A VIdeotape Swapshop Triple Bill: Ninja The Protector (1986)/Robo Vampire (1988)/Beauty and Warrior (2002)

From http://i1.ytimg.com/vi/z0FOVncOdJs/hqdefault.jpg

Dirs. Godfrey Ho/Joe Livingstone/Sukma Romadhon

The following three have a connective tissue to each other. An infamous director and two producers from Hong Kong that have all contributed to taking old films, adding ninjas to them and selling them to Western viewers. The first film is such a work, from Godfrey Ho, who has been covered on this blog before. Here one can find out what happens when a melodrama is mixed with an improvised action film. The next is miscredited to Ho, but can be fully confirmed to have the influence of producer Tomas Tang somewhere within it, who would work with Joseph Lai and Ho at times or at least share a credit on their work. Robocop (1987) as envisioned as the Tin Man fighting hopping vampires used by a drug cartel's guard dogs. As you'd usually expect from cinema. The final review is for what Lai's been doing long past the cut-and-paste ninja films; whether its based on true mythology or not I cannot tell, but its an excursion in the obscurest areas of animation that you can find produced. All together they are a testament to how unpredictable films can be regardless if they were made merely as product.

From http://www.hairballmedia.com/robo_vampire_4.jpg

Ninja The Protector Review - http://www.videotapeswapshop.co.uk/19759/ninja-the-protector-1986-dir-godfrey-ho/

Robo Vampire Review - http://www.videotapeswapshop.co.uk/19816/robo-vampire-1988-directed-by-godfrey-ho/

Beauty and Warrior Review - http://www.videotapeswapshop.co.uk/19936/celluloid-wunderkammer-beauty-and-warrior-2002-director-sukma-romadhon/

From http://i1.ytimg.com/vi/2svdEDvyKOs/hqdefault.jpg

The ‘Dull’ of Cinema [The Ultimate Ninja (1986)]

From http://faf-media.findanyfilm.com/film_images/L_Synd4017-379635.Jpg

Dir. Godfrey Ho

Hong Kong

Film #17 of The ‘Worst’ of Cinema

From http://www.fareastfilms.com/cmsAdmin/uploads/ultimate_ninja3.jpg

I may have hinted at this with my first review of a Godfrey Ho ninja film for this season, Ninja Terminator (1985), but his and his producer Joseph Lai’s concept of taking unreleased or unfinished films made by other people and splicing into them scenes of Westerners in cheap ninja costumes could have mixed results. While able to create films like Ninja Terminator, it could also lead to bad films like The Ultimate Ninja. The film consists of two parts that tentatively connect together. The first is a good red ninja, who we know is a ninja because the word ‘Ninja’ is on his headband, trying to get a ninja statue, of British seaside store quality in its tackiness, back from evil black ninjas. We know they’re evil because they’ve got skulls on their headbands, eliciting from my mind a moment where one of them, like in a sketch by David Mitchell and Robert Webb, looks at his headband and asking another “Hans... are we the baddies?” The second storyline, the original film redubbed into English and edited, is about a gang leader who takes over a rural town, and twenty years later, has his gang of thuggish debt collectors undermined and beaten up by an increasing amount of people who either want revenge or are fighting for the good guys.

