Official Exterminator: Kill for Love (1987)

... aka: Kill for Love
... aka: Ninja Brothers of Blood
... aka: Ninja Killer
... aka: Ninja Knight: Brothers of Blood
... aka: Ninja Knight 2: Blood Brothers

Directed by:
Richard Chen (uncredited)
"Raymond Woo" (possibly Godfrey Ho)

Here's another IFD Films & Arts Ltd. production following their usual pattern of taking an obscure Asian film, cutting it to ribbons, re-dubbing all the dialogue and then occasionally splicing in new scenes of whities and a few new action scenes and attempting to tie it all together. The victim of the pillaging this time out is a 1982 Taiwanese thriller called Chi qing qi nu zi, or Kill for Love, directed by Richard Chen. As was typically the case, that film was never released in its original form in English, so this is the best look many of us are ever going to get at it. This new IFD version became the first entry in a series of releases that also included Official Exterminator 2: Heaven's Hell, Official Exterminator 3: Joy for Living Dead, Official Exterminator 4: Goddess Mission and Official Exterminator 5: Enter the Victory. Most of these have "Official Exterminator" title screens and original posters bearing that name but were distributed under a host of other titles on home video. For instance, this first one was released on VHS as Kill for Love, Ninja Brothers of Blood, Ninja Killer, Ninja Knight - Brothers of Blood and possibly even more titles I'm unaware of.

I'd imagine this was a huge disappointment to basically anyone who saw it back in the day. I can see ninja-loving 80s kids eyeing the enticing video box above, slapping down a few dollars to rent it, excitedly rushing home, popping it in their VCR and then boring themselves silly slogging through a talky, poorly-dubbed, melodramatic love triangle patiently waiting for their beloved ninjas to finally make an appearance. The good news? A ninja does eventually show up. The bad news? There's only one, it doesn't appear until 70 minutes into this 85 minute movie and it's only featured in one scene that lasts about a minute total. Poor 80s kids.

Things begin with a hilariously awkward board meeting featuring amazingly stilted line-reading and deer-in-headlights "acting" from all involved. The members of an unnamed company are scrambling to stay afloat as they're being crushed by competitor The Pacific Corporation. In an effort to hobble the rival organization, one of the men suggests they have a lower-level employee get a job with Pacific Corp. plus get in the good graces of the president's daughter as a means to accomplish their task. They all decide on new guy Charlie Fong ("Sidney Chao" / Shu-Hoi Chiu) because he's good-looking, charming, intelligent and a hard worker. Company boss Blake (IFD regular Mike Abbott) nods, "If he can get into the family, I have it made!" It's just that easy, folks!

We're then introduced to a couple of small town girls; the meek and naive Fonda Chan ("Fonda Lynn" / Hsiao-Fen Lu) and her outgoing best friend Mary Wong (Viola Ku), who've been lured to the big city by an ad promising tour guide jobs. Instead, they've been tricked into working as strippers / prostitutes at a sleazy bar. While Mary complies for the easy money, Fonda fights off the guys with a broken bottle and then runs off and finds work in a factory. She then runs into poor college student Charlie, who rents her a spare bedroom in his tiny apartment. Fonda goes beyond the call of duty as a housemate; cleaning, doing his laundry and picking up the slack so Charlie has more time to concentrate on his studies and excel in school. The two soon get romantically involved and plan to marry as soon as he graduates. Things start looking even better for the couple when Charlie gets promoted to manager at work.

Little does Fonda realize, but the reason Charlie's climbing the corporate ladder so fast is because he's agreed to seduce artist Sophie Dao ("Lona Chang" / Fu-Mei Chang), daughter of the Pacific Corp. president, so he can get the goods on their company. But then Charlie finds himself falling in love with the sophisticated, educated, wealthy Sophie and wanting to pursue an actual relationship with her. Seeing how she's supported him all this time, even going so far as to have an abortion so it wouldn't ruin his reputation and thus threaten his job, Fonda's now (more than justifiably!) feeling the sting of being used and then discarded. When her desperate pleas fall on deaf ears ("You can tell me, even hit me, it's OK, just come back!") she ends up going the irate / unhinged stalker route. And yet this is somehow completely understandable considering what a self-serving asshole Charlie turns out to be. After all the crap he puts her through, you want nothing more than to see Fonda fuck his world up.

