https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NhC2JyEKZ-s

I’m amazed by the ZiiEagle Movie Box, which was released in 2010. This device has 668 fully restored and digitally remastered movies from Celestial’s Shaw Brothers Film Collection, produced from 1958 to 1986. Saved as high-definition remasters, then compressed and made available on a palmtop, this is the pinnacle for Shaw Brothers fans.  You can see a list of all the movies on it, thanks to John Kitchen on Letterboxd.

This wasn’t just a simple hard drive; it was a labor of love involving a massive collective budget of over $100 million dollars. Powered by the ZMS-05 high-definition media application processor, it was the first of its kind to converge content and technology in such a user-centric way. It had a complete cast list of over 30,000 members, detailed synopses for every title, and a color-coded mood search that would find movies for you based on how you were feeling. It also had a 400-page book that served as a reference for all the movies on the device.

That’s how this movie was found again. One of three Shaw titles by Japanese director Murayama Mitsuo, this is at once a Eurospy and a giallo, but most importantly, it’s a movie filled with wild moments and even crazier hues. 

Private eye Chang Wen Chiang (Yun Ling) has received a dying phone call from his ex-girlfriend, Li Lan Hsing (Shirley Huang). He gets there too late to save her — her new man has been murdered in the shower — and is suddenly in the middle of a mystery, going from nightclubs to sex parties. Yes, parties where women ride men like horses while rich people Eyes Wide Shut watch them, as well as a strange key party where women dangle their arms from cages, offering a way to unlock them for an evening of sex. There’s also a femme fatale, Lorna (Angela Yu Chien), who has a birthmark on her hand and a kiss of death.

I had so much fun with this, and I urge you to watch it.

There’s another movie directed by Murayama, Hellgate, with Yun Ling as Chiang Chu-jen. Maybe someday there will be another streaming device that contains that movie. I never say never when movies are lost.

You can watch this on YouTube.