1980s Foreign Horror Part Twenty-Eight

DEADLINE

(1980)
Dir - Mario Azzopardi
Overall: MEH

Released anywhere between 1979 and 1984, (accounts vary), Deadline, (Anatomy of a Horror), is the sophomore effort from veteran Canadian-based writer/director Mario Azzopardi.  The meta premise has some legs to it, concerning a horror author who longs to be taken seriously and to create the ultimate work in terror, meanwhile his books are a hit and the movies that are based off of his books are a hit, yet he still pushes himself to elevate the ridiculed genre that he works in.  Inter-cutting with scenes from his movies and him writing those scenes, the cinematic vignettes are odd and unrelated, (a guy getting brutally mutilated by factory equipment, a blood-gushing shower, a woman having a horrific birth, a Nazi new wave punk band performing a lousy song, etc.), but the problem is a simple one; our protagonist is a raging douchebag.  He is yells at, hits, psychologically abuses, and neglects his kids, he yells at, hits, psychologically abuses, and neglects his wife, he is pretentious, he flies off at the handle when anyone criticizes him or gets annoyed by his efforts, and he garnishes zero sympathy for anyone in the audience.  Most of the people that he is surrounded by are equally unlikable, (a raving wife with a substance abuse problem, an unfeeling producer, a prima donna actor who hates her lines or lack of them, an assortment of cackling coked-out ladies that he brings home from a bar), but even when tragedy inevitable strikes and madness intensifies in the third act, it remains a tiring watch.

 

LUCKER THE NECROPHAGUS

(1986)

Dir - Johan Vandewoestijne

Overall: WOOF

The debut from Belgium filmmaker Johan Vandewoestijne, (who would not get behind the lens again until several decades after this), Lucker the Necrophagus, (Lucker), this was a lone slasher movie from the country, in such an era with far too many of them elsewhere.  It is also a nasty and primitive one at that, with Vandewoestijne throwing necrophilia into the mix and handling most levels of production in the true DIY spirit of independent exploitation movies that were made to shock and appall first and foremost.  Logic is immediately thrown out of the window as Nick Van Suyt's largely mute, captured title character wakes up with zero difficulty after getting drugged to a level that should have put him in a coma for a year, just so we can get to the reckless murdering and eventual corpse fucking.  The lack of story may appease trash fans who just want to laugh at the sick stuff, but the film is detrimentally padded and wretchedly paced since it is not merely one nasty kill/rape scene after the other.  Thankfully, a director's cut exists which trims down the moments of Suyt walking around endlessly to a more agreeable sixty-eight minutes, but its combination of sluggishness and depravity is only for the most patient of gore hounds.  It may suffice for everyone else to just acknowledge its existence and go watch Nekromantik or Angst instead.

ON THE SILVER GLOBE

(1988)

Dir - Andrzej Żuławski

Overall: MEH

Left abandoned for nearly ten years after the Polish government shut down production, Andrzej Żuławski's sprawling science fiction opus On the Silver Globe, (Na srebrnym globie), was eventually completed with narration over contemporary montage sequences to explain what was never shot, yet the word "explain" can only be used loosely at best.  This was a passion project for the famed filmmaker as it adapts his grand-uncle Jerzy Żuławski The Lunar Trilogy of novels, and it is a case of what could have been, since Żuławski was forced to make do with what he had.  Thankfully, most of the footage was in the can and it is unlikely that the results would have been any more conventionally decipherable had it been completed in the late 1970s, as intended.  From a sensory overload perspective, this is an impressive achievement, with striking costume design, mountain, beach, crumbling city, and salt mine location shooting, mobile wide-angle cinematography, and a score that touches upon classical, rock and ambient music.  Most of its intimidating, one-hundred and sixty-five minute running time is made up of aggressive rambling and incoherent dialog delivered by actors that seem to have only one setting which is raving insanity.  It is difficult to find any kind of footing either emotionally or intellectually here within a story that seems to be breaking down religion, society, and the ego of man, but it sure looks and sounds amazing.

