Ninja Vs. Ninja (Filmark?, 1987)
A look at the wonderful world of IFD Films

[Note: Due to issues beyond our control, UR was unable to obtain the Korean death metal CD mentioned in the original "The Autumn of Asians" article. To make matters worse, technical issues kept this article from being posted before Autumn ended (December 21st). As a result of that, I figured that I'd make my debut on the site by fulfilling the promise for bad movies and Godfrey Ho. And since I'm running low on time, I figured I'd pay tribute to the man known for editing different movies together to make a new movie by stitching together some stuff I've previously written on the subject! Get ready for a bumpy ride, as we look at the final entry in the 2006 Autumn Winter of Asians...]

In the 1980’s, Sho Kosugi’s ninja movies (REVENGE OF THE NINJA, etc.) were extremely popular with American audiences, and imitations soon followed. Noting the newfound popularity of “ninja movies,” a film company in Hong Kong called IFD Films and Arts Limited hit upon a brilliantly sneaky idea; Instead of simply translating martial arts movies into English for Western markets as they had done in the past, they’d take footage from unfinished or otherwise “unreleasable” Asian movies, edit in some footage of white people in ninja costumes (under the idea that Americans would be more likely to see movies with stars who weren’t “foreign-looking”), and then use creative editing and redubbing the entire movie to make a single, semicoherent storyline.

This practice let IFD churn out a massive number of new “ninja” movies quickly and fairly inexpensively, allowing them to make a killing in the American home video market (along the home video market in several other countries). IFD paid close attention to what titles sold well and then gave other movies similar titles. For example, if a movie with the word “Thunderbolt” in the title sold well, they’d pump out more movies with the word “Thunderbolt” in the title.

They were also smart enough to use a “name” actor that audiences would be would be familiar with for their first batch ninja movies: Richard Harrison, an American actor known for his work in Italian spaghetti westerns, spy movies, and peplums (“gladiator” movies). One story has it that they hired Harrison to do a single movie and then chopped up his footage so that it could be spliced into multiple movies! No matter what the case was, Harrison stopped working with IFD and they sought out other actors to fill his place (often from local modeling agencies).

Another popular practice at IFD was to redo the film credits so that IFD employees were given credit for creating, directing, etc. (A practice similar to what American companies did while importing Japanese monster movies in the 1950’s and early 1960’s). Said employees almost always had “Western” pseudonyms, with the most famous one being that of the director “Godfrey Ho” (Real name: Ho Chi-Keung). Although he supposedly only directed the ninjas scenes and supervised the dubbing, Mr. Ho was credited with directing the entire movie. The story goes that since people started to catch on to the idea that “Godfrey Ho” meant that they were about to rent a “cut and paste” movie, IFD changed his pseudonym repeatedly.

Even after he left the company, their continued use of the “cut and paste” forumla and director psuedonyms have led many a person to conclude that Godfrey Ho has directed more movies than he really has. As a result, “Godfrey Ho” has become synonymous with any Asian movie where footage of caucasians gets spliced in (especially ninja movies.) and it’s still not known how many movies he actually “directed”.

Despite the fact that many martial arts movie fans hate these movies for not being “real” martial arts movies, many love them for the sheer entertainment value they provide. Although the movies themselves were nowhere near what most people would consider “good”, they are constantly hilarious and rarely boring (although they occasionally had some disturbing scenes). For example, their ninja movies often featured ninjas wearing multicolored costumes and headbands with the word “Ninja” written on them. Said ninjas often had supernatural powers that would give the ninja antics discribed at Real Ultimate Power a run for their money.

Just as funny where the scenes that attempted to show the “ninjas” communicating with characters from the Asian movie footage, in which it was obvious that the characters weren’t in the same room, let alone the same movie. Some IFD movies tried to get around this by having the characters ineract through telephone conversations (sometimes using a Garfield telephone). As you can guess, that didn’t really help much in the realism deparment. However, it does help a great deal in the “unintentionally hilarious” department.

