ray, which we did, I'd say it was last May or June. And we had the original, And we had the original. We tried to make it as faithful to the original version as possible, which came with some differentials, especially to people who were used to seeing the U.S. version. Because the U.S. version has Jackie Chan dubbing his own voice in English. Whereas the original version had a different actor

dubbing him in English. But that's what people saw in 1994. Not what Miramax released in 2000. And we didn't have the clearance to use the Chan track. And frankly, it really would have been,

it would have required probably doing another disc or something like that. So it's not just the audio. It was the, and the film was different too. Yeah. So, you know, we would have had to do a two disc set and maybe someday we will, but we're always taking a risk with these things to see how they'll perform. And this release, it was very well received by certain people. And then other people were convinced that it had been slathered with DNR, digital noise reduction, which we do not do. noise reduction, which we do not do.

And it was perpetuated as an internet lie. And once you tell people on the internet that something looks, you know, there is such and such wrong with this thing, they'll see it too. I was like, oh, I watched it four times and loved it. But now I see the DNR and it's it's just terrible, you know, and this this controversy still goes on. But it's based on basically a lie or a misperception, I think, is more accurate to say, because it isn't true. And unless you you worked on it, you wouldn't know that. We think it looks really great and we're very proud of the release. And we had three languages covered.

We had the original Cantonese, the original Mandarin, and the original English and the original wonky subtitles. Jeff can talk about the subtitles. Yeah, on the subtitles, I think there's kind of a misconception that the subtitles are really awful for those who haven't seen them. And to be honest, they're actually pretty good. I think Golden Harvest at the time, because of the Jackie Chan film, they hired a better translator than most other films that were other films that were, that were true. You know, all Hong Kong films have English

subtitles. It's, it's, uh, if it's not a law anymore, it's a custom. Um, and when I saw the hundreds of films in the theaters in the 1990s, every single one of them had English subtitles. And, you know, there is a little bit of, uh, you know, there's a little bit of quirkiness to the subtitles, but they're many, many times better than not only the subtitles on the, the subtitles that was on the Japanese disc, which came out earlier, but they're actually more true than the dialogue of the English translation that was used by Miramax. There's so much more flavor in there. For instance, there's a scene where he has all of the, he's naming all of the stances he's doing during one fight scene.

That's just not there in the, in the Miramax version. Um, there's a lot more flavor and there's really no misspellings actually. There's a little bit of grammatical issues, but they have so much flavor and, and charm and are much truer to the film than any other version available. So Jeff, what can you tell us a little bit about the history of the film itself? Well, first of all, I remember when I got the call from George saying that we had United States rights director master to it was a wonderful day. It was I always like getting calls from George. But this was one of the best ones I received.

And I'll just mention that George and I, we've known each other for a long time, well over 30 years. Before I worked at Warner Brothers, I used to work at a used record store in the San Fernando Valley. And this was in the early 90s. And George was a regular customer of mine. So, um, and a valued customer of course. And I'm happy that, uh, that, um, this one professional relationship, uh, became another professional relationship. So Druckenmaster 2, as I alluded to before, it was the sequel to Jackie's breakthrough 1978 film, Drunken Master, obviously. And it came out for Chinese New Year in 1994,

which was February of 1994. And it's interesting, and I mentioned this on an earlier Warner Archive podcast, but I think Jackie's box office dominance, you know, he was still a huge star, but his star had faded a tiny bit. Well, it hadn't really faded, but it was being challenged by who I called the two Chows that was Chai and Fat and also the comedian, Stephen Chow. And who had Stephen Chow, especially in the early nineties had just been, you know,

the biggest movie star in Hong Kong, basically. He was so popular that in 1992, every single one of the top five films at the Hong Kong box office were Stephen Chow films. Wow. Wow. And I think that Jackie, maybe consciously or not, thought, well, maybe I have to up my game a little bit.

So maybe go back to the movie that made me big and let's do a sequel, a more traditional martial arts film. Because he had done a lot more of the modern films, you know, the police story series, armor, the armor of God series, and even a foray into like a true crime film called Crime Story. And those were great too. But I thought maybe he was thinking, let's go back to my roots and do a more traditional martial arts film. So as I said, it came out in early 1994 and he filmed it in a good portion of it was filmed in mainland China, which I think was the first film of his

that filmed in the mainland. Maybe I'm wrong on that. Someone can correct me if I'm wrong. And the, uh, for some, you know, classic martial arts bona fides, he hired the director Lau Kar-Lung who is, who was actually in the film as well. He plays the general who's trying to recover the stolen artwork. He was the director of some of the greatest martial arts films of all time at Shaw Brothers, including the 36th Chamber of Shaolin. So he hired him as a director. Now, Jackie and him, I know, had kind of a conflict and he ended up leaving the film and Jackie finished it. I believe the entire last fight scene was filmed by Jackie and not by Lau Kar-Lung. Also in the cast, you have Ti-Lung, who was a huge Star Brothers star in the 1970s and

did dozens and dozens of great martial arts films and then had a career resurgence in the mid 80s, appearing in John Woo's Better Tomorrow with Chai and Fat, which revitalized his career. So Ti-Lung plays Jackie's father in this film which is interesting because he's only about seven or eight years older than Jackie but you know Jackie's so charming and boyish that it actually works in the movie now the thing about our release of Drugger Master 2 it's it's essentially the first time the original film has been legitimately available in the United States, aside from imports of Hong Kong Laserdiscs and VHS, there was never anywhere in the world a legitimate release of the original Drunken Master 2 on DVD. I saw the film in the theater when it first came out, again, in early 1994. I saw it, I think, three or four times.

