Revenge of Godfrey Ho Month - Ninja the Protector (1986)

Ninja the Protector (1986)

This is one of Ho’s more confusing, yet more comically-entertaining outings.  Released as Project Ninja Daredevils in 1986 (not to be confused with 1985’s Ninja Project Daredevils), this film was re-titled Ninja the Protector for distribution.  The movie is one of dozens of Ho’s that employs the cut-and-paste editing technique, and it is also one of his more famous entries, alongside Ninja Terminator (1985) and Undefeatable (1993).

There is not much that separates Ninja the Protector from Ho’s other outings, but the silly moments make this one worth watching.  The plot is more or less irrelevant, as usual, and is barely glossed over in the entirety of the film’s run time, which clocks in at under 70 minutes.  Still, for the sake of professionalism, I will do my very best to give an outline of this film’s “story”.

Warren and David are just trying to live normal lives.  They do what they can to survive but they share a secret: they are former ninjas.  As a crime syndicate specializing in counterfeiting rises, can Warren and David face their shared past in order to move beyond it?

Along with Warren and David’s plot, we have cut-and-paste footage to talk about too!  Here we have Godfrey Ho regular Richard Harrison as Ninja Master Gordon Anderson, who is now a high-ranking police official.  After two of his cops run across a wounded ninja, one Anderson himself actually bested, they inquire about ninjas to their boss to which Anderson replies “...they’re just a fairy tale.”  However, ninjas do exist, and there is a constant battle for power in their underground world.

Warren and David’s past finally catches up to them as events start to unravel their comfortable lives and the ninja empire attempts to clean up the past by assassinating Anderson but their multiple attempts fail.  Things become worse after Warren’s girlfriend Judy catches her lover cheating on her with a model, and then attempts suicide.  This is followed by Warren being abandoned by both Judy and his brother, David, then framed for murder by one of the criminal masterminds.

source: s3.amazonaws.com

The boss intends to trap David by ensuring he is informed of Warren’s murder charge, which he anticipated would motivate him.  David storms the gangster’s home and dispatches the charging goons but is eventually overpowered.  When the goons pull out a knife at the boss’s orders to kill David, the hero then brandishes a machete but is ultimately shot.  The boss takes David out easily.  Warren intervenes, seemingly out of nowhere, but is overpowered himself.  David then, severely injured from his wound, picks up a pistol and kills Warren’s attacker, but ultimately dies himself.  

Back in the new Godfrey Ho footage, Anderson receives a challenge from a rival ninja, one that is impossible to refuse.  The challenger is Bruce, the evil ninja overlord, and the ensuing fight begins with the two ninjas engaging each other whilst riding motorcycles and swinging weapons at each pass.  As the two warriors begin their fight on foot, we have a short but well-choreographed fight scene between Bruce, who fights dirty, and the honorable Anderson that ends really, really abruptly.  One of the highlights of this short scene is when Anderson fires smoke at Bruce from the hilt of his sword.  

As you can probably tell, Ninja the Protector does not make a hell of a lot of sense.  Like most of Ho’s films, it is all over the place and much of the film’s plot is lost to the forced and sloppy editing that permeates his work.  Even with a run time that barely clears and hour, this movie is padded with gratuitous sex and some very awkward ninja posing from Richard Harrison.  This padding alone is proof that there was little here to begin with.  So, why do I recommend this movie?

Ninja The Protector is an awesome mess.  The editing is awful, the camera work is hilariously inept, the acting is off and the dub is comedy gold.  This is one of the most riffable movies in Godfrey Ho’s collection, and all of the little “inadequacies” add up to one big successful failure.  Sure, it does not work as a ninja thriller, but it does work as a comedy, so, like most movies that are so-bad-they’re-good, Ninja the Protector is an anomalous “good” bad movie.  Watch this one for a laugh.

Revenge of Godfrey Ho Month - Undefeatable (1993)

By the turn of the 90’s, Godfrey Ho’s directorial career started to slow.  It was in 1993 that he decided to do a film starring a successful star in the martial arts circuit named Cynthia Rothrock.  Already an accomplished competitive martial artist, Cynthia Rothrock was still having trouble breaking out of the home video market.  She appeared in several failed straight-to-video films such as Rage and Honor and the exceptionally dull Fast Getaway starring a washed up, teenage Corey Haim.  She decided to do Undefeated, hoping, I assume, it would help her gain a wider audience stateside.  This, obviously, did not turn out as she had hoped, but that does not mean Cynthia Rothrock is bad.  Quite the opposite, actually.

I cannot blame Rothrock for her film choices, as a vast majority of martial arts themed movies of the late 80’s and early 90’s were severely lacking in the quality department, especially when they were made in the U.S.  However, in spite of most of her movies being pretty bad, she herself is a talented fighter with a surprisingly large influence on popular culture.  To video game fans out there, you may be surprised to know that there would be no Sonya Blade if it weren't for her inspiration, Ms. Rothrock herself.  Rothrock is presently in a sort of revival period in her career, starting to appear in frequent films and is working towards making the A-list in martial arts once again.  I cannot say that Undefeatable really hurt her career as she did appear in a number of action flicks in the 90’s after its release, but I honestly cannot help but think it had some negative effect on her ability to capture a wider audience.