From http://www.fareastfilms.com/cmsAdmin/uploads/ultimate_ninja5.jpg

The immediate problem with The Ultimate Ninja is that Ho attempted to make a new film with the material he had but ended up making something that doesn’t go anywhere. The original footage has far too many characters, especially on the hero’s side, which could have easily turned into a twisting of Seven Samurai (1954) or a Western with a team of heroes, but merely becomes a jumble of random scenes. Certain individuals would look identical to each other if it wasn’t for their hairstyles, awkward choice of English dubbing, and especially with one character with iron head and a sleeveless pink vest, their fashion sense. It isn’t an interesting film at all, the problem with Ho’s idea of making cut-and-paste ninja films with dull material as well as that which was entertaining, with rudimentary martial arts sequences and a blandness to its look and tone. The ninja footage doesn’t help either, with only one scene connecting the two aspects together, and not really working either by itself. There’s amusement to be had with a moustached ninja meditating on a picnic bench, but like the original footage the ninjas are interchangeable to each other and don’t get to do what Richard Harrison and ninja in other films did. They got to have motorbike sword fights, fight in car parks and suburban homes, throw smoke bombs and shoot flames from their sword handles, and do gratuitous back flips; the ninja in this are just white foreigners in low cost ninja costumes playing hide-and-seek in the bushes of what appears to be a park.

From http://www.sogoodreviews.com/reviews/tun.jpg

There are much better or at least far more ridiculous ninja films in Ho’s back catalogue. For a film called The Ultimate Ninja, the content barely stands by itself let alone live up to the title. The film is tedious. The amusement is occasionally there – including a training sequence which apparently couldn’t afford to get a trampoline, which even Turkish Star Wars (1982) was wise to have, and uses an obvious low camera to show a giant leap – but most of The Ultimate Ninja is a waste of time to view. Start with Ninja Terminator and go view other Ho/Lai collaborations instead, and only view this if you’re part of a secret, die hard cult of Godfrey Ho completists. 

"Have you noticed that our headbands actually have little pictures of skulls on them?"

From http://s3.amazonaws.com/auteurs_production/images/film/the-ultimate-ninja/w448/the-ultimate-ninja.jpg?1317228346

The ‘Stitched-Together Gem’ of Cinema [Ninja Terminator (1985)]

From http://img.movieberry.com/static/photos/33733/poster.jpg

Dir. Godfrey Ho

Canada-Hong Kong-United Kingdom

Film #1 of The ‘Worst’ of Cinema series

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It seems a shame, although I hope there will be more films that I view this way throughout the season, that Ninja Terminator  has to be reviewed under a season that has the title The ‘Worst’ of Cinema. I liked the film before this review, and I love it even more without any shame; the point of the season however was to review films as well that, even if I disagree wholeheartedly with them, are dismissed as bad by other people. The film has a 4.4 rating on the Internet Movie Database as I post this on my blog – January 1^st 2012 - but usually Godfrey Ho films are around 2.0 on their scale. While I fell in love with Ninja Terminator on this second viewing, and think it’s a good film in its accidental way, I can understand the low rankings it gets from other film viewers.

From http://static.megashara.com/screenshots/489190__snapshot20090424173920.jpg

Three ninjas (including actor Richard Harrison) steal from their ‘Ninja Empire’ the pieces of the Golden Ninja Warrior, an artefact that can turn your body and arms into living shields able to deflect even sword blades. Yes it has its weaknesses, such as the fact one’s legs could still be lopped off from under you regardless by a sword, but it’s a powerful artefact nonetheless and the Ninja Empire is on the hunt for the individuals responsible for its theft. When one of the ninja thieves is killed, it divides the remaining conspirators, Harrison’s Ninja Master Harry fighting for good, while his conspirator within the two years that have past is leading a crime syndicate and wants to claim the remaining pieces. Through his second in command, who dresses in a white suit and a lovely blonde, curled wig, and his own set of minions, the syndicate goes after the surviving sister of the murdered ninja to claim her piece of the Golden Ninja Warrior. To protect her, Harry sends in his own man Jaguar Wong (Jack Lam), a suave and skilled fighter who intends to help her and generally undermine the actions of the syndicate with his fist. Godfrey Ho, alongside his producer Joseph Lai, is infamous for this run of ninja films which take pre-existing films and re-edit them, intercutting new scenes of ninja combat and Richard Harrison, to weave together  new narratives using the English dubbing script and some blatant editing techniques. It was done mainly to capitalise on the bludgeoning obsession with ninjas in American culture in the 1980s, so it can be viewed as a questionable practice as well as ramshackle to the extreme.