And I remember sitting there just stunned after the end of the movie. The movie is just, it's such a joy to watch. It's clever. It's funny. It's exciting. It's impeccably well-made. And it's extremely accessible to,

even though to people who are not necessarily martial arts film fans, I think this has enough charm and enough jaw-dropping moments of physical prowess to even appeal to people who might not normally think about these, that they're into these films. It's just a treat. And, and it, you know, 28 years later, it, boy, it doesn't hold up. I went to a, they actually screened the, the Hong Kong, print of the Hong Kong version, which Warner Brothers has in our archive. They screened it in Hollywood in 2018 at a midnight show at the Vista Theater. And it was

packed. I went to it and the crowd was going absolutely nuts. I mean, laughing, cheering, you know, screaming, yelling. It's just one of those great communal, you know, audience experiences. And this, when it did come out, it was Jackie's, it was his biggest hit to date. It was his highest box office hit. I mean, highest grossing box office film ever. It didn't end up being the number one film of the year because Chai and Fat Films snuck in under the radar

at Christmas to beat it. But after that, Jackie became even bigger with the release of Rumble and First Strike. And I want to say, too, going off what George said, I saw this film in the theater just a week after it came out in Hong Kong when it played in Los Angeles. And on this Blu-ray, it looks better than when I saw it in the theater. It's absolutely impeccable. The quality is great. I think it's not going to look...

A Hong Kong production from 1994 is not going to look hong kong you know production from 1994 is not going to look like a film that just came out a few years ago but it is true to the film and it looks wonderful and the as i said you know i i had pushed for the subtitles the original subtitles to be included and i think they're wonderful and uh the one thing i can't can't you can't ignore about drunken master is jack doesn't get upstage very often in films. I can only think of two people that have really done it. Michelle Yeoh did it in Police Story 3. But in Druckenmaster 2, he is, at least in the scenes without martial arts, he is fully upstage by the wonderful Anita Moy, who plays his stepmother in the film.

Anita Moy, who plays his stepmother in the film. And as someone who absolutely adores Anita Moy and was a huge fan of hers, I have to mention. And this really came out, especially when I saw that Vista screening in 2018. I mean, she just blows away everybody else in the film in her scenes. She's got a wonderful, incredible comic timing, just a wonderful personality. She is, wonderful, incredible comic timing, just a wonderful personality. Uh, she is aside from Jackie's, you know, obvious, incredible talents. She, she owns the film. Um, she is just, she's unforgettable in the movie. Um, she's again, she's close to my heart. Also, I was able to interview Anita Moy in 2000 in Las Vegas, uh, for giant robot magazine and all the celebrity interviews I did, she was unquestionably the best she was warm friendly nice gracious and um the sad thing is she passed away in 2003 she died at

only 40 years old from cancer yeah um i have just wonderful memories you know i only spend about 45 minutes with her but the memories are wonderful it It was just before I got married. And so she actually, she poured tea and toasted my wife and I at that interview, which was a wonderful experience. And she's, she's, she's horribly missed, but she's also in Rumbled in the Bronx as well. And she doesn't have quite as media role, but she does have some very memorable moments in that. But in Drucker Master too, she's at her best. She's beloved in Hong Kong. that but in drunken master 2 she's at her best um she's beloved in hong kong uh they just made a biopic of her that came out last year in hong kong and it became the second highest grossing film in hong kong history uh it's a wonderful biopic i saw it and a wonderful testament to her legacy so she is a great a great reason uh one of the important reasons that drunken master 2 succeeds

as well as it does especially on the comic side uh the wonderful thing about that Drunken Master 2 succeeds as well as it does, especially on the comic side. The wonderful thing about seeing Drunken Master 2 is that it is a starting point. It can be a starting point to interest yourself in the Golden Harvest library. And we have more Golden Harvest films waiting in the wings that we're planning to release. I can't say when, but a lot of them are being scanned at the present time and that bodes well for future releases. And George, I think we can say also that when we do bring titles, we will get them as close to the original as possible. Isn't that correct? Yes, absolutely. What I've found, and it's an interesting thing because we have enthusiastic fans, passionately enthusiastic fans for various groups of films. There are, for various groups of films.