Undefeatable is a movie that began to grow in popularity thanks to, of all things, a YouTube clip.  The final fight scene began to show up on YouTube under the title “Best Fight Scene Ever”, or something along those lines, and became a big hit.  This was around the point that Godfrey Ho’s films started to get a following from cult film enthusiasts such as myself, who wanted to know more about this man’s work.  Before the clip began to circulate, I had seen other scenes from his older films, where he would dress his actors up in comically-bad ninja costumes with headbands that had the word “Ninja” printed prominently across the forehead.  These clips were often mocked for bad dubbing and goofy acting, and the Undefeatable clip took notice thanks to the extremely goofy performance of Don Niam as Stingray and John Miller as Nick.  It was eyebrows vs. mullet in this epic martial arts showdown!

So, what is Undefeatable all about beyond the notorious final fight scene?  The story follows Kristi (Rothrock), who looks out for her sister Karen after their mother’s death, and participates in underground street fights to earn money to support her sibling’s college education.  She is part of a street fighting gang of sorts, though, the gang aspect of the film is more or less pointless.  Karen is concerned for her sister, knowing she may one day be severely hurt or even killed, so she urges her not to fight.  Kristi begins finding it hard to get away with the fights as a homicide detective named Nick seems to exist to interrupt her.

Meanwhile we are also introduced to Stingray, the villain of the movie, who’s bug eyed expression and grandfather of all mullets makes him fodder for some serious riffing.  After an illegal fight, where he kills his opponent, he returns home to his wife Anna whom he abuses and he rapes her.  This is the last straw for Anna, who promptly leaves him.  This enrages Stingray and he begins a deadly killing spree where he constantly calls every woman he sees “Anna”.  He starts targeting couples, killing the male and taking the woman (still calling her Anna) and ultimately killing her, removing her eyes in the process.

After the police start investigating, Nick takes the case and shortly thereafter, Stingray (who has not yet been identified) targets Karen and kills her.  Kristi, vengeful and enraged, begins to hunt down who is responsible by targeting local gang leaders, that is, until Nick stops her, and it is at this point where the investigation starts to lean towards Stingray.  They find out about Stingray through his fight promoter, who winds up dead after he discovers the villain’s killer ways.  Stingray makes a mistake, however, in kidnapping Anna’s shrink, who then uses his own psychosis against him while captive.  After sending Stingray to the store, pretending to be his mother who abandoned him, she uses her cell to contact Kristi, who leads the police to Stingray’s warehouse.

A two-on-one fight breaks out with Kristi and Nick taking on the maniacal Stingray, and ultimately, they manage to rescue his hostage but are unable to subdue Stingray himself.  Instead, they take the psychologist to the hospital, where Stingray, disguised as a doctor, promptly abducts her again, but Nick and Kristi are on the case, and they chase the madman down to the laundry room.  It is in this room where the legendary fight breaks out, and for that, just watch the clip.

With the evil Stingray dispatched, Kristi, at her sister’s grave, finally gives up her fighting side and everyone seemed to have enrolled everyone else into college.  No, I’m serious.  The credits roll right after an ending high five.  In most movies this high five would be a freeze frame, but not in Godfrey Ho Land, oh no!  No, this high five actually has the actors high five, then hold their places for a few seconds before the screen turns black.  This is, for some reason, is so funny to me, that it is just the cherry on top of an already goofy-as-hell sundae.

Untouchable is awesome!  It is so silly, so flat, so bizarre that you kind of have to respect it.  It stands out from many of Ho’s other films as it does not employ the cut-and-paste technique.  Instead, Ho filmed this entire movie from scratch, which for him is commendable.  This has the added benefit of making a fully comprehensible, if not occasionally silly and padded-out, action flick.  

There is nothing here that you haven’t seen before in similar films, but Ho’s direction, the hilarious script and Don Niam and John Miller’s epically terrible performances make this a fun watch.  The movie is derivative, sure, but it is also great fun.  There are a few points where the movie is brought to a complete halt so that an actor can give the audience a martial arts demonstration, and these scenes, while still entertaining are blatant padding.  This is a 90 minute film with about twenty minutes of fat on it.  Still, it’s obvious why it was padded out, otherwise it wouldn't really be feature-length.  

Cynthia Rothrock shows some chops here, thought a lot of that may be due to the comparatively-worse supporting cast.  Still, as is often the case with Godfrey Ho, the choreography is good, and Cynthia Rothrock is a badass here, coming off as significantly faster and more agile than her opponents, which is how you become a martial arts superstar.  I like her in general and in this movie you also get a funny series of “bad laughs” and some of Ho’s best quirks on full display.  Check Undefeatable out.  I must admit, I needed this after sitting through Catman 2, which just... sucked.