The original unaltered film is a companion piece to another film from the same year called Leng yan sha ji, or EXPOSED TO DANGER. It also features a love triangle plot with an obsessive, mentally-unstable woman and even stars the same two main actresses seen here, except they've swapped roles. Exposed was itself acquired, dubbed and distributed by IFD, though they didn't bother to add any new scenes or random ninjas to it. They also gave it the new title Breakout from Oppression, which caused a lot of confusion over the years as that title had already been used for an earlier martial arts film starring Gordon Liu. I also need to point out that Exposed is far more of a horror film than this one. Outside of three or four scenes (including the bloody, slow-motion wedding finale inspired by Ms. 45), Kill for Love is mostly a drama.

Cut between the main story line are IFD scenes featuring a cop named Greg (Mark Watson), who's investigating Blake's company. Greg barely manages to survive an assassination attempt by samurai swordsmen on bicycles (!) but his partner Tim (Pedro Ernyes) isn't so lucky. He then decides to quit the force and go rogue after discovering his superior has been paid off to close the investigation. Blake not only orders his men to try to kill Greg but he also sends them after Fonda so "that bitch gets taught a lesson" for causing Charlie problems. After his men fail, Blake then calls up Charlie and demands he murder her. And, surprise, surprise, Charlie actually goes through with it by taking her canoeing and attempting to drown her. Told you he was an asshole.

The one and only ninja scene here is when Blake sends his "best man" Dragon after Greg. Dragon is a ninja. We know this because he wears a headband that says "Ninja" on it lest we be confused. He and Greg get into a swordfight that lasts a whopping 30 seconds and ends with Dragon easily being defeated after getting knocked off a mound and crashing through some flimsy bamboo scaffolding.

By IFD standards, this is surprisingly coherent. The new scenes and the recycled footage never butt heads to the point where this stops making sense. That by itself is something of an accomplishment for them, I guess. As usual, Joseph Lai and his wife Betty Chan proudly claim producer credit, but the identity of director "Raymond Woo" is pretty much up for grabs. It's probably Godfrey Ho because he's credited here for the screenplay as "Benny Ho;" an acknowledged alias of his.

★1/2

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Just a heads up, horror f(r)iends. Been struggling to keep this place going due to some major medical issues we're currently dealing with. On the suggestion of a friend, I've decided to open up a Patreon account on the off chance that will help enable me to post here with more frequency. In case you're unfamiliar with Patreon, it's a content subscription service for artists that enables supporters to pledge monthly support or pledge per content created starting at 1 dollar a month. I've been running The Bloody Pit for a solid decade now (damn, time flies!) and would love more than anything to keep going at a steady pace. This is one conceivable way to accomplish that with the hurdles I'm currently facing. Whatever I can raise there will go toward helping to free up time so I can create new content. I've written a full explanation about what's been going on over on the Patreon page. I have also added a donation button through Paypal (right hand column) for anyone wanting to make a one-time donation or sporadic donations. And you can always click on an ad on two while you're here, which will throw a few pennies my way. I'll be leaving this pinned to the top for about a month to see what happens and go from there. Irregardless, I'll continue to post here whenever time allows. Thanks for hearing me out and thank you for your continued support.

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Demon House (2018)

Directed by:
Zak Bagans

Imagine you move into a new house and find yourself unnerved by strange noises, objects moving and numerous other unexplained events. Now imagine your children suddenly becoming possessed, turning vicious and violent, walking up walls backwards and speaking in deep, demonic voices. While making arrangements to move the hell out of there, what else might you be doing? Note that these supposed events aren't taking place in the 1970s but in 2012. You know, when everyone has a phone with a camera and hardly anyone can get through a single day without documenting their kids, pets, what they'd doing, where they're going and what they're having for dinner. Here we're basically asked to believe that the haunted woman in question, Latoya Ammons, and her family suffered through months of demonic activity, possession and supernatural terror and not once thought about picking up a camera to film any of it. Color me skeptical.

But what could possibly (no pun intended) possess people to just make up some story like this? Well, considering these filmmakers couldn't even get an on-camera interview with Ammons herself as she'd already sold her rights to her story to someone else, we already know the answer to that, just as we also know it's been proven countless times over that most people will exaggerate events once a camera is pointed at their face. Seeing how Ammons lives in an impoverished area of Gary, Indiana, this has the potential to become a gravy train for her and her family, just as similar stories have proven to be highly profitable for people like Ed and Lorraine Warren and the Lutz's of Amityville Horror fame.

Outside of hearsay and a few sketchy witnesses (one that Bagans himself admits on camera wouldn't talk until he paid him!), there's no concrete evidence nor anything substantive to back up Ammons. In lieu of that, our trusty filmmakers have decided to film reenactments of all of the events and add spooky sound effects and music. After endless interviews, our egomaniacal host and his crew then decide to investigate the home with their EMF meter and other gadgets and, again, provide no real proof of anything unless you count fuzzy "enhanced" EVPs and videos that mysteriously go out of focus when shadowy "black masses" appear. This is all tied together with Bagans' awful narration, which is horribly written and read in the flattest, most monotone manner imaginable.