1980s Foreign Horror Part Twenty-Seven

PHOBIA

(1980)

Dir - John Huston

Overall: MEH

Falling under the category of "Wait, HE directed this?" is the dumb Canadian thriller Phobia, which has none other than John Huston behind the lens.  Largely regarded as a crud rock in the famed filmmaker's cannon and rightfully so, it suffers right out of the gate with a goofy premise that is impossible to take seriously.  Paul Michael Glaser's hopelessly Boston-accented psychiatrist is allowed to conduct inhumane experiments on criminals with severe phobias; criminals who start dying in rapid succession of each other with only one obvious suspect at the center of things the whole time.  A mystery that forgets the importance of convincing red herrings, it is staggering that so many screenwriters were credited with the project, yet somehow any winning details were omitted upon re-writes.  More surprising is the otherwise reliable chops of those screenwriters.  The team of Ronald Shusett and Gary Sherman had and would continue to have some landmark works on their resumes, and even Hammer's mainstay Jimmy Sangster was brought on board in some capacity.  Huston must have just needed the money since it is hard to believe that he saw any promise in such a hare-brained project, and he takes an indifferent approach to the material by letting the pacing inevitably drag with no visual flourishes anywhere.  The cast lacks familiar faces and the several woman that seem smitten with Glaser's character all have the same hair color and close to the same haircut, just adding one more forgettable ingredient to a forgettable movie.

CASSANDRA

(1987)

Dir - Colin Eggleston

Overall: MEH

 

A premonition slasher movie of sorts, Cassandra was the penultimate work from Australian filmmaker Colin Eggleston.  Well shot by cinematographer Garry Wapshott and boasting a consistent atmosphere of dread, it has Tessa Humphries' title character being plagued by nightmares and visions of both her past and current murders taking place that she witnesses through the killer's eyes.  It all ends up being linked to a convoluted family secret including a mentally unstable brother and a set of parents who are not exactly who they say they are.  The melodramatic details would seem silly under a different presentation, but Eggleston plays things dour and straight, plus the mood is enhanced by sincere performances and an unsettling score by Trevor Lucas and Ian Mason.  A couple of jump scares, stalking killer sequences, and jarring gore helps to appease genre fans, but the movie unfortunately becomes weighted down by a lethargic pace.  Also, we get to the bottom of the mystery about twenty minutes before it finally wraps itself up, making the closing moments feel their length as we correctly assume that it is now only a matter of time before the murderer is offed by the final girl.

 

RABID GRANNIES

(1988)

Dir - Emmanuel Kervyn

Overall: MEH

The only film from writer/director Emmanuel Kervyn, Rabid Grannies, (Les mémés cannibales), fails to deliver on its title in the literal sense since it does not have plural grandmas running around after being bitten by dogs, but it does have two elderly aunties running around after being cursed by a Satanic box.  Essentially a Belgium old dark house Evil Dead, it recalls a number of familiar tropes and plot points, yet it seems to be enjoying itself in the process.  Every character is unlikable which would usually be an insufferable detriment, yet Kervyn sticks to such a goofy and nasty tone that it is impossible to take anyone's rotten attitude, selfishness, or cowardliness seriously.  This makes for a more amusing picking-everyone-off scenario than usual since everyone's grisly deaths comes as a relief.  Also, the two old ladies who are running around like cackling, mutated monster demons, (that look like a cross between overgrown babies, zombies, and the crones in Nicholas Roeg's The Witches), are hilariously unpleasant.  Unfortunately, the good stuff takes over thirty minutes to happen, plus it spins its wheels after awhile, coming off as a missed opportunity to do more with its ridiculous premise than it allows itself to.  Still, it is a wild, mean-spirited, and laugh-out-loud hoot when it gets things right.

1980s Foreign Horror Part Twenty-Six

HARLEQUIN

(1980)
Dir - Simon Wincer
Overall: MEH

An Australian production that is made to look like an American one, Harlequin, (Dark Forces), doubles as a modern day reworking of the Rasputin legend from director Simon Wincer.  It gets too convoluted and muddled in its presentation to work, but its solid premise is upheld by a great performance from Robert Powell.  As the Rasputin stand-in, Powell is wide-eyed, loudly dressed, and persistently charismatic, which makes his infiltration into a Senator's household more believable than it should be.  This is in part due to the character's bonding with the family's leukemia ridden son, (whom he presumably cures), and the horned-up trophy wife that he begins a fling with, all of which is tolerated by David Hemmings' also adulterous politician.  Some questions are raised as to the supernatural legitimacy of Powell's powers, but by that time, the story collapses with shady manipulation on the part of higher-ups who want the mad magician out of the picture as soon as possible.  This reveal is less interesting than the set pieces involving Powell strutting his otherworldly abilities, and though his protagonist is ultimately underwritten, his presence still hints at a better movie hiding somewhere in here.