Revenge of Godfrey Ho Month - Catman in Boxer's Blow (1993)

Catman in Boxer's Blow (1993)
Image Source: numerocinqmagazine.com

Most of Godfrey Ho’s movies have a certain level of incomprehensibility, which is an inherent consequence of his cut-and-paste editing technique.  However, out of all of Ho’s movies that I have seen, I cannot think of one more confusing and outright perplexing as Catman in Boxer’s Blow.  The sequel to Catman in Lethal Track, the film continues the story of Catman, a special agent named Sam who gains superpowers after being scratched by a radioactive cat.  He’s in the movie all of five minutes.

The majority of the plot is simply confounding.  I honestly do not know where to begin here, but I will do my best.  An evil cult leader plots to use nuclear weapons to kill millions and hires a group of mercenaries to help him achieve this goal.  The crew is comprised of several men, each with their own specialties and skills, and they are all bad, except one.  A man named Bobby, who was recently broken out of prison, is coerced into helping the cult, who is holding his family hostage.  That is quite literally where I start to get confused.  

I assumed Catman intended to stop the cult, and I am guessing he did in the end fight, but characters run on into each other and the plot points seem so overlapped that they make zero sense.  I was able to decipher that Bobby was innocent of the crime he was imprisoned for... I think.  I also can tell that his father and siblings do not trust him because he is an escaped convict.  There is a female martial artist who just sort of seems... there.  She does not really do anything except help out in some of the film’s many fight scenes.

Rear of the VHS case.

The fight choreography is okay, and fights range from standard to occasionally entertaining.  The problem is, I spent half the time wondering which character was which, and who was fighting who.  In a few instances, I was not able to even decipher who the villains and heroes were, even after the fight subsided.  There was almost zero attempt to make a cohesive series of events.  I say almost, because they try to tie things together with some inserted dialogue scenes featuring Catman, his boss and his friend, but these do little to repair the damage done to this film by the horrible wrath of scissors!

Yes scissors.  No man, woman and child in any 80’s movie is safe when Godfrey Ho gets his greedy paws on scissors!  The editing here is so bad that it actually edits scenes into other scenes from the same movie.  This is not where Ho will cut in a dialogue scene from his new footage into the older movie to make it appear as though characters from the two films are speaking to one another.  No, these are two scenes spliced together out of order, from the same movie.  I only caught this when I saw one of the lead characters clothes change, then change back in the span of a few minutes.

A lot of movies can be heavily destroyed by poor editing.  Elaine May blamed Ishtar’s failures on poor editing and I can see it, even though what was left on screen sucked too.  Here, I honestly do not know what to think.  I would say that most of the fights are okay, but that doesn’t fix the fact that I have no idea who the heroes and villains of this movie were, besides Catman and the cult leader, who are barely mentioned at all in the movie.  The plotting is so bad here, that I had to read a plot synopsis AFTER WATCHING THE MOVIE, to know that it was a cult and not a terrorist group, because the movie makes no reference to the fact at all (except on the back of the VHS case, apparently).  It does make the fact that the villain’s name is Reverend Cheever make more sense, but other than that, it does not effect the movie at all.  

Character motivations are never established, character relationships are rarely explained, and actors are made up with the same hair styles, clothes styles and mustaches so that you cannot tell who is who in a fight.  That is until the camera does a close up and only then can you hope the close up will be of a character you have seen before because, in all honestly, half of the time it isn't.  A fight would end with a victor standing and I was forced to ask myself, “Who is this guy?”  This happened more than one time while watching this incomprehensible mess of a film.

This is one of Godfrey Ho’s last films, released in the early 90’s.  It definitely has a sort of inert blandness and lack of enthusiasm that could be found in his 80’s movies.  Even in Ho’s worst cut-and-paste work from ‘86 to ‘89 usually has some semblance of a story.  Here, there is literally nothing to hold anything together.  It’s like throwing a handful of random Scrabble tiles into the air, trying to read all of the letters as the fly up and form words out of them before they hit the floor.  So much is lost to the attempt to shoehorn Catman into the plot as well as make it seem as though he would be able to effect what is going on in the other movie at all, that I think Ho just sort of threw his hands up with this one.  

The only source of comedy here is occasional goofiness from the barely glossed-over Catman plot and some really bad dub work that left me laughing more than a few times.  The rest of this movie is so bad, so lost, so... sad, that it has achieved a new low.  On this blog I have discussed the Fat Spy, Birdemic, North, Chairman of the Board, the FREAKING Bounty Hunter and I may go so far as to say that Catman in Boxer’s Blow is the worst movie I have reviewed on this blog, and one of the worst movies I have ever seen.

There is hope just around the corner, however, as shortly after this film’s release, Godfrey Ho begin working with an American martial arts heroine and would make one of his most glorious films ever.  Next up on Godfrey Ho Appreciation month, we’re talking about Undefeatable.

