A couple of weeks back I was looking for some movie to watch, and I wasn't able to decide for some time.  Finally, I picked up one of the Video CDs I had bought long ago (in Chennai or Bangalore, I don't remember exactly now) —

Yes, that is a movie called Project Shadowchaser II, a direct-to-video release from 1995 [IMDb].  Let me tell you a bit about how I came to see these movies.  Back in 1992 or 1993, a movie called Project: Shadowchaser came out on videotape and was made available in rental outlets here.  I actually saw this movie at that time, and I remember liking it quite a bit (the music score was ripped off from Danny Elfman's Batman theme).  Sure, it was a low-budget film and a rip-off of Die Hard and The Terminator (the movie has an android and a group of terrorists seizing a hospital building, and it is up to a guy called D'Silva to save the day), but it was an entertaining movie.

Some months later, a video of Shadowchaser II came out, but get this, that video was actually the Michael Crichton-directed Runaway, with a cheap title replacement tacked on.  When the actual title of the movie came on, you got a black screen with text that said "Shadowchaser II", in a font similar to what you used to see on wedding videos at the time (I might add, one more movie that was retitled this way was Under Siege, for which a camera print I believe, was titled Univarsal Commando... yes, "Univarsal")!

But then a bit later, the actual Project Shadowchaser II came out on video, and I got to see it sometime in 1995.  If I remember right, the tape I saw had the title Project Shadowchaser: Night Siege, and I later got to know that the movie was also known as Armed and Deadly.  I remember that the movie was quite good.  Once again, no one was going to mistake this for a work of art or anything, but then I was younger and had a taste for action movies, and this one had a killer android taking over a nuclear base on Christmas eve.  It even had a nice, fast-paced instrumental version of "Jingle Bells" playing over the end credits, so I was happy.

Later, I'd tried to buy the video but it just wasn't available anywhere.  A couple of years ago, though, when I was in Chennai, I often used to randomly buy VCDs of movies which weren't available on DVD.  On one of these occasions (most probably it was in Chennai, but like I said at the beginning, it might have also been during one visit to Bangalore) I spotted a VCD version of this movie released by Diskovery Video in a Landmark outlet, and so bought it.

Diskovery Video is one company that began releasing movies on tape initially, and later, disc (briefly, laserdisc, then primarily video CD, I believe they've started with DVDs also now), and the quality of the transfers on these is quite varied.  Some of these are made from good sources, so you get a nice copy, but in some other cases the quality isn't that good (I have a copy of their release of Kickboxer II, which is horrendous — very murky video).  In this case the video quality was pretty good, if a bit darkish.  I also think it is a cut version, with some trimming done to the more violent scenes.  And, like all their releases, there is a "Diskovery" watermark on the video, so that is a bit distracting.  Anyway, I'm still happy that I own this movie!

Above, is a drawing I did quickly, based on this movie.  I think the sheet of paper where I drew that, is the only one of its kind in existence — after all, where else would you find a drawing plus handwritten review of a low budget movie such as this!

As a post-script, it must be mentioned that Diskovery has released some good stuff officially in India — most notably, Pulp Fiction, a videotape of which I've owned for years and watched several times, and later upgraded to Video CD.  Also, Project Shadowchaser II was followed by two further sequels, both of which were shown on AXN Action TV many years ago.  I don't think they're available here in any format now.  The sequels are Project Shadowchaser: Beyond the Edge of Darkness (a.k.a. Project Shadowchaser 3000 and Project Shadowchaser III), and Shadowchaser 4 (a.k.a. Orion's Key, Alien Chaser, Project Shadowchaser 4... by this time, the "Project" bit doesn't even apply).  While the first three movies in the series all feature Frank Zagarino as an android (and all directed by John Eyres), the fourth had him as some sort of alien, which further distanced it from the series.  The fourth movie was pretty bad (directed by Mark Roper, no offense to the man though) if I remember right, whereas part 3 was a good one, and had the crew of a spaceship run into a derelict craft with a severely malfunctioning, shapeshifting killer android!

Whew, if you've made it till the end of this long post, you must be thinking I'm mad for writing all this stuff about some more-or-less obscure B-movie.  Perhaps, you'd be right...