SYNOPSIS
Perhaps the most accomplished genre picture directed by British-Chinese filmmaker Po-Chih Leong (Hong Kong 1941), The Island is Hong Kong’s answer to the likes of Deliverance, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, The Hills Have Eyes and Motel Hell – a film that transports the visceral survival horror so popular in the 1970s and 1980s from the backwoods of America to a remote island in East Asia.
At the height of summer, teacher Mr Cheung (John Sham) takes a small group of his students on an excursion to explore a rural island that he assumes is uninhabited. But upon arrival, Cheung and his class discover that they are not alone – the island is, in fact, home to three deranged brothers and their equally deranged mother. And when one of Cheung’s students refuses a marriage proposal from the youngest – and perhaps most disturbed – member of this deeply strange family, both the teacher and the young people in his care soon come to wish that they had stayed at home.
Following in the footsteps of its Western predecessors, The Island plays out a pointed class conflict as it pits its educated urbanites against the violent members of an isolated rural community – but never loses the unique qualities of a Hong Kong horror movie. The Masters of Cinema series is proud to present the film on Blu-ray for the first time anywhere outside of Asia.
SPECIAL FEATURES
Limited Edition [2000 copies]
Limited edition O-card slipcase featuring new artwork by Ilan Shead
Limited edition collector’s booklet featuring an interview with Po-Chih Leong and revised introduction notes on The Island by film writer, producer and film festival executive Roger Garcia
1080p HD presentation from a brand new 2K restoration
Original Cantonese mono
Optional English subtitles, newly translated for this release
New audio commentary with East Asian cinema expert Frank Djeng (NY Asian Film Festival)
New audio commentary with genre cinema experts Mike Leeder and Arne Venema
Surviving the Shoot – interview with director Po-Chih Leong from 2023 courtesy of Frédéric Ambroisine
Trailer
Quite why this is meriting the MoC label instead of the Eureka Classics line isn't clear to me.
Their last Po-Chih Leong title was MoC, too, I guess they've decided that he's in. They have a pretty arbitrary classification of genre films, with many filmmakers who should be MoC (Chang Cheh, Sammo Hung, Jackie Chan), being relegated to Classics, while it's debatable if many of the recent German releases should be in the MoC strand (happy though I am that they exist).
To be fair, it already started under Craig Keller when Simon Killer was curated as part of the series. They did say that pivoting to Hongkong titles a few years ago literally kept Eureka afloat which, to me, was implying that the canonical stuff wasn't selling well enough. No one can argue with the inclusion of James Whale but mid-tier Kinji Fukasaku and Billy Wilder would have been more at home in the Eureka Classics line, ditto the DEFA space opera films (none of whom are great) or the Wallace films or those two Po-Chih Leong titles now, never mind Martyrs. Claire Denis made sense, on the other hand.
It's up to the audience to bring back the "old Eureka", though. If 2000 copies of whatever The Island is sell quickly enough, but hile it's tougher to sell some Jean Epstein or James Whale or Douglas Sirk, there's only so much a label can do (though I see their DEFA Strange New Worlds set seems close to sell out).
Not that I like it : Eureka's editorial line-ups as a whole definitely isn't what I was eager to get from them, but while I still liked discovering or upgrading several HK movies through their releases, it's a whole different label now, possibly more than ever before (I remember defending their balance between, well, HK vs non-HK stuff). But if they can access masters to movies that sell, what should they do ?
As a whole though, there's clearly a revival of HK (and Japanese action) movies over the world, which explains why Vinegar Syndrome in the US, or Le chat qui fume and Carlotta in France, have jumped aboard the bandwagon, with Eureka having been quite avant-garde on this when they started with Iron Monkey. I don't know why it's selling particularly that much after a period where the market was saturated and people lost interest, but it's clearly back to some kind of El Dorado.
You're absolutely right, it is up to the audience to buy the titles they want to see if and when they become available. If the Finis Terrae release, for example, doesn't sell at all, then Eureka can't be blamed for not taking a risk on Jean Epstein's other films (I'd love to see a MoC of Usher!) or other canon. There are other factors, too, like you mentioned availability and suitability of the source (though Eureka did do a very limited edition of a HK film recently whose title escapes me and they were upfront about the limitations), and of course, the competition, not just within the UK but globally. Occasionally I wish they'd be a bit faster. Finis Terrae for example has been out in France for years - though again, better late than never?
Credit where it is due. They put out those Universal Silents. There were dozens of those films restored by Universal and we got very few on disc. But for the most part it's easy for me to skip the label's output.
I wasn't aware that the previous film by the director had such a ragged reputation, to be honest. I'll be watching it sometime next week, and I guess I'll make a purchase of this film, or not, based on that.