From http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_l4ftszf5E61qztwngo1_400.png

I view Ninja Terminator as an immensely enjoyable film though, but what makes it and a few other of Ho’s ninja films even better is that the attempt to combine two completely different sets of material into one single movie, through editing, inadvertently stumbles into the ‘Montage of Attractions’ theory that Sergei E. Eisenstein, the legendary director of Battleship Potemkin (1925), had developed. Like his fellow Soviet filmmakers who practiced experiments with editing and the concept of the montage, Eisenstein believed that by juxtaposing two single images together in a specific way would have a certain effect on the viewer, and that it could be used in different ways to have significant power to them. This is seen at it best with Lev Kuleshov’s experiment known as the Kuleshov Effect, where the same image of Tsarist actor Ivan Mosjoukine was spliced together alternately with an image of a plate of soup, a person in a coffin, and a young girl playing, each version having a drastic change in effect on the viewer in each combination. By utter accident, in an attempt by Ho and Joseph Lai to take unfinished and obscure films from South Korea, Taiwan etc. – not just martial arts films, but at least one softcore soap opera set in the fashion industry as well that was remade into Ninja The Protector (1986) – they ended up practicing the same methods Soviet filmmakers perfected to make numerous films over the eighties and early nineties. Some film studies students reading this may want to throttle me for comparing Ho to one of the most important directors in cinema’s history, or may be dismayed that someone used these techniques so that we can have Harrison communicating with the lead of the original film through a Garfield the cat telephone. The resulting creation turns out to be something special however.

From http://c.asset.soup.io/asset/3117/2460_5fc0.gif

With a plot that, because of two different sets of footage being spliced together, doesn’t really make sense, the film ends up being an abstracted version of these sorts of c-level movies. The tiers of each side face other but do not interact with members of their own side in other tiers, outside the moments when they are connected together by editing of course, and fights break out about almost every five minutes. Nothing is seen as ill-advised production decisions either. No one raised an issue about toy, motorised robots being the messengers of death for the Ninja Empire, walking into rooms under the veil of ominous smoke or getting stuck on the raised doorway, but its charming and hilarious to see especially when the robots boom with the voices foreboding doom on those who trespassed against them. Everything that transpires in the film either undermines conventions of plotting, such as having a henchman of the villains get his own prolonged sex scene, or what one expects in this sort of filmmaking, and would become bored by, making it almost avant-garde in its idiosyncratic savant mindset. Any moment it seems to slog through the minutes is undermined by the fact that something interesting, mindboggling or amusing is going to happen. Godfrey Ho and Joseph Lai, while they could be taken to task for their idea of generating as many films they could sell from existing materials, at least, when their creations succeeded, made movies that are entertaining, and used pre-existing materials that had something inherently watchable about them for any viewer even if they were trash. Even the ninja sequences, with stunt actors clearly doing the fighting in the cheap ninja suits for the likes of Richard Harrison, are competent and have skilled performers involved so that, despite most ninja fights in Ho’s films consisting of flips and repeated sword clash sounds, they never become poor, slapdash sequences found in martial arts films outside of Asia.

From http://img.gawkerassets.com/img/17fq078m8os00jpg/medium.jpg

Since this is a review on this site, this cannot end without briefly talking about the music. Some of it is dated but appropriate for the material. Some of it however is legitimately great; it’s not up to the quality of the famous cut-and-paste film Shogun Assassin (1980), whose score is combined with the images to add to its ghostly, phantasmagorical tone, but Ninja Terminator’s music choices adds to it immensely. Researching, it appears that Ho had no issues with “borrowing” music from other sources and there is a possibility that some of the music in the film is by Pink Floyd and Tangerine Dream. It’s an exceptionally dubious practice to take for a film that may have made money only for Ho and Lai, but decades later it is actually inspired and effective. How these films have not occurred the wrath of the original musicians, especially since they have been released on DVD unlike rip-off films that have borrowed music too, I have no idea. No one care, no one knows about their existence, or Roger Waters really adores cut-and-paste ninja films. We will never know.

