Long before Bill Paxton hooked up with James Cameron and Roger Corman, he let it all hang out for the long-gestated arty and ambitious independent film TAKING TIGER MOUNTAIN, on Blu-ray/DVD combo from Vinegar Syndrome.

In the chaotic aftermath of World War III, an extreme feminist sect has decided to restore the long-lost balance between men and women by utilizing medical science to breed "convivial males" by determining what in male sexuality is intrinsic and what is conditioned. One such test subject is aggressively heterosexual Billy Hampton (Paxton) who they have submitted to electroshock, hydroshock, drug testing, and the manipulation of his diet, sleep patterns, and sexual stimuli, shifting his attractions from women to men before castration and surgical enhancement to become a woman and then going back (including grafting male genitalia back on to him) in the interest of studying his sexuality. While half of the faction is dedicated to the experiment purely in scientific terms, the politically-motivated half argue for observation and deployment in the real world: notably, using Billy and other subject as assassins to take out international prostitution commissioners. Ostensibly sent to Brendovery in Wales to enjoy some sexual recreation, Billy is actually being groomed to assassinate prostitution minister Major Guthrie Whitbread (Paul Guthrie) who has expanded his operation from regulating local prostitution to selling nubile women and virile men as sex slaves to third world dictators including various expatriate males who have escaped America as draft dodgers. Billy's meeting with the Major is an eventuality, but the feminist faction has programmed him to be triggered to violence by the Major's oft-told tale of "Tiger Mountain" from his India days. As expected, Billy upon arrival is taken to the prostitute auction which has the feel of a cattle auction and bids on Guthrie's favorite Judy Church and has sex with her; however, his confused attraction to Sally John, an either androgynous boy or tomboyish girl, triggers memories of his experimentation and programming while he is in danger of being captured and sold by the Major or murdered by boyish outlaw Tony whose bloodlust seems to be fed on violent comics.

Started in 1974 by nineteen-year-old Paxton and documentary filmmaker Kent Smith and left unfinished until Paxton's schoolmate Tom Huckabee – who would later produce Paxton's directorial effort FRAILTY – TAKING TIGER MOUNTAIN (so named after the Chinese Peking Opera "The Taking of Tiger Mountain by Strategy" adapted into a film by Tsui Hark in 2014) in its finished form may have little to do with what Smith and Paxton intended but it is more than just an art film homage with a monochrome French New Wave look. Although expatriate Billy starts off the film in London and then travels to Wales, the American situation during World War III is at the forefront in the form of endless radio news broadcasts that overlap with the dialogue and the Brendovery's own constant loudspeaker speeches about how women in the village do what they were "made to do" by biological predestination and those who participated in the "Yorkshire Women's Riots" are mentally ill. World War III America is a place where diseases like Scarlet Fever are running rampant due to sanitation conditions following a strike and the loss of electricity and running water in large stretches of the country. Oil companies are nations unto themselves, the Catholic Church is underwritten by Texas Instruments, and the United States urges other countries to shut their borders to draft dodgers and refugees and leave them to the "punishment of the sea." Women blame the men and the men enslave the women by legalizing prostitution on the common market, with the actions taken by this feminist terrorist group equally as extreme as the apocalyptic conditions inspired by William S. Burrough's "Bladerunner" (not to be confused with the Ridley Scott film or its Philip K. Dick source) who receives a co-writing credit although he had no involvement in the actual scripting (the attribution clarified in the end credits). Fearless boarding on shameless exhibitionism, including participating in nude scenes and a semi-hardcore sex scene, Paxton gives a performance – here even though his scripted dialogue was looped years later along with additional dialogue scripted and improvised – at a time early in his career when it was assumed by his start in filmmaking that his acting roles to his work as an art director and set decorator (he is credited as production designer on the film). If the ending feels anticlimactic, it is as much the director's nihilism as his having to work around the inability to go to Wales to shoot new footage.

Not finished until 1983, TAKING TIGER MOUNTAIN has been nearly impossible to see until now (Vinegar Syndrome having initially approached Huckabee a few years ago for the film as an Etiquette Pictures line title back when Paxton was still alive). The 1080p24 MPEG-4 AVC 2.35:1 widescreen Blu-ray is sourced from a 4K restoration of the original Techniscope 2-perf camera negative – although Huckabee's newer material was apparently shot in 4-perf anamorphic – and the results are gorgeous with the monochrome photography having more of a lighter New Wave look than low-key noir. The frameline is occasionally visible in a couple shot cuts and there are rare faint scratches – as well as a sequence in which a couple shots seem to pulse with vein-like scratches that appear to be intentional – but this is an admirable restoration. No complaints about the DTS-HD Master Audio 1.0 mono track since all of the dialogue from the original shoot is post-sync (apart from some extracts from Smith's short film also on the disc). Optional English SDH subtitles are included.

The disc also contains TAKING TIGER MOUNTAIN REVISITED, a new cut of the film (75:11 vs 82:47) in which Huckabee pulls out all of the digital tools Adobe Premiere provides, adding overlays to suggest camera surveillance of Billy's every move upon arriving in Brendovery, iris vignettes to sequences that are supposed to be dreams or hallucinations, digitally added erotic art, CGI rain and other weather tinkering, overall brightening and sharpening while also trimming for pacing (which includes shortening scenes, shifting scene order, and even dialogue editing), as well as adding a final scene shot on his own iPhone 7 that is meant to convey optimism in keeping with his more mature worldview (this bit and a new text overlay for the opening sequence profiling Paxton's character emphasize his bourgeois family background and his status as a draft dodger rather than a guy who answered a classified ad as in the original). This version is also presented in HD but the master was prepared by Huckabee himself so there is a disclaimer that mentions that some digital defects are inherent in the master and do not reflect Vinegar Syndrome's own restoration of the original cut (although the credit to Vinegar Syndrome in end crawl suggests that Huckabee also used the raw scan as the basis for his version). Huckabee provides introductions to the original cut (0:23) and the revisited version (0:18).

“Taking Over Tiger Mountain” (27:56) is an interview with Huckabee who reveals that Paxton and Smith were both working at Encyclopedia Britannica Films in the early seventies and decided to branch into film with an adaptation of Albert Camus' "The Stranger" to be shot in Tangiers with a rented Arriflex Techniscope camera and short ends from Bob Fosse's LENNY, shooting without sound (reportedly inspired by Smith's art film favorites like Fellini). They did not know they had to pay off the local cops and wound up in jail before relocating the shoot to Wales. Paxton had attended Richmond College, an American college in London, with high school student Huckabee and they would meet up again in Los Angeles. Huckabee discusses his additions including the feminist terrorist angle including the opening sequence, the looping of all of the dialogue as well as the additions of the Burroughs text.