Wednesday, February 6, 2008

Asia-pol (Hong Kong/Japan, 1967)

It was not an unusual practice for Hong Kong's powerhouse Shaw Brothers studio to participate in international co-productions during its heyday, and the result of that practice was often some fairly unique screen pairings. For instance, there was British horror icon Peter Cushing teaming up with kung fu badass David Chiang in The Legend of the Seven Golden Vampires and the Sentimental Swordsman himself, Ti Lung, trading lines with American TV movie staple and Night of the Lepus star Stuart Whitman in Shatter. But the 1967 spy thriller Asia-pol stands out in particular for being a potential wet dream for fans of 1960s Asian action cinema. This participation between Shaw and Japan's Nikkatsu - the studio that trademarked its own distinctive brand of hardboiled action cinema during the late fifties and sixties - boasts two stars who have, respectively, come to represent more than any others the identity of each of those studios at that moment in their histories...

Read the full review at The Lucha Diaries

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