After purchasing the supposed demon-infested home and filming enough material for this, "Demon House" was deemed "a portal to hell" and just "too evil" to remain standing and Bagans had it destroyed. Uh, so he destroyed a hotbed of demonic activity that would be invaluable for future theological and paranormal studies? And destroyed something that could conceivably prove something that 16 (!) seasons of Ghost Adventures never could: that supernatural forces and the afterlife do indeed exist? Sure, makes perfect sense. I first thought the home destruction was both a publicity stunt and a means to cover his own tracks to prevent further investigations into the home and Ammons' claims, and perhaps it partially is, but another motive is revealed in none-too-subtle fashion at the very end when Bagans announces that he's kept some haunted artifacts from demon house. And what a coinkydink, he's also recently opened his own "Haunted Museum" in Las Vegas where you get to pay 44 dollars to see them.

There are a number of anecdotes provided either by the supposedly afflicted or Bagans himself about visitors being affected by the home's demonic power. These include everything from having a bicycle accident to being diagnosed with cancer and prostate infections to getting evicted to quitting a job and moving to having to seek therapy to being compelled to tattoo 666 on their hand, start abusing eyeliner and taking a bunch of "Goth" photos of themselves. One crew member reports throwing up blood and bleeding from the ears, yet the film crew doesn't actually, ya know, film any of that. And then you have another woman who looks on the verge of laughing recounting a story about her daughter having the number 6 "engraved" on her back after having contact with the home. Naturally, she also forgot to take a picture of it just as anyone whose child miraculously woke up with a 6 carved on their back would just point, say "OMG!" and then go about their day without snapping a single photo. Seems legit.

Just when you think this can't sink any lower, Bagans also attempts to link the demons in this Indiana home to the murder/suicide of former GA contributors Mark and Debby Constantino. In 2015, Mark murdered Debby and a male friend of hers before committing suicide during a police stand-off. The couple had a long and well-documented history of domestic abuse, battery by strangulation, knife attacks, rape accusations and even kidnapping; much of which stretched further back than Ammons' fantastical stories. Now Bagans wants us to believe the Constantino murders were caused by demons; these demons? Honestly, does it really get any more pathetic than to degrade and demean victims of murder and domestic violence by scapegoating an abuser / murderer to help sell your stupid fucking pseudo-documentary?

I often wonder what the appeal of stuff like this is, but it's really not all that complicated. Some find is ridiculous and pitiful and unintentionally funny. Some approach this stuff apprehensively but with an open mind to evaluate the evidence presented. And there are people like me who get suckered in through our love of horror movies and love of movies involving ghosts, demons, etc. But there's also this other group who can't just rest easy in their own faith and are so desperate for proof of the afterlife they actually eat this embarrassing junk up simply because they want to believe it. Things like Ghost Adventures and this documentary provide them with the affirmation they desire.

Just as false prophet televangelists convince their flock that God speaks to them, comes to them in their dreams and wants them to hand over their money, Bagans has a similar scam going where ghosts contact him, he has visions of things like a "12 foot tall goat figure" (lol) in his dreams and then he makes a shit ton of money off of it. The real phenomenon here that requires further study isn't the supernatural, it's the people made of flesh-and-blood willing to buy what he's selling. Another study should be done as to why IMDb was flooded with 10 star reviews that were mysteriously sent in large numbers on the same exact days and with the same exact grammatical errors.

Speaking of IMDb, they've also removed their message boards to help minimize viewer dissent along with implementing an easy-to-abuse favorable / not favorable system to downgrade inconveniently negative reviews. But we're smarter than all that and not so easily fooled, right? And we also aren't fooled by genre sites like Dread Central praising this idiocy either, right? This is the same Dread Central that was actively promoting this swill for months prior to its release with a bunch of "exclusive" articles, a podcast interview, a Demon House "Artwork Premiere," an "Exclusive Q&A" with Bagans, various promotions of his Vegas "Haunted Museum" and more. In light of all that, their glowing review shouldn't come as much of a surprise, should it?  Actually, it's downright shameless, as is the fact the review is then allowed to factor into Rotten Tomatoes to boost its score. When reviews from supposed film experts and professional "critics" can be factored into a film's PR budget, that's just one more nail in the coffin as far as unbiased film criticism is concerned.

NO STARS!