Episode 5: Tartan Asia Extreme Titles Bombshells & Blueshells

Welcome back everyone! On this week’s episode we take a deep dive into the world of horror film distribution, looking at the creation of the Tartan Asia Extreme line of home videos. We explore how Tartan Asia Extreme opened up a Western audience to the films of East and Southeast Asia. We explore some of the popular films distributed under this title including:


Ringu Franchise (1 1998, Hideo Nakata, 2 1999, 0 2000) JAPANESE
Audition (1999, Takashi Miike) JAPANESE
Tell Me Something (1999, Chang Yoon-Hyun) KOREAN
Battle Royale (1 2001, Kinji Fukasaku & 2: Requiem 2003 Kenta Fukasaku & Kinji Fukasaku) JAPANESE
Three Extremes (2004, Fruit Chan, Park Chan-wook & Takashi Miike) COMBINED
Oldboy (2003, Park Chan-wook) JAPANESE
A Tale of Two Sisters (2003, Kim Jee-woon) KOREAN

We also discuss the era of Western adaptations of any Eastern material they can get their hands on resulting in some good remakes, some bad remakes and some weird and unexplainable butcherings. The expansion of global horror can give its many thanks to streaming services that have opened up a market of nightmares from all over this world.

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These are the links to my research sources if you want to continue down this haunted rabbit hole yourself!


https://www.ejumpcut.org/archive/jc50.2008/TartanDist/
https://www.theguardian.com/film/filmblog/2008/jun/30/riptartan
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2008/jul/04/filmandmusic1.filmandmusic1
https://variety.com/2014/film/asia/kino-lorber-to-revive-tartans-asia-extreme-collection-exclusive-1201108519/
http://www.themoviewaffler.com/2016/03/the-dark-cinema-of-japan-korea.html?m=1