Diamond Ninja Force (1988) [copyright 1986]

... aka: Ghost Ninja(s)
... aka: Justice Ninjas
... aka: L'enfer des ninjas (Hell Ninjas)
... aka: Ninja Boxing Force
... aka: Ninja Kuvveti (Ninja Force)
... aka: Ninja Mission
... aka: Ninja Warriors

Directed by:
Godfrey Ho

Feng-Pan Yao (uncredited)

Another of Godfrey Ho's cut-and-paste jobs for Joseph Lai's IFD Films and Arts company, this takes a preexisting Taiwanese Poltergeist knock-off and adds a new ninja story line to that, creating a horribly-edited and dubbed clusterfuck of utter confusion, though this one is slightly more coherent than many other Ho movies I've seen. The newly-added footage centers around Gordon (Richard Harrison), an incognito ninja master vacationing in Hong Kong with his wife Lori (Harrison's real-life wife Maria Francesca). Gordon is part of an elite group of fighters called the Diamond Ninja Force and has inherited the powers of the "Golden Ninja Warrior" that a group of bad guys want and will kill to get. A ninja assassin shows up at Gordon's home, makes goldfish leap from the bowl and then steps on one of them (?!) and then chain whips and murders Lori. Gordon vows to avenge her death, while the group of bad guys - led by Kogan ("Donald Kong" / Tao Chiang) - are intent on reviving the "Black Ninja Clan;" who were all killed off by the good Diamond Ninjas a century earlier.

Meanwhile, this keeps cutting back to the crazy (and trashy) Taiwanese footage and they do their best to try to meld the two plots together. A construction crew unearth a bunch of human remains in an unmarked mass grave. Billionaire real estate tycoon Vernon Wong, owner of Wong Properties Limited, pays them off to shut up about it and keep building. He's later given a fatal heart attack after a ghostly encounter in his limo. Soon after, Vernon's daughter Fanny ("Yolanda Chang") arrives in town from America with her architect husband George ("Curtis Yao") and bratty young son Bobo (yes, Bobo... and he's hilariously dubbed by an adult female) to take up where her dad left off. They move into Vernon's seaside mansion and face a curse and several ghosts due to her father's unethical activities.

The new English dub and added footage makes the discovered remains those of the Black Ninjas and the bad guys intent on getting Fanny's land so they can revive the fallen warriors. To do so, Kogan pays a sorceress named Ghost Ninja three million dollars to unleash her "devil magic" and make the home haunted so they'll cave in and sell. Fanny keeps seeing a black cat and several female ghosts clad in white, finds a severed living head in a laundry basket and has visions of frogs, snakes and mice. Flowers wilt in a matter of seconds, the image of an old woman appears in a mirror, kitchen utensils start flying around and her bath is spoiled when a zombie hand clamps down on her shoulder. During one scene, Fanny and George have sex while a horny young female ghost watches, strips and caresses her breasts. The ghost girl later decides to step in and help out when the the semi-frigid wife refuses to put out for her hubby.

This Garfield phone featured in numerous Ho movies has a cult following all its own.

In between all that, Ninja Master Gordon slaps on a bright red ninja suit and heavy eyeliner and takes out each of Kogan's (mostly Caucasian) henchmen; killing them off in scenes utilizing a samurai sword, a kama, chains and throwing stars. Unfortunately, all of these scenes are over in a matter of seconds before they even threaten to become exciting and it's mostly just a bunch of guys posing with their various weapons. The only battle that's given much choreography is the climactic battle between Gordon and Kogan and even that isn't much.

I tried to uncover the identity of the original Taiwanese film but was unable to.* It may have either been unfinished or unreleased - either that or just released in Taiwan and nowhere else -  as there is no evidence of an existing film from the early 80s with a similar plot featuring the same actors. The two known cast members in the original film are Dan Yang, who plays a goofball named Firecracker who gets scared off by ghosts and maggots pouring out of a bathtub faucet, and Yee Yuen (billed as "Yick Yuen" and listed over on IMDb as "Yi Yuen") as an exorcist named Magic Chan. Seeing how it borrows the 'haunted house on a burial mound' idea from Poltergeist and the copyright for Diamond is 1986, the original film had to have been shot some time between 1982 and 1985. Oh, and did I mention this film was issued on home video under about a gazillion different titles, such as...

* I've since discovered the original Taiwanese film is Feng-Pan Yao's DEMON'S APARTMENT (1985; aka Ghost Rapist) and reviewed that here separately.

The American VHS release came courtesy of Trans World Entertainment, who released several other Ho films. Videoasia then released it on DVD (a shoddy VHS transfer as per their usual) under the title Ghost Ninja (well, actually it says Ghost Ninjas on the box) on their set "Tales of Voodoo: Volume 2." The Videoasia release also comes with the Indonesian film Primitives (1980); which rips off Italian jungle cannibal films.

