2024 HAUL - NOVEMBER CHAPTER: BATCH #2
So I finally had a day off today after working the last seven days. Long story short I was supposed to have Sunday off but something happened and they needed my help to make sure everything went smoothly. Will be working the coming weekend but after that it should be back to normal until the end of the year.
Anyway we have a number of packages arrive. They arrived on Wednesday, Thursday, Sunday, Monday and today.
It's been a while since I bought any PlayStation 4 games, in fact I haven't picked up as much as I had done in previous years. In recent weeks I decided to be in the mood of wanting to pick up some more Japanese games for the platform and from none other than Koei Tecmo themselves. These two in particular were released first on PlayStation 3 and then received a re-release with extra content for PlayStation 4 so it came out early in the lifecycle. I bought both on eBay for decent prices and they arrived on two different days.
Starting off with
Dynasty Warriors 8 Xtreme Legends Complete Edition, this is another musou game and with the extra content for the action combat style massacre adventure. I don't go for the
Empires versions as they're not to my liking but I am a fan of the Musou genre. There's a few more that Koei Tecmo have released that I want to look into as well (
Samurai Warriors 4 &
Warriors Orochi 3) but surprisingly I don't see these anywhere at my local CeX.
The other is
Deception IV: The Nightmare Princess, which is the extended version of the PS3 game
Deception IV: Blood Ties. The
Deception franchise has been around since the original PlayStation (and you can even download the first game on PlayStation 3 thanks to the PS3 Classics line-up) and it's basically you creating various traps to stop intruders and I've been interested in this particular niche game for a while. I remember finding a copy in GAME that was so battered they were trying to sell it off for like a pound.
So because I have been working so hard I was rewarded Amazon vouchers which happened back in September, and I used this opportunity to also order the two latest releases from Radiance Films that came from their October line-up. I was planning to pre-order both of these but the timing wasn't right.
First we have the limited edition Blu-ray box set release for
Daiei Gothic: Japanese Ghost Stories, which includes three classic Japanese horror films from Daiei that were restored in 4K. The films included are Kenji Misumi's 1959 film
The Ghost of Yotsuya (四谷怪談), Tokuzō Tanaka's 1969 film
The Snow Woman (怪談雪女郎), and Satsuo Yamamoto's 1969 film
The Bride from Hades (牡丹燈籠). The box set has a well-detailed book which includes two short stories that add more context to what the films yokai came from. It's a well-presented release and it fits in line with the winter snow we've been getting as of late heh.
The second is the limited edition Blu-ray release for Toshio Matsumoto's 1988 film
Dogra Magra (ドグラ・マグラ) and it's been noted as the director's final feature-length film. The trailer that Radiance Films presented was really good and it's on my list to watch sooner in the backlog than the rest. Toshio Matsumoto also directed
Funeral Parade of Roses which I did pick up years ago from BFI when they released it on Blu-ray.
The next day, we have more Asian Cinema courtesy of ordering from Terracotta Distribution who are one of the best retailers in the UK for picking up Asian films on Blu-ray and 4K. Here we have a few pre-orders that I ordered together and they were being released around the same timeframe so it paid off.
First we have an interesting release from Eureka Entertainment because it's a collection of films from Celestial Pictures and Shaw Brothers which I believe is their first release from this production company. This is the
Super Spies and Secret Lies: Three Undercover Classics from Shaw Brothers, which includes three films; Lo Wei's 1966 film
The Golden Buddha (金菩薩), Lo Wei's 1967 film
Angel with the Iron Fists (鐵觀音), and Chang Cheh's 1969 film
The Singing Thief (大盜歌王). There's another collection of Shaw Brothers films being released next month which I have yet to order.
Next we have Patrick Tam's 1980 film
The Sword (名劍), which is his first feature-length film and also a wuxia themed one. The artwork for the set is really nice and I'm intrigued to see how it fares compared to his other noteworthy works
Nomad and
My Heart Is That Eternal Rose which Radiance Films will be releasing early next year.
And from Arrow Films they have another Japanese film being released so here we have Ataru Oikawa's 1998 film
Tomie (富江), which is the first live-action adaptation of Junji Ito's manga I believe and one of many adaptations. Considering Arrow likes to release box sets I'm surprised they only went with the first film and not all the rest together.
Today we have another batch of Asian films this time from 88 Films themselves as two releases from their November line-up arrived today.
The first is Stephen Shin's 1992 film
Black Cat II: The Assassination of President Yeltsin (黑貓II: 刺殺葉利欽), the sequel to the 1991 film from the same director. While the first film received the deluxe collector's treatment, the second film is presented as a deluxe limited edition which is more like a first print edition release with a rigid slipcase. The case includes a booklet and fold-out poster.
Next we have Corey Yuen's 1993 films
The Legend of Fong Sai Yuk 1 & 2 (方世玉 & 方世玉續集), presented in a different style of packaging than the previous 88 Films releases. Here we have digipacks and the usual booklet and poster. One of the films included in this release is cut by the BBFC due to animal cruelty but its like 1 frame removed or something so it's not noticeable from what I have seen. Jet Li and Josephine Siao both star in these films and it's another 4K Ultra HD release. This isn't a combo pack but the Blu-ray version does have the same type of packaging if you don't care about 4K.