 

HEAVY METAL

(1981)

Dir - Gerald Potterton/Jimmy T. Murakami/John Bruno/Harold Whitaker/Pino van Lamsweerde/Jack Stokes/Julian Harris/Paul Sebella/Barrie Nelson/John Halas

Overall: MEH

Rockin' tits, a rockin' soundtrack, and...only kind of rockin' animation join forces in producer Ivan Reitman's big screen adaptation of the sci-fi fantasy comic Heavy Metal.  Co-produced by the magazine's publisher Leonard Mogel, this Canadian production brings together a slew of animators and directors, as well as some recognizable voice talent, with the likes of SCTV's John Candy, Eugene Levy, and Joe Flaherty, plus Harold Ramis and John Vernon to name but a few.  The source material for each individual segment comes from an array of sources, with screenwriters Daniel Goldberg and Len Blum pulling from stories and characters that were created by Richard Corben, Angus McKie, Dan O'Bannon, Thomas Warkentin, and Bernie Wrightson.  The results of such a motley crew of talent is unfortunately a mixed bag, not just in the inevitable and uneven pairing of each entry but also in the overall presentation.  The animation bounces between acceptable and embarrassing, the pacing is not up to par even though each section seems rushed, and the permeating, juvenile sexism is more ridiculous than intriguing.  Still, it proves inventive at irregular intervals and any movie that throws Dio-era Black Sabbath, Stevie Nicks, Sammy Hagar, and Devo into its mix is doing at least something right.

MORNING PATROL

(1987)

Dir - Nikos Nikolaidis

Overall: MEH

Greek filmmaker Nikos Nikolaidis' Morning Patrol, (Proini Peripolos), is a foggy post apocalyptic work that serves as an atmospheric answer to Andrei Tarkovsky's Stalker, except more meandering than majestic.  Broken up into two halves that never vary in mood, the first forty-five minutes consist of Michele Valley's nameless protagonist simply wandering through a dilapidated cityscape, sneaking past or murdering people who would do her harm, only to briefly catch some shuteye while watching old black and white film noir movies that seem to be playing on every TV set that she finds.  Eventually, she meets up with another nameless character who under unwilling circumstances, proceeds to escort her out of their current no man's land.  Mysteriously, neither of them seem to be able to regain any substantial memories of what happened before society collapsed.  Through equally sparse dialog and internal monologuing, we only learn that it all may have something to do with a virus and/or humanity's inevitable self-destruction, but such ambiguity serves its purpose to emphasis a melancholic tone.  Unfortunately though, the characters are kept just as vague, plus the movie feels its length under such a murky presentation where there is too little to invest in; only an ugly and miserable world to pointlessly explore.

1980s Foreign Horror Part Twenty-Five (William Fruet Edition)

FUNERAL HOME

(1980)

Overall: WOOF

 

A psycho-biddy slasher snore-fest from Canadian filmmaker William Fruet, Funeral Home, (Cries in the Night), arrived with a whimper during the sub-genre's heyday.  A talky affair with boring and underwritten characters as well as equally boring set pieces that are too few and far between, the small scale budget is detrimentally noticeable at every turn.  Kay Hawtrey turns in an appropriately crotchety performance as a bitter and self-righteous lady who has fallen on financial hardships, therefor turning her spacious house/former funeral home into a bed and breakfast.  While it is refreshing that Hawtrey's character is not exclusively bitchy and exhibits moments of tenderness towards her newly-arrived granddaughter, (played by minor Canadian scream queen Lesleh Donaldson), her suspicious behavior wields predictable results.  As we all know, any time that someone vehemently forbids anyone from venturing into a locked room, (in this case, the basement), clearly that is where all of the malevolent secrets lie.  Such pieces are in place here to deliver something that is merely mildly acceptable, meaning that it lacks the necessary exploitative pizazz to differentiate it from both worse and more ridiculous slasher crap.