One such movie is NINJA CHAMPION (1985 or 1986, it’s hard to say due to the conflicting information on this movie online). Sadly, this is one of those IFD movies with a disturbing scene in it. In fact, NINJA CHAMPION starts with a gang of criminals with painted faces (think Kabuki mixed with KISS) attacking a couple in the forest. After beating up the male, they grab the bikini-clad female, punch her in the stomach, and rape her. This is followed by the woman being treated (operated on?) in a hospital, demanding that she not have any anesthetics since she “deserves the pain”! Not exactly what I was hoping for from a ninja movie.

At some point in the future, we find that the couple has split up-the man (George) got married to another woman and the woman (Rose) has become a diamond smuggler who’s trackling down and killing her attackers on the side (one of them she kills using poisoned nipples). I should note that you don’t learn the characters’ names until much later in the movie. Later, it’s revealed that it’s been three months since the incident. That’s right folks, George dumped his girlfriend and got married in under three months.

Anyway, Interpol gets involved because of their interest in stoppping the smuggling (and in order to justify the ninja footage), with footage from the two movies being edited and dubbed to make it look like two characters are talking on the phone. Speaking of phones, when (stock footage of) Richard Harrison makes a cameo appearance, he’s shown using a novelty Garfield phone! So while the good Interpol agent/ninja goes after the evil ninjas behind the diamond smuggling ring, George tries to get back with Rose (As you can imagine, she’s less than thrilled to see him again) and Rose tries to kill off the rest of the rapists. But when Rose seems to die and George sets out to avenge her death, he notices a woman that seems to be Rose. I won’t spoil the ending, but I will tell you that it involves some insane plot twists and a gun-toting retard. Seriously.

The “source movie” has some decent fights, including a bizarre sequence in which George displays supernatural powers in order to fight off some bad guys. I’m guessing that he got those after being attacked at the beginning of the movie. Either that, or Rose has an even better reason to hate him.

Judging from some of the signs at an airport sequence and a brief cameo by Bruceploitation legend Dragon Lee, I’m guessing that the “source movie’ was made in Korea. Although the propaganda van in the parade scene makes me wonder if the “source movie” is North Korean in origin. The ninja footage has some pretty interesting fight sequences as well, such as an evil ninja who likes using a giant ring as a weapon (which was apparently recycled in the movie NINJA CONNECTION). If you can find NINJA CHAMPION and like bad movies, it’s well worth a look. Just be prepared for the beginning…

But just as IFD piggybacked on the success of Sho Kosugi movies, others noticed the popularity of IFD’s ninja movies and copied them! One of these movies is a little gem from 1987 called NINJA VS. NINJA, and it plays out almost exactly like a typical IFD “cut and paste” ninja movie (only without the headbands):

Non-Asian ninjas being the source of the problems seen in the footage taken from another movie? Check!

Goofy “special” ninja techniques? Check (The multiple arm trick and dividing scene are must sees)!

Hilariously bad dubbing? Check!

Music lifted from American sources? Check!

A ninja shows someone a picture of a character from the other movie that’s clearly a movie still? Check!

Characters from different sets of footage “interacting”? Check!

However, there are some differences that set this apart from a typical IFD movie. The credits don’t bother to “Westernize” most of the cast’s names, the ninja suits seem to be a size too big, and the ninja scenes lack the “polish” that ones shot by IFD have (And considering how many reviewers look down on the quality of IFD’s stuff, that’s an accomplishment). For example, cuts between different sets of footage in this movie are more abrupt than in a typical IFD ninja movie.

While IFD movies at least tried to establish why characters from different sets of footage would meet, NINJA VS. NINJA often opts to sudden cut to a shot of another character, perhaps under the impression that the audience will come up with an explanation. I didn’t see any indication of what film company originally made this, but I did find a website that claims Filmark, a company known for “cut and paste” movies like ROBO VAMPIRE and whose founder had done work with IFD president Joseph Lai in the past, was behind it.