★1/2

Scorpion Thunderbolt (1988)

... aka: Snake

Directed by:
Godfrey Ho
Cheng-Ying Lai (uncredited)

Godfrey Ho was the king of what many refer to as the 'cut-and-paste' technique of filmmaking. Meaning, he'd get his hands on someone else's movie, eliminate some of the footage, add a bit of his own and then re-edit and re-release it as a brand new feature (the much-hated Jerry Warren operated in about the same way in America). Knowing that many Asian films would never be released to Western audiences, Ho would have them English-dubbed (often completely changing the plots in the process), hire a few Caucasian actors to interject into the works (in scenes which usually had absolutely nothing to do with the original film) and then release the finished product to the unsuspecting public through Joseph Lai's company IFD Films and Arts Ltd. The vast majority of these were martial arts films, but Scorpion Thunderbolt was one of their few horror releases. Most of the footage is from Cheng-Ying Lai's Snake Woman, a Taiwanese production filmed back in 1983. From all indications, that film was barely released in Asia (I don't buy that is was never released like some claim because there's a poster), let alone anywhere else, which made it the perfect victim for Ho / Lai's predatory 'style.'

The bulk of Scorpion (also released under the generic but more fitting title of Snake) is the 'borrowed' film, which revolves around female reporter Helen Yu (Juliet Chan). Helen seems like a meek and sweet enough lady, but every once in awhile she transforms into a vicious snake monster and hits the streets looking for victims. Some blind man roaming the streets plays a song on a flute that makes her transform. A flashback reveals that Helen's mother was the daughter of a snake killer who fell in love with "The Prince of the Snakes;" a coupling that resulted in a baby who bites off mom's tit while nursing and caused her grandfather to throw a hatchet into his daughter's back! The city's miserly police commissioner is baffled as to what's going on, but assigns two of his best inspectors; Jackie Ko ("Bernard Tsui" / Shou-Ping Tsui) and his female partner Inspector Li ("Nancy Lim" / Nan-Shi Lin) to the case. Li has fallen in love with Jackie, so she doesn't quite like it when her partner finds himself falling for Helen. A love montage (frolicking on the beach! eating freshly caught fish right off the skewer at a lake!) later, Jackie is head-over-heels for the mysterious beauty, but will his love remain once Helen's beastly side is revealed?

The newly added footage features one-time peplum / western actor Richard Harrison. The middle-aged, washed-up Harrison was also the 'star' of many other productions for the same company. In fact, director Ho got maximum mileage from the actor and the scenes the company shot with him would later be recycled for many other IFD productions. Harrison's character, named Richard, is first seen cruising down the road. He picks up a female hitchhiker who flashes him and accompanies her back to a movie theater for a private screening of a porno she's starring in. After doing a strip tease set to Jean-Michel Jarre's 'Oxygene' (!!) she tries to stab Richard during sex, pukes up some orange stuff and dies. Other henchmen will show up to try to take Richard out and they're all being sent by a witch ("The Queen of the Scorpions") who plays around with frogs and eels, constantly beats on a drum, wears sharp silver blades on her fingers and seems to be controlling all of the action. She wants a ring that Richard owns that can be used to destroy her. These witch scenes don't appear to come from Mongnyeo han, but they also don't match up with the Harrison footage, so it's hard to tell just what they were taken from.

Ignoring Ho's newly added footage, the hack job editing and the abysmal dubbing, Snake Woman appears to have been a hokey monster movie, but sincere and somewhat charming all the same. There are definitely some fun scenes in here, including a hilarious attack on some teenage girls (one in the shower), some disco dancing and a finale featuring the snake woman leaping out of a building and flying around while a squad of police officers try to shoot her down. Some subplots don't seem to have much to do with anything. There's an escaped criminal who attempts to kill Jackie (and rape his partner) but then just disappears, a madman who kills a cat and throws its guts at a hospital staff (??) and another scene of a drunk tying his unfaithful, hairy-armpitted wife up spread eagle and shooting pool balls at her crotch! One of the better horror-oriented scenes finds Jackie and Helen trapped in a moving car being overtaken by snakes. The rubbery creature design (which is difficult to see until the end) is pretty ridiculous, but there's plenty of blood and gore in here, as well as a generous amount of nudity.

Not only utilizing footage from possibly two other films, this one also swipes snippets from Pino Donaggio's Carrie (1976) score to help fill out the soundtrack. The copyright date in the credits is 1985, but the film wasn't released until 1988. It has been issued on both VHS and DVD (on Videoasia's "Tales of Voodoo, Vol. 5").

SBIG