Blu-ray release: ‘Hapkido’ & ‘Lady Whirlwind’
By Phil Mills | Jun 28, 2022
Eureka Entertainment are bringing two action-packed Angela Mao movies – ‘Hapkido’ (合氣道) & ‘Lady Whirlwind’ (鐵掌旋風腿) – to UK Blu-ray on August 22, 2022.
In ‘Hapkido’ (aka ‘Lady Kung Fu’), a group of martial artists (Mao, Sammo Hung, and Carter Wong) start their own school to teach the Korean martial art, Hapkido, but a rival Japanese academy attempts to crush them – deeming Hapkido inferior to their Japanese fighting style. Similar to the plot of Bruce Lee’s ‘Fist of Fury’ (a canny decision by the filmmakers, capitalising on Mao often being referred to as a “female Bruce Lee” ), ‘Hapkido’ was a huge hit in the West, even briefly beating Lee’s ‘Enter the Dragon’ at the North American box office.
Perhaps her most iconic film, ‘Lady Whirlwind’ (bizarrely re-titled as ‘Deep Thrust’ in the US, to capitalise on the success of ‘Deep Throat’, which probably made its tag lines—“The Deadly Stroke of Bare Hand Combat” and “Mistress of the Death Blow”—a tad misleading) stars Mao as a deadly fighter out for revenge on the man who wronged her sister (Chang Yi). After tracking the man down, she finds he is on his own vengeful path against a gang of Japanese thugs and agrees to help keep him alive – as long as she gets to take her revenge when it’s all over!
Features:
• 1080p presentations of both films from new 2K restorations
• Hapkido – Original mono Mandarin and English audio options
• Hapkido – DTS-HD MA 5.1 English dub
• Lady Whirlwind – Original mono Mandarin and English audio
• Optional English Subtitles, newly translated
• Hapkido – New audio commentary with Frank Djeng & Michael Worth
• Hapkido – New audio commentary with Frank Djeng & Robert “Bobby” Samuels
• Lady Whirlwind – New audio commentary with Frank Djeng & Michael Worth
• Lady Whirlwind – New audio commentary with Frank Djeng & Robert “Bobby” Samuels
• Lady Whirlwind – New audio commentary with Samm Deighan
• Brand new interview with Angela Mao, filmed in 2022
• Archival interview with Angela Mao
• Archival interview with Carter Wong
• Archival interview with Sammo Hung and Yuen Biao
• Hapkido – Alternate opening credits
• Selection of trailers and TV spots
• Stills Galleries
• Reversible sleeve featuring original Hong Kong poster artwork
• Limited Edition O-Card slipcase [2000 copies]
• Limited Edition Reversible Poster [2000 copies]
• Limited Edition collector’s booklet [2000 copies]
The Angela Mao boxset is available to pre-order now from Amazon.co.uk.
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