The Revenge of Godfrey Ho Month - Thunder of Gigantic Serpent (1988)

Thunder of Gigantic Serpent (1988)

When you sit and think about it, Thunder of Gigantic Serpent makes perfect sense.  Since the late 60’s the genre called Kaiju has been a popular choice for sci-fi filmmakers.  The genre, commonly referred to in the U.S. as “Giant Monster” is a huge cult movement, sparked by the release of the 1954 film Godzilla (or Gojira of you want to be pretentious about it).  The King of the Monsters has been everywhere, appearing in dozens of his own Kaiju films, as well as becoming a mainstay in the world’s pop culture lexicon.

The 1980’s saw a sort of a dry spell for this sub-genre, as it would be several years until Godzilla vs. King Ghidorah would see its release.  It is likely that Ho wanted to bring this back into popularity with his 1988 film Thunder of Gigantic Serpent.  I don’t think it really worked, but I will admit that this movie is entertaining as all Hell!

This is one of several Ho films starring actor Pierre Kirby, a mysterious action star who went as quickly as he came.  He appeared in several movies in the late 80’s, all under Ho’s direction, then just vanished.  No, seriously, there is mass-speculation among films fans as to what actually happened to Pierre Kirby, because few people actually know for sure.  It was confirmed by Brad Jones of thecinemasnob.com that Kirby did, in fact, die at sea, as stated by the actor’s sister. This fuels a widely-accepted conspiracy theory that pirates were involved.  

So, with that bit of back-story out of the way, what is up with Thunder of Gigantic Serpent?  The film follows a young girl who has a secret pet snake.  I have not been able to really find out what she’s calling the snake in the movie.  I want to say it’s something like Mazla, or Mozra or something like that.  She hides the snake from her parents and when it is discovered, they refuse to let her keep it, but she defies them.  

Meanwhile we get plot #2 involving a formula that could save the world from starvation.  It is a super-growth serum that can cause things to grow more than three times their original size.  The experiments are a success but the military confiscates the good doctors’ research for their own ends.  At the same time, an evil Terrorist named Solomon wants to take over the world’s food supply, and he believes obtaining this formula with give him that power.  He stages a siege on the lab to steal the scientific wonder and begin... taking.. over the world.... (ho, boy).

Image Source: foywonder.com

Things go wrong, however, as an assistant takes the formula in a clear case and flees, throwing it out of the car into an embankment right before driving off of a cliff.  She survives, however, and the terrorists fail to catch her.  The young girl, her pet snake in mind, finds the container and brings it home, using it as a sort of terrarium.  Upon putting Mazla (?) in the case, it grows to a huge size.  The snake appears to have consumed the formula.

Image Source: roberthood.net

Solomon discovers the girl has the case and assumes, as he finds the case empty, that she has the formula too.  Sending his goons after her angers Mazla and the ensuing entanglement leads Mazla trapped in an electric fence, but the snake doesn't die.  No!  It grows!  To a massive size.  From here the girl attempts to protect her pet while the gangsters subdue her, holding her hostage as ransom for the formula.  It all comes to a head as Mazla is destroyed by the military and the young girl mourns the loss of her pet and friend.  The end..?  Nope.  We still have one scene left.

Pierre Kirby in Thunder of Gigantic Serpent

So, I bet you were wondering where Pierre Kirby comes into play in all of this.  Well, the Solomon character was cut into the existing movie as the villain, and Kirby is as well.  Kirby plays... are you ready for this?  Fast.  Ted Fast.  A super-agent who “always works alone” (Yes, that’s actually a line from the movie).  He cuts in and sort of comments on events in the movie, but is rarely given anything until the end of the film, and really has less than five minutes of screen time.  After Mazla dies Kirby tracks down and takes on Solomon in a brief, but entertaining Kung Fu battle.  Then the abrupt credits roll and the film comes to a close.

Thunder of Gigantic Serpent is comedy gold.  It is filled to the brim with 80’s cheese action clichés and goofy dialogue.  The dubbing can, however, become a little insufferable as the young girl (I never was able to fully decipher her name but I think her parents are calling her Ting Ting) spends the last act just shouting her pet snake’s name ad nauseum in her whiny dub voice.  The thing that really makes Thunder of Gigantic Serpent a must-watch is the effects work.

The original film used as a starting point for Ho’s cut is a strange movie on its own.  Obviously a Kaiju send-up, this movie has one of the most hilarious puppets I have ever seen in a movie.  Mazla, the snake, is not a real snake.  It is an inanimate foam form of a snake that is obscured in poor-lighting in earlier scenes and revealed in all of its comic majesty in later ones, after growing to a large size.  The first act has Mazla nodding and shaking its head “yes” and “no” in response to the girl’s prompts.  That’s funny enough, but later on, after growing, the snake appears to fly out of a window and then it takes out a bridge as a giant. These moments just kept me in stitches.

This is a great dumbass movie and if you want to watch a film that will keep you laughing (for numerous reasons) this one should do it.  The only downside, as I mentioned, is occasionally-annoying dub work and some poor lighting that gives the film a muddy, grayish look, typical of straight to video movies of the 80’s, I know, but it seems a little worse here than usual.  As of the time of this post, this one is watchable in its entirety on YouTube.  Check it out for a good time.

