Taiwan Black Movies at IFD & Filmark ( Part 26): Ninja Operation Knight & Warrior Unpublished!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

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!

Ninja Knight:Thunderfox (aka Ninja Empire) deleted shots

I like IFD movies, I love them and I have a special love for the ones starred by my good friend Mike Abbott. When I was a kid I just love ninja movies, then I learnt how to enjoy IFD & Filmark movies and eventually felt in love with them when I learnt how they were made & who made them possible. So, I am always looking for new details, information or whatever that can help me to fully enjoy these movies.

This movie was cut & retitled Ninja Empire in the US.

One of the problems we must face when we find an IFD ninja movie is the big ammount of different aka titles given to these movies around the world. For instance Filmark produced Ninja Phantom Hero Usa was re-edited & re-titled in the US as Ninja Empire after it was released under its original title but this new edition was shorter since the end battle was cut among other parts...but then we also find that IFD's Ninja Knight Thunderfox was also released in the US as Ninja Empire...

This movie was also cut & retitled Ninja Empire in the US

The US edition of Ninja Knight Thunderfox, retitled Ninja Empire was also a new re-edition of the original film and as it happened with Ninja Phanthom Hero Usa, some scenes were shortened or just cut...but what the US censors cut on Ninja Knight Thunderfox? Just the nudity scenes!!!...

In Germany, Ninja Knight Thunderfox was also cut but retitled as Bionic Ninja. There is another Filmark movie titled Bionic ninja.

Sometime ago, someone uploaded Ninja knight Thunderfox Us edition to Youtube claiming it was the full movie. At that time, I was trying to find out the original taiwanese movie used on it so I decided to watch it again and...imagine my face when I see this version has been cut for more than 10 minutes.

Ninja Empire?????Well, just a mutilated version of, Ninja Knight Thunderfox

What I don't understand is WHY the nude scenes were cut. The censorship label of this movie around the world shows it is a movie for adult audience, so cutting those scenes is ridiculous. The full movie is about a prostitution ring and how our heroes destroy it...so what's the use of cutting those erotic shots while all the beating to the women are fully uncut?????

Japanese released didn't want to show anthing "dangerous" to innocent audiences like us..

Anyway, if you have a copy of Ninja Thunderfox  it is cut, here I offer you the deleted scenes that were totally uncut in the spanish VHS tape.

ACT 1: Dance, Drugs and Hair

ACT 2: Be Water My Friend, and Hair too!

ACT 3: There Is No Place as Home, I Mean Bed!

Well, now, I am looking forward my copy of the original taiwanese cut of Fierce Lady, the movie used by Godfrey Ho to design his Ninja Knight Thunderfox & check if these scenes were also seen in the local version or they were edited out as it happened in the US version. I will let all you know about it. I promise!

Ninja Operation :Knight & Warrior on Widescreen

This blog was born just in order to give some credit to the movies produced & distributed by IFD / Filmark, Godfrey Ho, Joseph Lai & Tomas Tang among others. I was tired of reading & listening these movies were the "bottom of the barrell", "the worst  films ever" and similar expressions said by people who generally don't know how those movies were done or by people who watch Ninja Terminator looking for Arnie....said in a different way, we can't watch 55 days in Pekin expecting to see a Wong Fei Hung movie...so, we can't see an IFD ninja movie expecting to see a  ninja movie like American ninja saga or anything related to classic Ninjitsu or a classic japanese ninja films. Once this premise if fully understood & digested IFD & Filmark movies are nice cinematic experiences of exploit cinema since they contains all the ingredients for a perfect "ninja salad": ninjas, kung fu, erotic scenes, stolen music, asian actors from different countries, a very exotic if not a lost film from the southeast asia,etc etc..

This is in my opinion the first & most importat fact why IFD & Filmark films are so unfamous but there is a second reason. Because of the video boom most of those films were edited to be seen on TV, so the different releases were edited on horrible FULLSCREEN and that effect makes the movie less dynamic, we lose a lot of details & in many ways it is not confortable to see a film on that format.

To prove what I said above, I would like you to check what David Pinnegar nicely reccomended in his nice message: A WIDESCREEN VERSION of the very best ninja movie ever produced by IFD Ninja Operation: Knight & Warrior ( aka Silent Assassin). This film deserves to be watched on its widescreen format to apreciate that peope at IFD knew their duties.

