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| Images courtesy of Eureka Entertainment |
Eureka Entertainment and other like-minded boutique labels
such as 88 Films and Arrow Video have made a concerted effort to curate and
release domestically titles restored and licensed by Fortune Star largely
consisting of either Shaw Brothers or Golden Harvest titles of Hong Kong based
actioners. With recent particular focus
on Raymond Chow’s Golden Harvest company, Eureka’s latest acquisition and
release comes in the form of the 1976 political assassination-plot/martial-arts
thriller A Queen’s Ransom or International Assassin depending on
the territory. A reaction of sorts to
the recent slew of American politicized action thrillers ala The Day of the
Jackal or Black Sunday, the Golden Harvest production is a cops vs.
trained assassins thriller surrounding a multi-continental conspiracy to assassinate
Queen Elizabeth II on her visit to Hong Kong in 1975.
What sets this one apart from the pack is the screen
presence of former On Her Majesty’s Secret Service James Bond star
George Lazenby who began making a name for himself in the Hong Kong action film
industry including but not limited to The Man from Hong Kong. In a film written and directed by the
insanely prolific Ting Shan-hsi (also known under the pseudonym Erh Yang) who
worked as a writer and assistant director on King Hu’s Come Drink with Me,
A Queen’s Ransom follows a group of mercenaries hired by an Irish
Republican only known as Morgan (George Lazenby). The ragtag group consists of a Japanese
explosives-technician, a Thai boxer, a Filipino sniper and a South Vietnamese
veteran. Only a couple of police
officers Gao (Ko Chun-hsiung) and Karate Master (Charles Heung) stand in their
way in a race against time to beat the conspiratorial killers to the punch. Oh and the musclebound Bolo Yeung from Enter
the Dragon shows up to kick ass and take names here as well.
An ensemble action-thriller with many disparate characters
from numerous countries in what appears to be a global conspiracy to take out
Queen Elizabeth II, the film is very much Hong Kong’s answer to the
aforementioned political action-adventure nick-of-time movies that engendered
such popularity in the United States. In
the time-honored tradition of Hong Kong movies at the time, there’s a lot of
unlicensed cribbing of music amid Shao-Lung Chou’s otherwise rousing score,
like a couple of moments where the film clearly samples Pink Floyd’s Shine
On You Crazy Diamond Part 1 likely without the band’s permission. The panoramic widescreen cinematography by Fist
of Fury and The Big Boss cameraman Ching-Chu Chen looks fine as the
action stars and bullets fly across the screen in between furious kicks and punches. There’s also a wealth of preexisting
documentary footage of Queen Elizabeth II on her tour interspersed with the
film footage, giving viewers a docudrama realism to the proceedings.
Restored in 2K by Fortune Star and granted its first-ever domest
home video release in the west, A Queen’s Ransom is a taut, entertaining
little kickboxing gunslinging explosive actioner and as always Eureka
Entertainment’s fully furnished slipcover package with reversible art comes
with a collector’s booklet of newly written essays by James Oliver and original
poster artwork. For posterity all of the
variant cuts including the shortened export versions and English dubs have been
included though I myself went with the Mandarin track. There’s also a documentary featurette by
martial artist Michael Worth included and an audio commentary by action movie
aficionados Mike Leeder and Arne Venema.
Overall, it’s a splendid release of one of Golden Harvest’s most
exciting and thrilling cops vs. assassins movies to come out of Hong Kong.
--Andrew Kotwicki