 

TRAPPED

(1982)

Overall: MEH

 

Low-budget director William Fruet and slasher screenwriter John Beaird team up for the ugly hicksploitation romp Trapped, (Baker County, U.S.A., The Killer Instinct), which hinges its suspense on both the odious and moronic decisions that every character in it continually makes.  Set in a mountain village that runs its own form of redneck justice that cherry picks the Biblical vengeance verses while ignoring all of the "love they neighbor" ones, we know from the get-go that a small crop of happy-go-lucky yet ignorant college kids are going to have a run in with Henry Silva's inbreed flock of violent bumpkins.  This makes the general structure inherently nail-biting, but it also means that we have to endure people poking the tiger and testing fate with their idiotic actions; actions that only make things worse for themselves.  This includes the bad guys and the hapless victims alike, crossing the whole thing into torture porn at times that does not make for an easy watch.  On the plus side though, Silva, (as he is wont to do), is ideally cast as the diabolical ringleader who oozes the type of "do not fuck with this psycho" intimidation with a professional level of scenery-chewing confidence.  His villain gets a fitting and nasty comeuppance too, which should relieve everyone watching.  Now if only the trek to get there was peppered with some more humor or not-stupid behavior from everyone on screen.

 

SPASMS

(1983)

Overall: MEH

 

Despite the presence of noted thespians Peter Fonda and Oliver Reed, Spasms ends up being a poorly-executed killer snake movie.  Adapted from the novel Death Bite by Michael Maryk and Brent Monahan, the production was wrought with issues.  The original company behind it went bankrupt, various directors were allegedly attached, numerous rewrites ultimately threw in supernatural elements not found in the book, and the idea to utilize live stakes was abandoned for awful puppet ones that looked so poor on camera that director William Fruet chose to eliminate their screen time almost entirely.  This makes the final showdown between Reed and a taipan serpent more laughable than intense, not just because of the goofy creature design, but because flashback footage is spliced in to cover up said goofy creature design.  Uninteresting and loaded with distracting and obvious ADRed dialog, at least noted special effects makeup men Dick Smith and Stephan Dupuis were able to pull off some always-appreciated icky bladder effects.  Say what you want about this period in Reed's career where he was almost certainly pickled in alcohol, but his sweaty intensity is ideally-suited for a character whose psychic link to reptiles results in the overpowering spasms that the title alludes to.

 

KILLER PARTY

(1986)

Overall: WOOF

Ill-conceived and tonally imbalanced, William Fruet's Killer Party dumps a handful of cliches into a confused mess of a final product.  Opening with a double "movie-within-a-movie" psyche-out, such a gimmick lends itself logically enough to a series of pranks that are pulled both on the audience and the people on screen.  A sorority hazing backdrop means that we have a crop of characters who are either assholes or nerds, and though the three leads are more likeable than usual as far as 80s slasher garbage is concerned, good luck telling them apart aside from their hair color or the fact that one of them wears glasses and seems to be handy with a guillotine.  While everyone's forgettable banter with each other is lousy enough, the biggest blunder is the malevolent possession angle that is awkwardly thrown in, largely because this does not even become readily apparent until the last ten minutes.  Until then, everyone's goofy mannerisms continually undercut some snore-inducing murders that no one seems to either be aware of or take that seriously.  By trying to play in the horror comedy pool without committing enough to either genre, it just comes off as a boring hodgepodge that has many of the usual ingredients for such films while simultaneously having no idea what to do with any of them.

 

BLUE MONKEY

(1987)

Overall: MEH

A bog-standard mutant larva bug virus alien thing B-movie, Blue Monkey, (Insect), was the last full-length project from Canadian director William Fruet for some time, at least for the next twenty years of his career which was spent exclusively in television.  All of the hallmarks of straight-to-video productions are there; mostly no-name actors, mediocre-at-best special effects, an incessant and cheap keyboard score, and it being predominantly shot at a single location, likely without any sets.  Though he rarely if ever worked with interesting material, (which includes the uninspired script here by George Goldsmith and Chris Kosulek), Fruet had enough experience and chops from behind the lens to make the proceedings at least visually acceptable.  The giant ant creature does look inescapably ridiculous, but he keeps it off screen until the third act when it is fully matured, shooting it with minimal dark blue lighting and bathing the scenery with shadows.  Some nifty POV camerawork and squishy cocoon close-ups also make up for the still noticeable lack of a budget, but the film's biggest issue is in its sluggish first half and the overall pedestrian nature.  Cameos by SCTV's Robin Duke and Joe Flaherty, plus a supporting part for John Vernon are appreciated, but this is otherwise forgettable, mid-level monster tripe.

