| Video: In 2002, Celestial Pictures acquired the entire Shaw Brothers library (760 films) and began the over three-year long process of restoring and digitally remastering them. Their quality work is apparent here. Infra-Man is presented in anamorphic widescreen. There is no print damage and very little grain. The image is sharp and clear, with bright, vibrant colors. All of the rays, explosions, and colorful costumes look great. The sharpness of the transfer even belies some of the special effects, by making wires visible. The faded, grainy, fullscreen VHS versions released Stateside can't begin to compare to this gorgeous DVD. Grade: A
Audio: Two language tracks are included: Cantonese and Mandarin, both in Dolby Digital 5.1. They both sound good. The dialogue and crazy sound effects are loud and clear. There are a few scenes in which the music kind of fades into the background of the mix and sounds muddled, but it's no major problem. There are some scenes that have music only on one of the two tracks. For example, when Infra-Man fights the Plant Monster, there is no music on the Mandarin track, only on the Cantonese. The Cantonese track has stronger music and voices (especially for the monsters), and is overall a tad louder than the Mandarin track.
Infra-Man was dubbed into English for its U.S. release, but that dub is not included here. No great loss, as it was poorly done. Cantonese is the film's original language, and thus is the preferred option (even though the disk defaults to Mandarin if no manual selection is made). Grade: A-
Extras / Menus: The extras are divided up into "trailers" and "movie information." Five trailers are included. In addition to Infra-Man, there are trailers for: Twinkle Twinkle Little Star (a sci-fi parody which includes some hilarious Star Wars-inspired gags, such as lightsaber nunchakus), Buddha's Palm (supernatural kung-fu), The Killer Snakes (which looks like a Chinese Willard with snakes instead of rats), and The Mighty Peking Man (inspired by King Kong). All of the trailers have Cantonese and Mandarin audio (except for The Killer Snakes and The Mighty Peking Man, which have Cantonese audio only), with optional English or Chinese subtitles. They are all in anamorphic widescreen, and really show off the image quality of the restored films.
The movie information consists of a photo gallery, original poster image, production notes, and filmographies. The photo gallery is subdivided into movie stills and behind-the-scenes. There are 15 movie stills. Given the clear freeze-frame capabilities of DVD, movie stills are kind of pointless. The behind-the-scenes section includes 16 screens of one or more black & white pictures. They include photos of the crew preparing the shots, and partially-costumed action actors getting ready to do their thing. All of these pictures have captions in both English and Chinese. There is also a single image of the film's original poster, notable for its blatant use of a Superman-style "S" logo. The so-called "production notes" are just a single screen of text (in both English and Chinese). It's one short paragraph that reads like a summary for the back of the box. It gives no insight into the production of the film. Finally, there are filmographies (in both English and Chinese) for actors Danny Lee (aka Li Hsui-hsien, Infra-Man) and Wang Hsia (Professor Liu), and the director, Hua Shan.
Every screen, and all of the menus, are anamorphic. All of the menus are still images with no sound or music. The selections are listed in both English and Chinese, so the menus are easy to navigate. Grade: B
Final Analysis: This wild and crazy kung-fu classic looks spectacular on DVD. Everyone who enjoys Infra-Man, and has a region-free DVD player, will want to pick this disk up. Fans of Ultraman and Sentai should also check it out. Highly recommended.
Final Grade: A |