The Revenge of Godfrey Ho Appreciation Month - An Introduction

Godfrey Ho; Image source: popmatters.com

One year ago, I dubbed August “Godfrey Ho Appreciation Month”, named for one of my favorite schlock directors of all time.  I love his over-the-top dub acting, the silly plot lines and, of course, his legendary cut-and-paste editing, which mixes two entirely unrelated films together.  At one point I actually really hated this director’s films, but over time they grew on me, and now I enjoy the insanity.  So, last year, I dedicated a series of articles to some of his films.  This year I will continue in that tradition.

There is something to be said about Godfrey Ho’s films.  They aren't exactly unique, as there are a ton of these poorly-dubbed, poorly edited, kung fu/ninja films out there from the 70’s and 80’s.  What makes Ho’s different, if not slightly so, is the way he would often film new footage, usually with white actors, to edit into the old footage, often attempting to change the context of the film entirely.  Sometimes this actually works.  As silly as it is, Ninja Terminator sort of works as a movie plot-wise.  Most of the time, however, it’s a mess; a beautiful, hilarious mess.

So how did Godfrey Ho make it in America?  Well, it all comes back to the home video market, which opened the doors for hundreds (if not thousands) of wannabe filmmakers and foreign veterans to begin inexpensively releasing their films in the U.S.  Early on (mostly in the 70’s) distribution of these films was pretty much chaotic, but generally easy, since there was no stranglehold on the home video market from larger studios, nor were there any strict laws about content (in the form of censorship; because that is what it is) from the government.  If you could make a movie, and the master could pass customs, you had a release.  

The rise of home video stores in the 80’s fed this push and ultimately, it collapsed as the studios began to crawl out of their fifteen-year-hole as the mid-to-late 80’s saw blockbuster after blockbuster begin to make huge sums of money.  They bought up most of the distributors they could, and, for the most part, the mostly-free home video market died in the early 90’s, leaving only a few of the original distributors (pretty much the ones who were already big enough to stand on their own two feet) to ultimately die a slightly slower death.

Godfrey Ho did continue to release films into the 90’s, thanks to revenue he earned in the 80’s, and is, I think, largely responsible for the rise in popularity of ninjas in pop culture, though you may not know it.  Yes, his movies were goofy, but they predated Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and they followed an extremely popular kung-fu craze in the 70’s and early 80’s.  Godfrey Ho released dozens of ninja films in the 80’s, and yes, they made money.  So, it stands to reason his ubiquity would lead to influence somewhere.  Could Godfrey Ho be the reason for the massive popularity of ninjas in pop culture?  I dunno.  I just think it would have been one hell of a coincidence if he weren't.

So, I start this month with a very... special movie.  Ho’s attempt at making a Kaiju film.  Well, sort of a Kaiju film anyway.  It is a hilarious mix of a child’s pet story, mixed with an evil overlord trying to take over the world’s food supply.  I’d say that’s a perfect way to start things off this month, wouldn't you?

Godfrey Ho Appreciation Month - Death Code: Ninja (1987)

Death Code: Ninja (1987; IDF)

Written and directed under one of Ho's many pseudonyms we get one of his several collaborations with American actor Mike Abbott.  Today, Abbott is working a number of local jobs as listed on his personal website.  One sit through Death Code: Ninja, and it is easy to understand why.  Now, I'm not dogging the guy, he's awesome.  He's just not awesome the way, say... Humphrey Bogart was awesome.  If you catch my drift.

Death Code: Ninja is a revenge flick mixed in with a spy flick mixed in with a ninja flick.  It's a lot like peanut butter and jelly and pepperoni; one thing just doesn't belong.  Since this is a Godfrey Ho film, you have to have ninjas, weather they are actually relevant to what's going on or not.  The meat of the story involves an agent returning home to his family after a long absence.  Everything seems to be going well for the Ko's until their son is abducted by the hero's former colleagues.  When Ko moves in to face them, he is murdered and this leaves his wife to avenge her family.  From here this portion of the movie is a lot like Kill Bill, with a lone female doing everything she can to take out the men who are responsible for her grief.

The spliced-in sections of the movie star one of Godfrey Ho's recurring actors, Mike Abbott, this time as a villainous gang leader who is dealing with the Triads to sell a map that contains the locations of key military installations in Asia.  The film makes several references to "Star Wars", which was what Ronald Reagan dubbed a strategic missile defense system in a speech.  This system was not only technologically unfeasible at the time, but fiscally and diplomatically as well.  It did fool some folks though, just not the people it was intended to.  This obvious bluff made a special guest appearance in this movie referring to the map as the "Star Wars Map", which would disclose a way around U.S. aerial defenses.

This movie is actually pretty good for Ho.  No, I'm serious.  I like the premise, especially the B-plot revolving around the distraught and bitter widow seeking revenge.  I like how we see her character evolve through the movie.  She has a dark side, and it comes out strong near the end of the film. The A-plot, which was the spliced-in portions with Abbott are really just typical Godfrey Ho shtick.    Brightly-colored ninjas (kind of defeats the purpose) flipping around and fighting.  The dialogue scenes are just off mainly because Mike Abbott is just so damn goofy looking.