From http://www.videotapeswapshop.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/ninja-terminator03.jpg

There films of Godfrey Ho – not taking into account his self directed films, the ones he made with Cynthia Rothrock, or those made by other directors he merely put his name on and claimed for himself – can be hit-and-miss, as to be expected from a technique that can work immensely but also creates many unusable results even for artists who are using it for more than commerce. When they do succeed like Ninja Terminator, they do so greatly and its disappointing to merely dismiss them as guilty pleasures as, while it will be difficult to defend it to friends and loved ones, its Frankenstein form and tone is inspired and avoids the pitfalls of completely original material that falls into generic tropes. With this film generic tropes are cut to shred like an unfortunate watermelon Richard Harrison practices on with his katana and is repeated again later in the film to compensate for the lack of a second training montage.

From http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v218/Glupinickname/Blog%20gluparije/NINJA_Terminator_03.jpg

Can Dialectics Break Bricks? (Dirs. Kwang-Chi Tu* and Rene Vienet, 1973)

From  http://www.jonathanrosenbaum.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/candialectics.jpg 

The follow film is an addition to my list ‘Cinema of the Abstract’. All films that have this piece at the top with have an ‘Abstract’ Rating and a personal score at the end. For more information on this peculiar scoring system, and what the ‘Cinema of the Abstract’ list is, follow this link – http://mubi.com/lists/cinema-of-the-abstract

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Taking a martial arts film called The Crush (1972) and redubbing it into comedic take on Socialist/Communist ideology, this depicts its struggle against corruption of its ideas and capitalism through the fight sequences of East Asian cinema while playing it up for humour. A Korean martial arts dojo, represented as a utilitarian dream of left wing socialists, is threatened by Japanese gangsters, representing bureaucrats, who threaten to stomp down their subversive activities to liberate the proletariat. Entering in the middle of this is the lone stranger skilled in his technique of martial arts, who finds himself between protecting his comrades and the offers of corrupt ideology.

The idea is on paper inspired and hilarious – evoking images of a proletariat crane kicking a capitalist while quoting Karl Marx at the same time – all the while using a genre which, while full of art, is full of work merely churned for capitalist gain, to project alternative ideas in an entertaining and more vivid way. Under an American view, despite the French dubbing and left wing European target audience, this is even more subversive, a Grindhouse staple, grounded through cheap cinemas in places like 42^nd Street in New York for profit, being used to fight such an idea while fitting the ideologies common in East Asian martial arts cinema of the bond and unity in martial arts schools and fighting for the downtrodden. The trope of good versus evil almost always existing in this genre is used to its least expected. (That this original film, from my small research, concerns Korean characters does misses a chance on the creator’s part considering the spreading of Maoism, the communist ideology of China, was significant in left wing politics not a lot of years before this film’s making, and likely** still as preached in 1972, but the idea still works as it is). I will openly admit that I did not get a lot of the references, and many won’t, including references to books of socialist ideas and the Structralist movement director Rene Vienet was part of which almost becomes a list the viewer must go and read after the film, but the idea could still work. The fact that the words ‘Castro’ and ‘comrade’ heard in the least expected places of cinema could illicit an amused grin from almost anyone, especially fans of the genre, helps the idea, and if done properly it would be a subversive and original experience. Using a technique (detorument) which is mostly used now for only comedic purposes, redubbing pre-existing cinematic material to create new messages, Vienet and his cast of voice actors had the ability to both project a left wing message and also play with cinematic form. A genre where dubbing is synonymous with its history and helped by it to its popularity, whether we purists who prefer original language soundtracks to our DVD copies will admit it or not, this concept the creators took doesn’t jar with the genre, but the material they decide to add to it (and admittedly for me, hearing actors of the genre dubbed in French with subtitles in a rare viewing experience) distorts the concept of layering dialogue on real individual’s mouths. As with any object, film can be manipulated into any different shape from what it was originally if someone else has an idea for its new form and the desire to do so; hell, this idea could be done if one mutes a martial arts film and ad-libs new dialogue for it, far from a flippant remark on my part but how it is possible for anyone to subvert something from what it was.

