Saturday 2 March 2013

DVD review: Dragon Hunt (1990)


First of all I should point out that Dragon Hunt is quite rare, there seems only to be one legit DVD release and that one comes from Germany and it is cut. I know I can buy bootleg releases of this but I ain´t interested of those, I collect and review legit releases. Identical twins and martial arts experts Martin and Michael McNamara (Martin and Michael as themselves) are back in this sequel to the 1986 film Twin Dragon Encounter. In Dragon Hunt the two martial arts instructors get caught up in a life-and-death game of revenge orchestrated by their old nemesis, Jake and a band hunters here recruited by Jake because he wants to make his revenge against the Twins exciting: There are mainly ninjas, poachers and mercenaries. Dragon Hunt is written by Michael McNamara and is directed by Charlie Wiener. The acting is amateurish, actually I think I´ve never seen such uncharismatic heroes. The villain with his silver-hand and mohawk belongs in a comicbook adventure and made me think of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles... The camerawork is okay, it´s hard to comment on the editing as I can´t say who´s too blame, the filmmakers or the german censors. The actionscenes, both shootouts and martial arts, are pretty ridiculous but yet again keep in mind that it is a cut release that I had to make due with. It´s quite evident that all action-scenes have been heavily cut as many scene-changes happens quite abruptly. The fightchoreography is bad and I do know that the McNamara brothers supposedly are accomplished martial artists but it doesn´t show. There´s no gore in this, I think I saw just two squibs in this, but I´m pretty sure that it, in its original edit, is much more violent and graphic. There´s no T & A in this.
Dragon Hunt is also known as Dragon Kickboxers in France.
This review is based upon the german region 2 DVD release from Madison Home Video, it´s cut and german language only but it is the only legit DVD release available.
Rating: 1½ out of 7.  Despite some obvious flaws (amateurish acting and filmmaking, a heavily cut release and so on) it nevertheless remains an pretty entertaining flick in a weird way.

/JL



1 comment:

  1. Good review. This one is a real fun flick in my personal opinion. It's also on DVD in Greece, but with non-removable subtitles and was more or less recently in Canada, put out as a double feature with its prequel, Twin Dragon Encounter, by the Twin Dragons themselves. http://www.twin-dragon.com/announcements/twindragonsturn60

    Both the Greek and Canadian DVDs are uncut.

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