I know that isn't fair, and there have been many actors who weren't exactly Elvis Presley who were good because they were strong performers (Edward G. Robinson, Peter Lorre and Spencer Tracy just to name a few).  Abbott just doesn't cut it, I'm sorry.  He just may be the single least-tolerable recurring actor that worked under Godfrey Ho.  He's just... distracting.  Looking at him, I can only recall images of the Beastie Boys Sabotage music video, in which Mike D, Ad-Rock and MCA are sporting 70's hair, thick porn-staches and shades, acting out a cliche'd cop show (that video is epic, btw!).  Still, the way he carries himself in all of these films is pretty hilarious, and that helps with the tolerance level a little.  I love it when he shows up because he's just so damn out of place.

All-in-all, however, Death Code: Ninja is a good watch.  No.  Seriously.  Occasional goofiness and typical Ho ineptitude aside, this is one of his better movies.  The action is well done, the revenge story is engaging and there are actually scenes of real tension here.  I would even go as far to say that I... like... this... movie...  That's always hard for me to say.  (I'm a film buff, I'm supposed to hate everything).  But nay, I say!  I enjoyed Death Code: Ninja.  It may seem a little off if you aren't used to Godfrey Ho's quirks, but this just may be one of his best pictures, judging from a quality standpoint.  This one does lack a lot of the laughs you may get from his more dopey endeavors like Ninja Terminator, but it is definitely a decent 80's Kung-Fu flick.

Godfrey Ho Appreciation Month - Let's Talk About Catman!

Cartoon by Christopher McElfresh

Catman in Lethal Track (1990)

Godfrey Ho is well known for his ninja films, but he also took a stab at other action sub-genres as well.  Case in point: Catman.  Catman is a recurring character who had reportedly only appeared in two Godfrey Ho films.  The first, which told of Catman’s origins is called Catman in Lethal Track (1990).  The second one, which had Catman pursuing a dangerous cult leader with Soviet connections, was titled Catman in Boxer’s Blow (1993).  In true Godfrey Ho fashion, these films were both released under one of Ho’s many, many pseudonyms and were also spliced in with two completely different and unrelated Hong Kong martial arts movies then redubbed to make them both “work... together..?”

Catman in Lethal Track, being the first and most essential film in his repertoire, glosses over the character’s origins and gives us a hint at who this character really is.  Of course, it’s Godfrey Ho so comprehensibility is often cast aside in lieu of more... entertaining pursuits.  Bear with me, here, this is going to get preeeety retarded.

The origins of Catman begin with bravery.  Two agents are walking along when they witness two junkies in the process of robbing a delivery truck with only one piece of cargo.  Are you ready for this...?  It’s a radioactive cat.  Yep.  Apparently we just carry those around in regular old pet cages.  Ho, attempting to get as close to ripping off Spiderman as he can without getting his ass sued off by Marvel Comics, then proceeds to give us some of the most awesome 90 minutes of film you will ever see in your entire life.  I am not kidding here.  I’m only going to focus on Catman’s story points as the irrelevant other film really just detracts from how awesome the titular hero is.  

Anyway, the two agents decide to intervene and, using the baseball bats they were carrying, (Presumably either for batting practice or for their audition of the stage performance of The Warriors) take on the two thugs.  During their engagement with the two punks, one of the agents gets scratched by the radioactive cat and is imbued with superpowers.  Over the course of the next few scenes we get Catman exploring his newfound abilities like the power to turn a TV on and off...

Catman and his buddy go on a crime-fighting escapade and ultimately face off against the gang the thugs they owned in the beginning of the film belong to.  Of course, the heroes (or the screenplay, however you decide to like at it) are really dumb and get led right into a trap, end up chained to trees and are preparing to be turned into ground chuck by explosive rounds.  Catman, however, is invincible and the explosion doesn’t kill him, it merely gives him the cover to slip his chains and vanish.  He breaks his buddy’s chains and runs into the brush leaving his friend to get turned into swiss cheese by about forty rounds of automatic fire.  Of course, the friend is totally okay and gets back up and runs away.

From here we see Catman and his buddy fight off the baddies, picking them out one by one in the clearing of the woods.  Note, judging by the timing of the scenes that led up to the heroes being brought to the woods, they’re probably just about a mile from a major metropolitan area and anyone can hear the reenactment of Platoon that is going on in the city’s backyard.  HA!  But, details!  Who gives a crap about details?!

The second film, Catman in Boxer’s Blow, is a lot weaker, with less fun badness and more sloppiness.  The plot involves Catman and his partner looking into a deranged cult leader who is part of a deadly Soviet ring.  Really, in my opinion, the funniest part of this film is how they start off this movie with their own M, in the form of a chubby politician who gives them their mission.  Boxer’s Blow is just weaksauce, lacking the laughs of the first one, still, it is Catman!