Sadly the actual results on this viewing do not live up to the premise. One of the biggest issues with works which re-use existing film material is the quality of said material for the purpose of the subject and how it is used, especially when the visual images are the original film with the changes completely vocal. The original film The Crush, if the material seen without the original script is enough, is okay for being manipulated for this idea but is frankly a generic piece of churned out material. This might not have been a problem, especially considering its redundant nature is played up to, if the contribution of the French creators the project fully relies on were on ball...which is not the case with a subpar contribution by Vienet into this melting pot. There are moments of interest and humour – the use of Socialist phrases for the first few times, the references to the film’s own artificiality – but a lot of it is both unfunny and insightful for a film trying to communicate very important politics through laughter. I will not comment on the ideological references I did not get, which is not the fault of the film but viewing a work catered to a very specific audience originally, but the rest of its script is deeply lazy and pointless crass with its constant use of swear words in the subtitles. It is important to say that there are multiple versions of the film available, including dubbed, and the translating of dialogue from one language to another is full of complexities that could be problematic, but it feels clear that most of the script is characters talking about destroying capitalism and swearing at bureaucrats’ ad-nauseum until it becomes incredibly tedious. Occasional use of crassness, including jokes about child sexuality that wouldn’t fly now but add to the subversive nature of the film, would make sense as crudity, and a well time use of words like ‘shit’ and ‘fuck’, can be incredibly powerful tools to undermine and provoke ideas, as well as generate belly laughs, but like a lot of bad and cringeworthy examples of this humour in cinema, it is not very well used in the first place, and that’s not taking into account of it being over relied upon throughout the whole running time.

The result is disappointing, especially with an idea this inspired. It’s worse when, as a work provoking socialist ideas of the time, and facing right wing attacks back throughout the globe, this French work would be a miserable failure in my mind to try and convert people to fight for their fellow working man against corrupt businessmen. As a botched attempt on such a funny idea, it also commits the crime of wasting great comedic material. All there is left a peculiar experiment that could have been something special in another existence.

Abstract Rating (High/Medium/Low) – Low

Personal Rating – 4 out of 10

* There is a discrepancy with original director of the film The Crush. This is the person listed on IMDB, but a site known as the Hong Kong Movie Database lists the director as Tu Guang-Qi (http://hkmdb.com/db/movies/view.mhtml?id=5325&display_set=eng). This complication found with information gives someone like me an immense headache, so I will warn you about this in case the information is wrong.

** My knowledge of Maoism’s history is equivalent to a goldfish’s knowledge of philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, which I am just as terrible with, so forgive this uneducated minnow if this is completely wrong.

If you still want to see this film despite this review, it can be legally streamed (and downloaded) from the site UBU.com – http://www.ubu.com/film/vienet_dialectics.html. The quality of the material is terrible, but it is still watchable, and considering the obscurity of the film, it is always better to be able to actually see it than not see it. Also note that the version you see is supposed to be black and white. The original version may be in colour but this does not affect the central idea of the film at all.

I advise anyone to look on UBU, as for any film fan it contains countless experiment and avant garde works available legally to see. Again, the visual quality of many of them is adequate, but it is a trove as rare works and ones you likely have never heard of but will fascinate and delight after their viewing.

Addition - The follow review by Jonathan Rosenbaum adds a lot but also suggests that the version I watched was a recreation of the original work, adding to its improvised nature - http://www.jonathanrosenbaum.com/?p=6675