After watching the crappy Gordon Liu BREAKOUT FROM OPRESSION I figured I would give this one a shot since it couldn't possibly be much worse. Luckily it's not. It's also a totally different type of film replacing the kung fu with horror/thriller elements here. The plot deals with a lady who is wrongfully sent to prison for 12 years after being wrongly convicted of murder and then her attempts to get her life together after that. Things don't go very smoothly and more people end up getting snuffed. Very effective atmosphere and ending, which is seemingly swiped from FRIDAY THE 13th, and cool plot which successfully throws a twist in.
This film originally was released in Taiwan as EXPOSED TO DANGER in 1982 before being dubbed and re-christened by IFD films in Hong Kong. Thankfully they didn't feel the need to throw any ninjas into this, as they were wont to do, or really do much editing, besides dubbing it into English and throwing the band Tangerine Dream onto the soundtrack, from what I can tell.
This is one of the few films credited to director Godfrey Ho that isn't a hodge-podge of 2 or 3 other films mixed into one and follows a fairly coherent story line. Apparently that was due to it being co-directed by some Korean fellow named Kim Si-Hyeon who worked with star Dragon Lee on a few films. It's all pretty simplistic stuff here about a Buddhist temple being taken over by an evil fighter who uses a lightning kick to beat his opponents. There's some backstabbing and a lot of Buddhist monks getting offed before the big final battle. One weird scene has a guy wearing what appears to be a Mexican wrestler mask for a little bit, besides this not the most memorable outing. AKA THUNDERING FIST
MARTIAL MONKS OF SHAOLIN TEMPLE is another film from this same year directed by these two with a very similar cast and plot that seems to get mixed up with this one often.
I was never a big fan of Cynthia Rothrock. The movies of hers that I'd seen were just the most generic of direct-to-video action films possible and I assumed they were American martial arts films which is normally not a very good thing. This one is directed by the great Godfrey Ho, who, as far as I know, is not an American(although he is credited here as Godfrey Hall which makes him seem way more American) and I always thought he just made Hong Kong movies with bizarre editing tricks before seeing this. The best thing about this though is that it features a kung-fu serial killer and is by far the most entertaining Rothrock flick I've seen yet. A lot of the credit here goes to actor Don Niam as an insane rape-happy, ass-kicking killer named Stingray. This guy was only in a couple of things in the 90's which is too bad because he's so over-the-top here it's awesome! Stingray goes around trying to find his wife after she splits(I guess she was tired of the frequent rapings on the kitchen table and whatnot), has a very bad mommy-complex and rips people's eyeballs out and sticks them in a fish-tank after he beats their asses in a fight. He also never forgets to load his mullet up with hairspray before going on a killing-spree so he looks good for the ladies. Rothrock here also has a gang of sidekicks that sorta act like an Asian version of the Bowery Boys and this movie might have one of the strangest endings ever where everyone gets punished by being enrolled in college!?. I was lucky enough to see this in a theater full of drunks yesterday and that might be the perfect way to watch this. It definitely raised my opinion of Rothrock and also Ho and if there's anything similar to this that they did together I gotta find it. AKA BLOODY MARY KILLER
These Godfrey Ho-directed kung-fu/ninja flicks are pretty hard to tell one from the other. They almost all star Richard Harrison and they all seem to be conglomerations of at least two different movies. This one also stars a guy named Bruce Stallion and if that's not the greatest name for an action-movie star I don't know what is. The plot here deals with a couple of rival gangs fighting over turf or something(it's not all that easy to follow exactly what the hell is going on). One gang sometimes dresses like they're in the 1930's and the other gang enjoys dressing up like The Blues Brothers. They then do a bunch of gun-fu and people get assassinated. In the middle of all this Mr. Ho shoehorns in a bunch of scenes of two ninjas, who wear heavy eyeliner, fighting and Mr. Harrison doing some slow-motion sword-handling which I'm guessing was shot at another time. This is definitely one of those movies that I will forget ever seeing five minutes after it's over but at least it's mildly amusing, even if just for it's extremely stupid dubbing, while viewing.
Bruce Stallion is, in real life, a Muay Thai fighter named Paulo Tocha. Strangely he doesn't do much of any real fighting in this.
As with most movies directed or produced by Godfrey Ho this film doesn't make much sense. Of course the reason for that is that Ho liked to take a couple of previously released films and splice them together to make something new. Usually something new that involved ninjas or even just the word "ninja" in some cases. In this case we get a hodge-podge of fight scenes, some even involving ninjas, and a bunch of softcore sex mixed together. The sexy bits are supposed to come from something called ROCKY'S LOVE AFFAIRS which sounds right since they involve a guy who spends a lot time working out in a gym and training to be a boxer. The boxing scenes quickly devolve into kung-fu/kickboxing which is way more exciting than regular boxing anyway. The ninja fight scenes are allegedly from a martial-arts flick called 108 GOLDEN KILLERS. There might also be some bits that Ho actually directed just for this film but getting very accurate information about Mr. Ho's trashy films is pretty difficult since there's so much misinformation on the internet about him. Technically he's not even listed as the director on this, someone named Yeung Chuen Bong is, but it seems to be the popular consensus that this is Ho's work and it does seem like something he woulda thrown together.
The plot here as well as I could follow it, which isn't very well!, starts out with some ninjas in the 1940's then somehow we travel to the modern day(1980's) Hong Kong where this tattooed boxing fellow bangs a bunch of chicks. There's something about a missing necklace then a pregnant lady gets shot and killed, ninjas explode and disappear, some gals mud-wrestle, one lady gets herself kidnapped and I think the hero wins at the end but it's kinda hard to tell because I think there were two different heroes at the beginning.. So yeah, basically there isn't really much of a plot just a bunch of random stuff. It's a good thing some of the action scenes are cool, you get lots of naked boobs and ass and things move along pretty quickly otherwise you would just be left with a headache trying to think too hard about this mess. AKA's= NINJA HOLOCAUST & NINJA STRIKE (or these may just be re-edited versions using some of the same footage as this one)
Could have been filmed in 1990 or 1980 or even 1970. There's no relation to anything from any of those decades visible to me. The dubbing is wonderfully absurd. Everyone calls the buddha "the booder" or something like that?? Basically, it's just a really crappy kung fu flick with some ninjas thrown in here and there. The other THUNDER NINJA KIDS movie I've seen, THE HUNT FOR THE DEVIL BOXER, at least has some horror elements thrown into it with those hopping vampires and all that silliness. This one doesn't even have that to amuse you. Joseph Lai produces, Godfrey Ho directs under the name Charles Lee. The kings of splicing movies together and ending up with a mess. 2 names you never hear involved in anything good. Great movie to put on if you need to take a nap.
