Taiwan Black Movies at IFD & Filmark ( Part 26): Ninja Operation Knight & Warrior Unpublished!

My many trips to Hong Kong during the late 90's and the first years of the new century allowed me to collect enough information about IFD & Filmark movies and the people who worked on them. Of course, the spanish video releases were also a very valuable help on this task for unveiling the true story behind these productions. But at one point I found myself in a dead-end situation. If I wanted to continue researching about Lai & Tang productions I needed the help of several people that in some ways were related not to IFD or Filmark but to Hong Kong in general and Hong Kong cinema in particular. And here is where people like Teddy Wong, editor of HKMDB, enters. 

Teddy knows very well my interest on those movies bought by IFD & Filmark and I think he enjoys my uncontrolled reactions of happiness & anxiety when a movie has eventually been discovered or "unmasked". I know the work of this humble blog is just a hobby but offering some information that has never been published is something else...it is like a small discovery of something that was practically impossible few years ago. And that's the feelings I enjoy most!. So, after many years of being looking for the taiwanese movie used on IFD Ninja Operation: Knight & Warrior, at last, we can say the "Quest" has been accomplished. Ninja Operation: Knight &Warrior has been unveiled!!!!!

 

 The story of how Ninja Operation: Knight & Warrior was done was explained quite well by Godfrey Ho himself on an interview my friends from Nanarland.com did to him. Please click HERE to see the full interview. But we didn't know what movie was behind it. Ninja Operation: Knight and Warrior was done using a taiwanese film titled A GIRL ROGUE. 

 A Girl Rogue was directed in 1984 by Chiu Chan Kwok who has on his credits some important & popular films like Gun n´ Rose directed by Clarence Ford with Andy Lau, Alan Tang & Simon Yam as main stars along others like Leon Lai or Loretta Lee. We also owed Mr Chiu funny movies such as Lucky Seven or several movies of the Kung Fu Kids franchise. But as always, IFD also bought another movie from Mr Chiu that were released under new titles with Ninja fotage. So, checking Chiu Chan Kwok profile on HKMDB we can see he was also the director of the taiwanese movies used on Ninja Showdown. 

As always on these kind of posts, what we need now is finding a copy of A Girl Rogue to check & enjoy it on its original form. Thanks again to the hard and priceless effords of Teddy Wong and special mention here to Michael Kistner who has been the one who made this entry possible. Michael is also an editor of HKMDB and shares with me a passion for finding the movies used by IFD and Filmark.

Thunder of Gigantic Serpent & Ninja Force of Assassins OST

Music scores were also an important fact that made IFD & Filmark movies interesting. Filmark movies used to credit Tom Lee as music composer / supervisor. Well, if you are familiar with Hong Kong life, you may know Tom Lee is chain of shops that sells all kind of music instruments.  You can check their website here.

In the other hand a guy named Stephen Tsang was the music supervisor at IFD. Opposite to Filmark musicians, Stephan Tsang was a real guy who has been working as music composer in many movies from the 70's to present time, some of his credits including him as sound editor in Jackie Chan's Twin Dragons. It has taken me long time to guess that Stephen Tsang was the IFD name for Chang Gong-Wa (aka Tsang Kong Wah).

 Any way, Listening the different scores used on the ninja movies produced by IFD, it seems  Mr Tsang was very  interested on New Age & electronic music.

But what it makes him very interesting for me is he chose a score titled Isadora from a Spanish group named Azul y Negro ( Blue and Black) for the title credits of Thunder of the Gigantic Serpent.

Even more interesting is the fact the same score was used on Filmark Ninja Force of Assassins opening credits. So the question is Was "Tom Lee" another name for Mr Stephen Tsang? Surely it was...but he is the only one who can confirm it. Meanwhile we only can enjoy this delicious theme in those movies

Or enjoy the original video from the spanish composers.

I am glad to know that Spanish musicians were on the mind of the makers of these two insane but greatly funny movies.

Taiwanese Black Movies at IFD & Filmark ( Part 25): Majestic Thunderbolt

First of all, I would like to wish you all a Happy New Year and I would also would like to let you know that this site is not dead. I know I don't update it so regularly as before but every new information, news, questions and answers, posters, pics, users contributions etc about IFD & Filmark are being published in Facebook, so if you want to join it, just click here, be welcomed & feel at home.

 

I want to start 2014, uncovering, unmasking and confirming once for all all the wrong information about the movie used by IFD for Majestic Thunderbolt and of course, offering the true information about the movie used by IFD for this Thunderbolt movie. Not so many months ago, someone in the FB group claimed several times that Majestic Thunderbolt was done using as main body a taiwanese movie titled Red Rattlesnake. He based his opinion on the HKMD profile of this film.

At last!...after several years searching it...we found the treasure!

As soon as he conteacted me by PM, I explained him my doubts because the information displayed wasn't enough to confirm it. Even if many of the actors were the same in both movies, it wasn't enough evidence because at certain time many actors work together in several movies at once. I think there is no need to explain how prolific HK film industry was 25 years ago.

IFD erased this scene from the final edit of Majestic Thunderbolt!

Also there aren't many avaliable picture of Red Rattlesnake around so I didn't want to give a definitive answer about this matter in order to not spread more  false & wrong information. But as always, when a dilemma needs a right solution, I told to Teddy Wong from HKMDB it would be nice to solve this mistery in the same way we solved the one related to Scorpion Thunderbolt.

This Thai Poster of Red RattleSnake gives some hints to unmask the film.

 It is very curious that IFD have tons of movies on its catalog but the audience of these movies mainly prefer these two movies among all the remaining ones. I am still very surprised about it & I don't really understand it becuase we can find many crazier & funnier movies on IFD shelves. Anyway, 2 days ago, I got a messagge from Teddy Wong and he finally can confirm, with no mistakes that Majestic Thunderbolt was done using Red Rattlesnake as main source.

I can't risk myself telling by this picture, this is the movie used on IFD's Majestic Thunderbolt

 

The evidence of this matter can be found on the new pictures you can see here as well as displayed on Red Rattlesnake profile on HKMDB. Now, as it always happens on these cases, we only need to find a copy of it...and of course, the search is already on.

The pic of the cruxified bloke and the pic below are the proof I needed to find to be 100% sure this was the movie we were looking for!

HAPPY NEW YEAR 2014 and keep in touch!