1980s Asian Horror Part Seventeen

PULGASARI
(1985)
Dir - Shin Sang-ok
Overall: MEH

 

Remaking a lost film is a commendable act and in this respect, director Shin Sang-ok's Pulgasari, (Bulgasari), does kaiju fans a solid since the 1962 version and alleged first South Korean giant monster movie is no more.  More interestingly though is that this was the last film made by Shin during he and his actor wife Choi Eun-hee's six year abduction by Kim Jong II, the couple managing to escape before its release was cancelled by the dictator.  Remaining unseen in its entirety for another thirteen years, it was eventually released in Japan, with Toho's special effects team working on it, (also under a form of kidnapping by Kim), as well as stuntman Kenpachiro Satsuma who suited-up as Godzilla during the studio's Heisei era and portrays the title monster here.  For a movie that was produced by Kim himself, it is baffling that the villainous overlords of the story's village are comically brutish; torturing, starving, and depriving men, women, and children peasants until little baby Pulgasari rises up as their avenger after being made from a dying blacksmith's rice, a little bit of blood, and getting his first taste of metal by biting a bad guy's sword like a candy bar.  Propaganda elements that can be read in the opposite manner than they were intended aside, it is a melodramatic, goofy, reckless, bombastic, and of course eyebrow-raising entry into the genre, but it is also a singular one at that.

THE GHOST SNATCHERS

(1986)

Dir - Lam Ngai Kai

Overall: MEH

 

The first crack at horror from cinematographer-turned-director Lam Ngai Kai, The Ghost Snatchers, (Bi gui zhuo), is a goofy affair that takes its cue from the blockbuster Ghostbusters, be it of the more violent and horned-up variety that was in keeping with Hong Kong exploitation movies.  Here, Wong Jin's unfunny shlub that everyone calls "Fatty" (because the 1980s), and his uncle Stanley Fung play falling down security guards in a newly-built luxury skyscraper that just so happens to have been constructed on top of dead Japanese World War II soldiers.  Arbitrary supernatural high jinks abound as the two team up with Jin's out-of-his-league girlfriend Joey Land and a savvy and professional exorcist lady Joyce Godenzi, who Fung has the relentless hots for.  The humor is lame-brained at best, but innocently juvenile, gross-out, and sexist for its era as the tone is too lighthearted to take seriously.  Thankfully, the production design makes fun use out of some practical and imaginative set pieces involving television sets that spout arms and legs and bounce around, colorful otherworldly dimensions, a giant hand that snags people, a stupid furry gremlin puppet that makes our hapless heroes suck at playing tien gow, and some willy-nilly folklore sprinkled about.

THE DRIFTING CLASSROOM
(1987)
Dir - Nobuhiko Ôbayashi
Overall: MEH

A whimsical fairy tale with dark implications and a head-scratching tone, The Drifting Classroom, (Hyôryu kyôshitsu), is Nobuhiko Ôbayashi's typically stylized adaptation of Kazuo Umezu's manga of the same name.  A tonal mish-mash by design, it bounces between lighthearted kids adventure to surreal nightmare, all with clashing production values and quirky details that are as hilarious as they are confounding.  The first minute of the movie finds Yasufumi Hayashi playing who is supposed to be a spoiled and rebellious teenager, yet his form of rambunctious behavior involves fondling and flirting with his mother while being naked right out of the shower.  He also pours sand over himself while talking to a girl and sings "Camptown Races" because drugs apparently.  We then have some spontaneous musical numbers, wretched ADRed English dialog, (over non-actors who were allegedly just normal local kids), a nude teenager showering with sand, giant worm roaches that run away when you play a piano, everyone nonchalantly excepting that an entire school disappearing into a hole in the ground is a normal time slip occurrence that happens all the time, an adorable sand critter that pees on people to a jolly musical accompaniment, Lord of the Flies-esque power dynamics, Troy Donahue monologuing nonsense with a desert matte painting behind him, and some other stuff.  It is definitely a mess, but it is also bizarre enough to maintain one's interest.