If you haven’t guessed yet, I think Catman is awesome.  He is one of the goofiest superheroes I’ve ever seen played straight and I just love how Catman-actor Jonathan Isgar hams up each performance with the typical hero cliches like posing with his fists on his hips and wearing a getup that is both goofy and epic.  The one liners are pretty great too, spouting off lines that would have been dated in 1965 like, “It looks like we’ve seen the last of our old friend!”  Watch these movies.  Both are in the public domain (as are many of Ho’s films) and are very much worth your time, Lethal Track in particular.  If you like fun, bad action movies, they really don’t get much better than this.

Godfrey Ho Appreciation Month - Robo Vampire (1988)

Cartoon by Christopher McElfresh

Robo Vampire (1988;
Filmark International Ltd.)

Following up the cool-but-silly Full Metal NInja we have Robo Vampire, a movie that is just a silly (if not more so) than FMN but lacks the awesome action we say in the first film we covered.  Robo Vampire was an obvious attempt to cash in on the success of the awesome 1987 classic RoboCop, even going so far as to feature RoboCop himself on the freaking VHS cover!  I mean, look at that freaking epic cover art!  However, we do not get Alex Murphy in this film, oh no!  We get a character we barely care about who dies close to the halfway point of the film and is transformed into an “...android-like robot”, to quote one of the film’s strangest dialogue scenes.

The film’s ridiculous premise involves a vile drug cartel who uses specially trained vampires controlled with talismans to guard their stash of drugs and to act as the cartels private undead army.  When an agent is killed in the line of duty a scientist transforms him into an android to battle the bouncing vampires and to rescue a missing couple in the Golden Triangle, a real-world location in Thailand and an area famous for drug manufacturing and trafficking.  

This is one of those action movies from the 80’s that displays the excess that has become central to the over-the-top, fun action flicks of the era remembered fondly by film fans.  Explosions, blood, bad effects and sloppily-filmed martial arts are all key to the fun in this film.  The fight scenes are, for lack of a better word, crazy.  The goofy vampires hold their arms outward like Boris Karloff’s Monster and bounce sillily towards their target.  It’s hard to watch these guys move without a chuckle, or at least a smile.  All this is before they start shooting freaking fireworks out of their hands, which is obviously coming from sparklers hidden in the baggy sleeves of their robes.  In fact, all of the effects in this film seemed to have been made with leftover fireworks from that year’s Lantern Festival.

Now let’s talk a little about the titular robot.  Do not be confused by the title, as there are no robo vampires in this movie.  a more accurate title would be Robot Vs. Vampires but I guess that was just a little too on-the-nose for Ho.  No, the robot we get in Robo Vampire is a wannabe clone that looks like a cosplayer had his over-zealous but untalented mother make him a RoboCop costume out of duct tape.  As he moves a moderately-talented foley guy hits the middle-C key on his Casio synthesizer and we get poorly-queued mechanical sounds that are meant to convince us that the hero really is mechanical and isn’t just wearing a poorly-fitting, floppy costume.  

The fights, namely the few between the robot and the vampires, are a lot of fun and are where Robo Vampire is at its most entertaining.  Occasionally, the screen will get so dark you cannot actually see what’s happening on screen, but I could attribute some of that to the copy of the film I watched.  Still, what I could make out is pretty damn awesome.  Given the nature of the characters, the vampires and the robot are so stiff.  It is pretty awesome to watch them struggle to maintain that rigor-mortis-like stiffness while they hurl each other about.  Also, oddly, the vampires have a tendency to knock dudes up to roofs of buildings when they hit them, and this is sort of the way this movie goes.  One character motions a hit towards another character and we cut to a reaction shot of what is almost always a stunt guy as he or she flies into poorly-lit set dressing.  It is often difficult to tell where other characters are in relation to one another, as the blocking and lighting obscure almost every fight.  I’m quite positive that much of this obsctruction is intentional, to hide the sloppy makeup and costumes and the shoddy choreography.  This is why my favorite fight in the film takes place on the beach during daylight.  When you can actually see what is going on it is pretty damn funny.  These hilarious fights alone are motivation enough to justify repeat viewings.

What makes this movie work is its ineptitude, and like the other fun “bad” movies like Birdemic and Plan 9, there are hints that the director and actors, despite all of their ineptitude, are really working hard to make this movie happen.  These are the bad movies that are fun because while you pick these films apart and are actually laughing AT them, they have a charm about them.  Robo Vampire is, by its very nature, a cash-in, and like other films that fall into a subgenre known as Action Exploitation (or “Actionsploitation”, for short) it exists to bask in the glory of another movie that is far, far more well-known and respectable than itself.  Still, Robo Vampire is a freaking blast and bad movie fans can easily make a game out of all the bad takes that made it into this movie.  The dubbing is read so poorly, that it can make the simplest line excruciatingly funny simply but its poor tone, or odd timing.  

Robo Vampire is all over the Internet, making it extremely easy to watch.  I was able to find multiple uploads on YouTube alone.  See this movie.  If you love the genre, if you love bad movies, or if you just love to laugh, this is a must-see.  It should be a regularly-discussed film in the topic of films that are so-bad-they’re-good.  Robo Vampire is a great film to springboard uninitiated viewers into the bizarre underbelly of 80’s action.


