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In 1988, Brian Trenchard-Smith directed two low-budget martial arts films in Hong Kong and his native Australia featuring Edward John Steak as a tough guy named Jason Blade. The results? Day Of The Panther and Strike Of The Panther, two rollicking action pictures that were released on Blu-ray for the first time this year because of this new double feature from Umbrella Entertainment, who previously released this double feature on Blu-ray in Australia back in 2019.Â
The first movie reveals to us the existence of The Panthers, an elite group of martial artists who go through intense training. From this group, Jason Blade and Linda Anderson emerge, trained by Linda’s father, William. Now they are officially Panthers which means they are given positions with the special branch of the Hong Kong Police Department where they work as undercover agents.
Linda has been given the difficult job of dismantling a drug cartel which Damien Zukor (Michael Carman) runs and which rakes in impressive revenues from selling to Australians. Unfortunately, she becomes another victim of Zukor’s sinister right-hand man Baxter (Jim Richards). When Blade receives news of her death, he goes deep undercover to Zukor’s gang to take them out from the inside.
When this second picture, which was renamed Fists Of Blood for its US home video release on VHS through Celebrity Video, was picked up by the first film’s viewers, it was still at a point where Blade had been captured. Out of startling neglect, Blade managed to get away from captivity and is still employed by the HKPD. He continues to war against evil and save civilians. His new assignment is to descend deep into an undercover, multi-layered brothel and rescue the stunning daughter of one of the top tycoons, Julia Summers (Fiona Gauntlett).
When that particular job is completed, he plus certain others from a select task force come together to try to apprehend Jim Baxter. Also, things do take a different turn when Jim Baxter who was recently released from prison, abducts Blade’s girlfriend, Gemma Anderson, who is also part of the task force. Naturally, Blade pursues him and tracks both him and Gemma to a deserted power station which he has rigged with a lot of deadly explosives. Unfortunately for him, there are also an army of ninjas between Blade and his revenge. Fortunately for us, both Blade and Anderson seem to have the same psychic ability, and along with some of her narration in the opening sequence of the film, new audience members are brought up to speed on the Blade saga, and although more things get squeezed into this sequel, I guess it helps to increase the feature length.
Sure, these movies are not of a serious nature and are not all that unique, but they are amusing in a multitude of ways. Amusing to the point that it is astonishingly amusing.
If action movies created by Cannon Films back in the day have always been your favorite, then these will definitely hit the right chords for you as they feature a hint of Australian uniqueness to stand out. Even in these pictures, Trenchard-Smith managed the action genre well and that started with The Man From Hong Kong. Given the sequel made in Australia has heavier focus on padding which, in all honesty, is a good excuse for reusing some of the original movie, the shots are well paced and the filming is relatively nicely executed.
And what about the action? It is choreographed well and quite thrilling. The stuntmen on these movies also earned their pay and Stazak, who seems to have done only one other film but these pictures were made ( 1991’s Black Neon), serves well as a nondescript B-grade actioner. He looks the part, he moves the part and though his acting will never win any acclaim, he deals with the material he’s given without any issues. No Escape (aka Escape From Absolom) saw James Richards as the Executioner and his interpretation of the ‘heavy’ is incredibly entertaining.
Day Of The Panther and Strike Of The Panther are set to be released on Blu-ray by Umbrella Entertainment, and each of the features was graded using a new 4k restoration from 35mm Interoceptive prints. Although there’s sprinkles of print damage, the rest of the film remains untouched displaying superb quality. To add to the already impressive outline, both of the features listed above were framed at 1.85:1 and used an AVC encoded 1080p high definition transfers on a 50GB disc. It’s worth noting that the transfers from both films look incredibly filmic, from the stunning reproduction of skin tones all the way to the deep black levels. In other words, all the colors, reproduction of the skin tones, level of detail and the lack of noise issues are free from post processing filters. And finally, one of the improvements that are undeniably apparent is the high bitrate that the disk now possesses, successfully eliminating any chance of bad compression artifacts.
Both movies have the 24-bit DTS-HD 2.0 mix. They are both in the English language. The tracks are in proper order since they were free of hiss or distortion, which is a welcomed relief. The quality of the dialogue was nice, while the sound effects and the score had what could be called decent punch behind them. Optional subtitles are provided, however, only in English.
All that is available are schoolbook style cover cards for each one, which could be said to be extra. Other than that we get menus and chapter selection. In terms of packaging, there is someone aesthetically pleasing double sided cover sleeves and the first 2000 copies purchased directly from Vinegar Syndrome’s website come with Robert Summerlin’s lavishly designed slipcover. A color insert book with some fun liner notes by Brian Trenchard-Smith and archival images is also provided alongside the Blu-ray disc.
It is a fact that the double feature Blue-ray release of Day of the Panther/Strike of the Panther is not rich in extras, that said, it does include two very entertaining B-Level action pictures that were done up in decent shape. The amount of entertainment provided by the two movies is ample which allows me to recommend this to fans of martial arts movies or low budget action movies.
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