The movie used to make the bulk of NINJA VS. NINJA is an odd crime drama that’d be extremely entertaining even without the added ninja scenes! It involves a cop (made into a CIA agent in NVN’s dub) who’s out to avenge the death of his wife (and injury of his son) caused by by a bomb set up by two criminals: one who uses his mastery of the iron skin technique(!) to kill people without fear of being injured by knives or guns and the other who is a pervert that was driven insane by the death of his cross-eyed girlfriend. No, really. There are some pretty interesting, non humorous scenes and fighting in this movie as well.

According to this website, these scenes are from a 1981 movie called BOMB SHELL. And if that wasn’t crazy enough, there’s also a scene featuring the worst disguises ever put on film (including a guy wearing swim goggles and plastic vampire fangs). However I forget if it this was in the original movie or if it was a newly shot scene.

Tai Seng Entertainment’s release is a cropped, full frame VHS transfer with faded colors and some tape glitches. Oddly enough, this (to my knowledge) is actually a licensed release from Ocean Shores (their watermark shows up twice during the movie). Back in the 1980’s, someone at Ocean Shores (and sadly, several other Asian companies) decided that it’d be a good idea to make full frame, VHS masters and junk the original films for easier storage! The DVD itself is bare bones, having 8 chapter stops, a semi-animated menu, and some previews. But trust me, the sheer entertianment value of NINJA VS. NINJA makes up for it.

Since Tai Seng released NINJA VS. NINJA onto VHS and DVD years ago, so I can imagine that you can find it cheap on Amazon or Ebay. Or you could do what I did and pick up Tai Seng’s “Ninja Six” set, a collection of titles they had previously released repackaged into a single box. It contains NINJA HUNTER, NINJA IN THE DEADLY TRAP, NINJA IN THE USA, NINJA VS. BRUCE LEE (starring Bruce Le), NINJA VS. NINJA, and NINJA VS. SHAOLIN GUARDS. I got mine for about $16.00. However, you’ll want to buy some empty amaray cases when you get this, since Tai Seng decided to package them by having the DVDs stacked on a hub with foam at the bottom! I should also note that with the exception of NINJA VS. NINJA, none of these are IFD-style ninja movies.

Alternately, you could try renting it through your local library’s rental system (Seriously, I got a lot of library references while looking up information for this title online). Reviews and screenshots for NINJA VS. NINJA and some of the other titles in the Ninja Six collection can be found here. However, the reviews there contain some minor spoilers.

However, the good times couldn’t last forever and the ninja craze eventually died down. Some have even claimed that IFD killed off the ninja craze via flooding the market with “low quality” ninja movies. No matter how the ninja craze ended, IFD survived that setback by appling the “cut and paste” formula of mixing Asian movie footage with footage of white (and occasionally black) people to genres like superheroes, kickboxing, war, horror, and crime thrillers. They also do straightforward (but still unintentionally hilarious) translations of various Asian live-action movies (mostly martial arts movies) and animation. As for Godfrey Ho, he did some (from what I hear) decent movies that didn’t use any footage from other movies and now (at least, according to Wikipedia) teaches at the Hong Kong Film Academy.

Although they were widely available on VHS in the 1980’s, it’s hard to find licensed DVDs of IFD movies in America nowadays. As far as I know, Digiview and DG Distributors are the only American companies who license movies from IFD. Digiview tends to handle fake anime and dubbed “normal” martial arts movies, while DG Distributors did two dubbed martial arts movies and a “cut and paste” kickboxing movie.

However, many unlicensed DVDs of IFD movies are floating around out there; so let the buyer beware. But there is a ray of hope, seeing as how several “cut and paste” ninja movies are on the Turner Classic Movie channel’s film database, where people can vote for movies that they’d like to see on DVD.

Since these movies can be hard to find (and since technical issues kept me from getting any screenshots), here are some links to various IFD movie trailers that I found online:

IFD’s Official Website (Has many trailers, but be warned that not all of them are “safe for work”)

THE ULTIMATE NINJA
NINJA DRAGON
THE NINJA SQUAD
ZODIAC AMERICA: THE SUPER MASTER (aka ZOMBIE VS. NINJA)
NINJA TERMINATOR
ZODIAC AMERICA 2: EVIL
DESTROYER