There are, of course, the DC fans. There are the Hammer Horror fans. There are fans of all sorts of films that have a large part in our library. Warner Gangster films, you know, film noir, MGM musicals, all sorts of things. And each of these groups are really incredibly passionate and they want to see every possible incarnation and make sure that it's exactly the way that it's supposed to be. And I don't think you could ever do anything for any of these films, for any of these groups, and please 100% of the people. But that's our goal is to try to do so.

So what I think we'll be doing with Golden Harvest releases as we move forward is trying to up the ante a little bit and add more features that will appeal to the fans and make them even more special. They could be physical items, they could be special features in the video sense or archival films. And I frankly don't even know if we have, you know, outtakes or anything like that. I would kind of doubt it. But we did buy the films and everything that came with them. So I think the only thing we didn't get were the stills, right, Jeff? Yeah, there's not a huge number of stills. Thankfully, we have lobby cards and original posters, too. And if you take a look at the website with this podcast, you will see a very nice scan of the original Druckenmaster 2 poster,

a very nice scan of the original Druckenmaster 2 poster, right Tim? Yes. It will be on there. And indeed we did try to use some of those artwork elements on the packaging rather than trying to

make them look 2000 you know new millennium let's say. Right. The cover of Mr. Nice Guy is the original Hong Kong theatrical poster artwork. Yeah, that's our that's our approach in general, regardless of the film, is to use original key art wherever possible. And another nice thing is that there is also there are some preservation protocols that are being done right now as well. Right, George? Yes. So as a result, anytime there is a need or a request for a Golden Harvest film, we bring in all the elements to make sure that they're the best that they can possibly be. We try to be as faithful to

the original as possible and to give it an outstanding presentation that will make the fans happy. This is very fan driven. And the fact that we're going back, I, you know, I'll give Warner Brothers as a whole credit. We're going back to the original camera negatives on both Mr. Nice Guy and Rooker Master 2. We went back to the negatives and a 4K scan of those and our incredible quality control team. It's not going to look better than it looks now, at least on a Blu-ray, you know, when 8K in the future. And we have to remember that these were not mega budget Hollywood productions. Right. And they're not supposed to be.

And they don't look like it. And so you don't see multi-million dollar production values, but you're not supposed to. These were made on modest budgets, but they are what they are. And that's exactly what they're supposed to be. And we present them in their the way they were originally intended to be seen and heard. And despite any of these issues, the movies themselves are still unbelievably entertaining. Unbelievably entertaining. And that's what counts. I think it's fair to also say it's not just Jackie Chan, you know, action, martial arts, comedy.

There are also some very serious films. Yes, that's true. And a lot of darker films. It's not just one that this studio was responsible for martial arts comedies. They did many different kinds of films. Yes. So George and Jeff,

I know that you can't necessarily say exactly what is coming out next, but are there any teases you can give us of some of the titles that you're looking at or that have been highly requested from the library? Well, I think I can say that there were a few that had no involvement part of our DVD initiatives and aired on our late lamented Warner Archive instant streaming service, Hollywood's first studio owned streaming service, which unfortunately was before its time, but we were showing high definition masters of some of these movies on that service and uh we were very proud of that and some people the service wasn't around

very long because the company had a different structure and plan in mind for how they were going to be handling streaming. So they retired it in favor of larger operations. But those who are lucky enough to be members and see those, those films and those masters, they were impressed by them. We would be starting again, of course, because they were not scans off the original camera negative, and that's the rule. But some of the first releases we're looking at

are films that were part of that initial group of DVDs. So I think that's a good hint. Thank you, George. Thank you, Jeff, for coming on the show today and talking about Drunken Master 2 and Mr. Nice Guy, the Blu-ray releases so far from the Warner Archive and giving us a little background on the Golden Harvest Thank you Tim very much for letting

us do so it's always a pleasure Yes thank you very much I could go on and on probably for several more hours but I think what you're doing is great and thank you for the opportunity to share my passion and then our passion as well George and our passion for getting

the best possible releases out to to be to the people who love them and jeff thanks for taking the time to be part of all of this and you're welcome on the show as soon as we have more information to share with the fans absolutely so keep your eyes out for more Golden Harvest. Thanks again to Warner Brothers executive George Feltenstein and Jeff Briggs for coming on the show today. I hope you have enjoyed their review of the previous Blu-ray releases of Drunken Master 2 and Mr. Nice Guy. And if you're like me, you look forward to some of the Golden Harvest releases they have planned this year. So subscribe and stay tuned

for more information in the near future. For those of you interested in learning more about the show, please check out our website at www.theextras.tv where we have some of the images that Jeff Briggs mentioned in the podcast. Also follow the show on Facebook or Twitter at TheExtrasTV or Instagram at The Extras.TV

to stay up to date on the latest episodes and for exclusive images and behind the scenes information about the episodes and upcoming guests and if you're enjoying the show please subscribe and leave us a review at iTunes, Spotify or your favorite podcast provider until next time you've been listening to The Extras with Tim Millard

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