1980s Asian Horror Part Sixteen

THE GATE OF HELL

(1981)
Dir - Pao Lun-Lu
Overall: MEH

Beginning as Hong Kong's answer to the early 80s slasher boom with a bunch of college students camping in the woods, (and running into a local yokel spouting ominous warnings, this one played by the country's perpetually never funny and cross-eyed character actor Tan Wan Yue), The Gate of Hell, (Gui Ho, The Gates of the Hell), ultimately ends up being a Gothic vampire film, albeit one with a contemporary setting.  The first of only two movies from director Pao Lun-Lu that was made for the short-lived Yee Lung Film Company, it was allegedly shot in 1977 and features both local and Caucasian actors, which furthers its trajectory as an Easter and Western hybrid of genre styles.  Despite some colorful lighting, gloomy set design, and spooky music, the film is unintentionally moronic and wretchedly paced.  Warwick Evan's undead baddie occasionally speaks in a hilarious accent, but he usually just groans really loud at people, plus the dubbed dialog for all involved is particularly lousy.  Pao Lun's screenplay is too bare bones for its own good and his amatuerish chops from behind the lens simply cannot sustain people slowly walking around and sporadically getting also slowly attacked by blood-suckers.

 

REIBYO DENSETSU

(1983)

Dir - Nobuhiko Ôbayashi

Overall: MEH

 

The 100th episode of the Tuesday Night Suspense Theatre television series, Reibyo densetsu, (Legend of the Cat Monster), is an incomprehensible melodrama instead of a conventional kaidan ghost story as the title would suggest.  Not that director Nobuhiko Ôbayashi would ever make something that could be described as "conventional" and even for a TV movie, he interjects his usual brand of head-scratching narrative choices, except strips them of their otherworldly wackiness.  What is left is meandering nostalgia and incoherence, sort of like an arthouse version of Billy Wilder's seminal Sunset Boulevard with only some mild supernatural feline mischief occurring in the last fifteen minutes.  While there are interesting ideas here hovering on the surface, (such as people being haunted by their happier days and those who are infatuated by their perceived admiration for a bygone era that they were never a part of), the presentation is frustrating and inadvertently boring.  As is always the case, Ôbayashi allows for whimsical romantic music to play uninterrupted throughout the entire thing, even when he punctuates it with startling piano screeches and introduces more surreal elements.  This makes such scenes go by unnoticed as it all feels stuck in a flowery haze, with characters endlessly repeating themselves and bringing us no further to unlocking whatever is going on here.

ABRACADABRA

(1986)

Dir - Tai-Kit Mak

Overall: MEH

 

Hong Kong loved their horror comedies and Abracadabra, (Tian ling ling, di ling ling), from director Tai-Kit Mak and producer Raymond Wong fits in line with dopey/never-funny humor and ridiculous supernatural set pieces.  It opens strong with a crack team of ninjas who arrive at a construction site to trap a bunch of pesky jumping ghosts in a mirror.  They do this with flips, rope nets, and by sticking swastikas to the spectre's faces because sure why not?  Sadly though, the proceeding movie is not kung-fu mercenaries vs the undead as they are never seen again.  Instead, this settles into a bunch of annoying scaredy-cat young adults who work at a mall and find said possessed mirror.  Besides barely being worth paying attention to, the story is monotonous and lacking in imagination.  A ghost lady called Pinkish Red just invisibly toys with our protagonists for no other reason than to have something "funny" happen, and this goes on for at least a hour until we venture into a colorful and macabre underworld where now the good guys have found a way to be invisible and tip-toe around while making dumb faces.  The budget is thankfully sufficient enough to afford some solid set design, as well as one quick moment where a ghost's face is melted off with a blow-dryer because electricity is deadly to the dead in this universe, but this is otherwise cutesy, juvenile, and forgettable stuff.

1980s Asian Horror Part Fifteen - (Godfrey Ho Edition)

DEVIL'S DYNAMITE

(1987)

Overall: WOOF

 

A "sure whatever" sequel to Robo Vampire that was released a year before it, (figure that one out), Devil's Dynamite, (Devil Dynamite, Robo Vampire 2: Devil's Dynamite, Robo Ninja VS Vampires), features Chinese jumping undead, gangsters, ninjas, and a superhero dressed as the Prince of Space, and all of this is introduced in the first ten minutes.  Being dropped in the deep end without a flotation device, no viewer will have a prayer of trying to follow what is at least two different movies happening simultaneously, if not two dozen.  As is usually the case with Godfrey Ho joints, it is anyone's guess as to how much footage is swiped and then violently mixed together from other movies here, but the results somehow manage to be equal parts head-scratching, kinetic, sluggish, moronic, and hilarious.  Yet, such silliness is exactly where the charm lies.  Incompetently edited, scored, shot, and dubbed, Ho can be both applauded and condemned for haphazardly throwing a barrage of nonsense into a blender and seeing what came out.  The "good" part is that he made only about nine-hundred of these movies a year throughout certain parts of his career, so if his singular brand of WTF-ness suits you, there is oodles more to partake of from here.