NOTE: A little editorial correction, in full-disclosure. I am aware that technically this film is directed by Thomas Tang. This is a fair and important fact to point out that I failed to note in the post. Godfrey Ho's footprint is all over this one. Also, there was some splicing in this film as well. Sorry about the bad info. I do my best to research these movies but a lot of the time the more obscure films are hard to find information on.

Godfrey Ho Appreciation Month - Full Metal Ninja (1989)

Cartoon by Christopher McElfresh

Full Metal Ninja
(1989; IDF Films and Arts)

In one of Godfrey Ho’s later spliced works, we see a lot of great imagery.  There’s an evil military leader who wears a Santa cap in one scene, a completely irrelevant white guy in a hot pink ninja costume and Chinese Eegah!  Along the way we get a strange yet surprisingly entertaining piece of cinema.  This is Full Metal Ninja!

Full Metal Ninja is just another one of the strangely-titled ninja films in Ho’s repertoire, this time featuring a Zatoichi-esque swordsman named Eagle who travels a lonely road to save his family that was taken from him by an evil warlord named Lo.  This is not, however, very well explained but this is par for the course with Ho’s narratives.  They are rarely comprehensible and are, more-often-then-not, damn near unintelligible.  

Along the road, Eagle faces many foes, most are fights he engages to help another person, other times they are in retaliation of a previous encounter.  At one point, Eagle comes to the aid of a young woman who would become an important point of contention for the hero, after she invites him into her home for rest.  However, when her father seemingly inexplicably attacks him, she vows vengeance.  After a short time, she becomes entirely irrelevant to the story.

About seven minutes of additional footage was added after the fact starring Ho and Lai’s perennial caucasian action hero, Pierre Kirby.  Kirby’s scenes do nothing but add a little more violence to the movie and ultimately serve no purpose, as the added scenes in Ho’s movies rarely do.  Still, we do see some funny action and we also get a nice taste of the goofy ninja costumes Ho uses in many of his films.  Thus, there are a few laughs to be had at these scenes’ expense.  

Pierre Kirby from Full Metal Ninja,
in all of his hot pink glory!

The fight choreography in Full Metal Ninja, as is the case with most of Ho’s films, ranges from good to bleh.  To Ho’s credit, he is actually able to construct a good scene from time to time, and his movies, as silly as they often are, do occasionally have some good action.  Some of the fights in Full Metal Ninja aren’t bad, and really do deserve some recognition as entertaining pieces of martial arts action.  Some of the cut-in fights are pretty fun too, like when we see Pierre Kirby rip off Raiders with the gun to the swordsman’s gut and when we see him kick down a freaking tree in an attempt to crush his attackers.

All-in-all, Full Metal Ninja is a blast, and while it isn’t good, not by a long shot, bad movie fans and fans of kung fu movies in general will find quite a bit to like about it.  The principle plot, while cliched and paper-thin, isn’t bad and the hero, Eagle is pretty badass, though, you have seen this very same character played better, in far-superior films.  Give this one a watch if you want to have a few laughs and to quench your thirst for fun kung fu action.

Godfrey Ho Appreciation Month - An Introduction

Cartoon by Christopher McElfresh

I hereby dub August Godfrey Ho Appreciation Month and that means lots and lots of awesome ninja action!  The 1970’s were an important time for movies in America.  There were several elements from that decade that contributed to the changes, one being the rise of Independent Cinema, and another was Bruce Lee.  In fact, I don’t think it is often stressed enough just how huge of an impact Bruce Lee had on cinema, not just here in the States, but everywhere.  

Asian cinema began to grow in popularity during the late 50’s thanks to the films of directors like Akira Kurosawa, who created sweeping historical narratives highlighting feudal Japan and showing us a side of a culture we had only really heard about through WWII news headlines and biased word of mouth.  It would be a few years before we got our first taste of Bruce Lee here in the popular TV show the Green Hornet, which aired from 1966-67.  Lee had, by this time, already appeared in a number of films from the growing Hong Kong circuit and was trying to break into Hollywood to better share his love of the Martial Arts and his amazing acting and fighting ability with the world.  

Bruce Lee.  Image from imdb.com page.

Lee’s films more or less opened the door to the Kung Fu genre to become the powerhouse fans recognize it to be today, and like all other growing fads, there were plenty of others with slightly less talent who would move in to latch on to that success.  One such director out of the 1970’s was Godfrey Ho.  But Ho, along with producer and colleague Joseph Lai, become notorious for re-editing their own movies while splicing in some new footage featuring American actors.  This was principally a business decision as Ho operated under the assumption that by having actors from the US in his films, and giving them top-billing upon release, he would generate a stronger following.  He was wrong.  
Still, Ho and Lai did quite well for themselves.  Just during the 1980’s they released well over 80 films, most were re-hashes and re-edits.  He did do some entirely original films as well, and we’ll talk about those too.  So, without further ado, let us kick off Godfrey Ho Appreciation Month with a film starring one of his favorite Spliced-In Superstars, Pierre Kirby: Full Metal Ninja.