duel to the death

DUEL TO THE DEATH Wields A Fully-Loaded Limited Edition 2K Restoration On Blu-Ray This Fall

You can always count on niche banners to keep up the posterity on classics for physical media, including Eureka Entertainment which has been on a roll with a variety of genres in its output since 1981. Their latest brings forth martial arts cinema legend Ching Siu-Tung’s 1983 wuxia hit, Duel To The Death, which makes its return to physical media via the UK-based distributor and packed with a bevy of special features to make the purchase worth your while. Our own Vance Ang took to the dashboard for his own providential thoughts in a review he remarkably posted way ahead of this announcement. As genres, horror and thriller films manage to build up the tension, where a violent final act reaches a crescendo that will stay in the consciousness of the viewer for many hours, if not days or even weeks. Yet Duel is neither horror nor thriller. Evidently, there are some […]

DUEL TO THE DEATH Retrospective: A Refreshing, Indelible Bookmark In Wuxia Cinema

Vance Ang

It may look like just another early 80s period style martial arts film, with a title that immediately denotes the key theme and purpose of the film. Yet, Duel to the Death (referred to in this review as Duel) manages to surprise the audience. Duel has cheesy moments of melodrama (common in many Hong Kong films of this era) but the way the film builds its tension through its bleak narrative makes it more masterful than it initially presents. Personally, these style of films with wire-fu, long gowns and stylized sword play have never been, my choice of a martial arts film. In the 80s and 90s, martial arts cinema preference for me, and no doubt for many of you, was dominated by movies starring Jean Claude Van Damme, Jeff Speakman and Mark Dacascos, and with frequent dives into movies with legends like Bruce Lee or Chuck Norris. There was […]