āMannajaā - āA Man Called Bladeā (1977) is on UK TV tonight @ 11.15 PM - Talking Pictures Television Channel 82 Freeview.
A bit of a surprise to see this one listed - Itās the first SW that the station has screened (to my knowledge) ā¦ and undoubtedly itās UK TV premier.
Worth seeing if you havenāt caught this one yet.
Letās hope that TPT will start showing more Spags and or other Euro genre flicks.
Is this an HD channel?
Just SD unfortunately. Most Freeview channels in the UK are shit quality, there are some worse than others - we have about 100 channels and 7 or 9 are HD ( I wasnāt counting the kiddies channel) ā¦ not good enough when technology has produced 4k UHD TVs .
So I met Sergio Martino (and Enzo G. Castellari) at the weekend. It turns out the event hosts Treasured Films are releasing Mannaja on blu-ray. Here is an art card Sergio had on his table, which Iām guessing will be included with the new release.
Looks like that may be the cover art they will go for?
They also teased this on Facebook, which looks like itās from a different piece. Either of them could end up being the cover I guess.
Most details of the BluRay release are now in the database (some aspects still need to be confirmed). There is also an Amazon USA pre-order link.
Head this way:
Iād be lying if I said I wasnāt a bit jealous 
$50 for the preorder of Mannaja? Yikes. Are the discs to be handmade by Monks and dipped in 24kt gold?
I believe they come with an axe 
Lolā¦the price will surely drop before its release and end up probably around where OrbitDVDās pre-order price is at..$33.99.
Update: USA only. Amazon US and Canada links added to the database.
This is the THIRD time the Martino brothers have used this plot of the daughter being in league with the kidnapper in a western. It was also used in Arizona Colt Returns virtually verbatim as well compared to $10,000 Blood Money. As soon as she was kidnapped I suspected they were using their same old chestnut.
Further the killing of the nominal heroine - being knifed by the bad guy after she abuses him when the hero is tied up - follows Vengeance Is Mine, the āsequelā to $10,000 Blood Money and was also used in Arizona Colt Returns as well although she doesnāt manage to hand the hero a knife in Mannaja (which would have been no use as he is buried in the sand).
The torture of keeping the eyes open in the sun may have been inspired by Vengeance (1968) when matchsticks are placed in Richard Harrisonās eyes.
Despite the plagiarisms, I quite enjoyed the movie. I didnāt like the voices on the English dub - took me a while to work out that Steiner had a German accent and I wasnāt sure it was his voice - so watched it in Italian with English subs.
I first watched the Italian dub with English subtitles and found it surprisingly entertaining ā¦ some time later I acquired an English audio version which was oddly distracting, and not as enjoyable for me.
On the forthcoming Mannaja Blu Ray, the blurb says āfully uncutā and there is a suggested 101m running time.
Was the Blue Underground DVD not uncut? I have this and it runs 96m. I assumed that was NTSC rather than Pal and that it was uncut. 95m/96m corresponds with the 2614m in the Italian censorās submission./
Weāll see when itās out. 1080p and DVD-NTSC can of course not exactly be compared, and then thereās the question of when you start and stop measuring, with different opening and/or closing credits used etc.