  

 Fully Uncut & Widescreen version of NINJA OPERATION: KNIGHT & WARRIOR. IFD Property, Please respect the Coypright laws

 This video has been possible thanks to RockoMylers from Youtube & on his own words: 

 Special thanks to Emperor Ing for supplying me with the English audio source for this video; without him this wouldn't have been possible. Yes, it's the film restoration that the entire world has been waiting for: a complete version of Godfrey Ho's Ninja: Operation Knight and Warrior a.k.a. Ninja: Silent Assassin in its original 2:35:1 aspect ratio(or as close to it will probably ever be). This little piece of video wizardry was pulled off by combining the audio from a (relatively)high quality encode of the pan-and-scanned VHS of Ninja: Silent Assassin- the American version of Ninja: Operation Knight and Warrior- with the more complete image from the French VHS release of the film which was titled Black Ninja(no relation whatsoever to the 2003 direct-to-video Clayton Prince film of the same name). Surprisingly, putting this together required much more than simply overlaying the English audio over the French video and doing a bit of color correction, because the latter not only runs at the PAL standard of 25 FPS but also uses a markedly different print as its source than does the American tape.The differences generally amount to a matter of frames at reel changes which were easily fixed by repeating or cutting a few frames as needed, but on some occasions there are a few seconds of material that are outright missing from the French print andon those occasions I had no choice but to default to the pan-and-scanned American VHS. Thankfully, those occurences are few and far inbetween, but they DO happen so keep that in mind. Also, there are some issues with this version that slipped by me when I was editing this in Vegas- rest assured that those will be ironed out as much as possible by the time I upload this to a file host. In any case, enjoy your partially-restored audio-visual trainwreck.

Taiwan Black Movies at IFD & Filmark (part 11): Ninja Dragon

Ninja Dragon is possible one of the most well-known IFD ninja movies because of its many releases on different formats & even today is an easy to find film. Ninja Dragon was possibly shot back to back to some other IFD ninja films such as Ninja Terminator, Ninja The Protector & Diamond Ninja Force. All of these movies share almost the same supporting actors, crews & even locations.

by 1985, IFD ninjas didn't use headbands!!!

Ninja Dragon tells the story of two Shanghai international tycoons played by Richard Harrison as the hero & Paulo Tocha ( credited as Bruce Stallion) as the villain. A couple of years later ( Ninja Dragon  was shot in 1985) Tocha would become very popular as the evil kickboxer Paco in Jean Claude Van Damme's classic Bloodsport.

Paulo Tocha (aka Bruce Stallion) got an impressive film career in HK: from cameos or extra roles in Shaw Bros to main star at IFD & Filmark & then to bigger productions & finally Hollywood!

Ninja Dragon was choreographed by Donald Kong ( aka Chiang Tao) who played different roles at IFD around those years before he move to Filmark where he used to be credited as Don Kong, Tony Kong or Whatever Kong. He did a nice job on Ninja Dragon: the film opens like a classic kung fu film showing different ninja weapons & then we have a red background where two ninjas display their skills. This kind of opening was very popular on many kung films at the end of the 70's...even Jackie Chan's Snake in the Eagle's shadow used this kind of opening.

Bruce Lee + Sylvester Stallone + IFD flavour= Ninja Bruce Stallion

In the other hand we have a Taiwanese crime drama played by well known players such as  Lily Lan Yu Li who played  Madam Phoenix in Jackie Chan's Killer Meteors & also some other Taiwan Black movies distributed by IFD such as Fury of a Virgin among others & Chan Kuo- Chu who also played along Jackie Chan & Jimmy Wang Yu in Island on Fire.

IFD knew how to buy nice movie with nice players as Chan Kuo Chu

Ninja Dragon was done using a 1982 taiwanese production titled Dark Trap directed by Lee Wing-Cheung who among other works he directed Cat 3 cult films such as Rape & Die or Dress off for life. But the most interesting thing about DARK TRAP is that this taiwanese black movie is just a remake ( well, let's say a Xerox copy suits better) of a Shaw Bros film directed in 1976 by Hua Shan titled Brotherhood. Lee Wing-Cheung worked as assistant director in Brotherhood & then in 1982 he decided to remake it using some of the original cast from Brotherhood!!!.

On January 19th 2011, I did an entry writen in Spanish in this blog about Ninja Dragon & Shaw Bros Brotherhood. At the time I had noticed both films had the same story & even same actors.You may see that entry clicking HERE. Back then I didn't know the title of the source movie used by IFD for Ninja Dragon. Today, and Thanks to Teddy Wong from HKMDB, another IFD mistery has been unclosed!

As always on these entries, a question, an important question is needed: Does anyone know if Dark Trap was released on tape or is on VCD? Does anyone own a copy of it? Any kind of information about it will be highly appreciated!