 

ROBO VAMPIRE

(1988)

Overall: WOOF

 

Another cobbled together trainwreck by writer/director/shameless hack Godfrey Ho, Robo Vampire, (RoboVamp), swipes footage from the 1984 Thai action film Against the World, but knowing how thrifty Ho operates, there are likely various other recycled bits edited together as well, least of all the previous year's Devil's Dynamite which was also a "sequel" to this movie, but whatever.  The entire concept of cobbling together footage from various Asian genre films that were already D-grade at best, adding a couple of Caucasian actors for more domestic appeal, and then re-dubbing the entire thing in a laughable attempt to give it a narrative through-line is a tactic that Ho became infamous for, and it is one that is in full-swing here.   We have jumping cannibal kung-fu gorilla ghost vampires that shoot fireworks out of their sleeves, a witch/sorceress/something lady who is in love with one of said creatures and also knows kung-fu, a bunch of criminals who hide drugs in said creatures and also know kung fu, some other criminals who fight each other with kung-fu every couple of seconds, several "Wait, who the fuck are these people?" people, (presumably who also know kung-fu), and the titular robot that wears a silver foam Robocop Halloween costume, does not show up until over thirty minutes in, and shoots people instead of kung-fuing them to death.

 

THE VAMPIRE RAIDERS

(1988)

Dir - Godfrey Ho/Chow Chun-Gaii

Overall: WOOF

 

A typically nonsensical hack job from filmmaker/footage and soundtrack thief Godfrey Ho, The Vampire Raiders, (Vampire Raiders: Ninja Queen), re-edits Chow Chun-Gaii's obnoxious horror comedy Mixed Up into something stupid enough to be considered a war crime.  Absurd moments like a vampire-stuffed cow from absolutely nowhere falling on two people, a woman in a scantily-clad bikini posing for no one on a beach before hopping vampires emerge from the ground to engage in ninja battle with her, (one of whom is played by the relentlessly not-funny character actor Tau Wan Yue, lord help us), non-hopping vampire ghoul zombies drinking piss, plus dialog like "I'm not scared, one of my best friends is a ninja", "Cut it!  Piss on it!  Shit on it!", and "I'm full of bullshit, I've never touched a girl before", provide a handful of both intentional and unintentional laughs.  The fact that at least ninety percent of the movie is literally another movie and that only a couple of pointless action scenes are haphazardly tossed in there to "justify" this as its own product can all be seen as hilariously embarrassing.  It begs the question of how either Ho or certain production companies were able to routinely get away with such nonsense, but for anyone who is looking to make their IQ drop several points in a matter of ninety-minutes, this has you covered.

THE VAMPIRE IS STILL ALIVE

(1989)

Overall: WOOF

There is laughably unconvincing English dubbing and then there is Godfrey Ho's laughably unconvincing English dubbing.  With a crop of characters who all sound like they are auditioning for a cartoon while intoxicated, (and one woman's voice that likely had several different actors providing dialog for, including at least one man), The Vampire Is Still Alive, (Robo Vampire 3: Counter Destroy, The Vampire Is Alive), is everything that anybody would both want and hate from a Ho production.  Another incomprehensible conglomerate of two or six or who knows how many movies sandwiched together with the awkward grace of a three year old having a temper tantrum, this one has the usual crop of jumping comic relief vampires and ninjas busting out spontaneous kung fu moves.  In addition, there is something about a Freddy Krueger monster terrorizing a couple of women who are staying at a house to write a movie about the last emperor of China and then Robo Space Ninja Man shows up within the last nine minutes, just to make this tie in to Ho's Devil's Dynamite and Robo Vampire "films" in the loosest manner possible.  As tortuously sluggish as can be expected, it still manages to provide some laugh-out-loud stupidity with its preposterous dialog and line-readings, plus a story line that even a boardroom full of top tear NASA scientists could never figure out.  Also, a woman gets possessed by the Krueger demon and then gives birth to an eight year old jumping vampire who pisses on two cross-eyed jumping vampires, plus oh yeah, Robo Vampire is his dad.