Godfrey Ho Ninja Movies
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Born a Ninja, die a Ninja! |
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In the eighties, Ninjas were one of the biggest hypes, making not only thousands of young boys fascinated of weird men in pyjama pants fighting pseudo-kung-fu, but - and that's important - also got many people to buy VHSs they would have otherwise rejected, just because they included abovementioned weird men in pajama pants.
This moved the movie industry to create legendary works like the American Ninja quadrilogy or the unforgettable movies with Sho Kosugi, all of which became B-movies still praised today by cineasts all over the world. But one man went a step further...
Godfrey Ho, a Hong Kong director working together with the equally infamous producer Joseph Lai, gathered B- and C-movie actors from around the globe to make his legendary Ninja series of films. These usually consisted of a couple of ninja fighting scenes being pasted into a failed or unfinished Hong Kong movie, thus making a new movie out of these shreds. As one might expect, this didn't work out very well, but since we love ninjas, these movies are still watched today because of their overall narminess and their weird ideas.
A full list of Godfrey Ho Ninja movies can be found on imdb.com -- it would be to troublesome to make a page for every single one of them.
- Achilles in His Tent: Grandmaster Gordon has the tendency to stay away while the bad guy kills one ninja after the other. Usually results in a Curb Stomp Battle against the movie's Big Bad.
- Pulled off especially straight in Ninja Death Squad and the Ninja Squad
- Angry Eyebrows: Many actors put on very exaggerated expressions to show they were angry.
- Stuart Smith still is the best example for this.
- Badass Normal: Many characters from the Hong Kong-non-Ninja movies display kung fu skills that would make the ninjas look old.
- Slightly subverted with Billy from The Ninja Squad, whose badassness was explained by his training under ninja grandmaster Gordon.
- Brotherhood of Funny Hats: Subverted, as most ninja take their part in their "secret society" dead serious.
- Cut and Paste Translation: With one part "translation", and three parts "cut and paste".
- Deus Ex Machina: Happens quite a couple of time. The most hilarious example occurs in Zombie vs. Ninja. The ninja hero, Duncan, faces off against an evil ninja. Since both of them are equal in swordcombat, the evil ninja starts to concentrate to overwhelm our hero. What happens? An acorn drops from a nearby tree onto the sword of the ninja, distracting him long enough so Duncan can kill him.
- Funny Bruce Lee Noises: Too many to count.
- Hey, It's That Guy!: A motor operated Omega Supreme figure acts as a messenger in Ninja Terminator.
- Highly-Visible Ninja: To the point where some of the movies actually have ninjas who wear headbands with the word Nin-Ja on them.
- Importation Expansion
- Instant Awesome, Just Add Ninja: Whenever the source movie has nothing to do with ninjas, which is most of them.
- McNinja: There are hardly ever Asian ninjas. Instead, we get Richard Harrison.
- In the earlier movies, the common ninja Mooks were usually played by Asians, while their leading figures were Caucasians.
- One might call that racism, if Godfrey Ho himself hadn't been an Asian too.
- Godfrey Ho did this intentionally to make fun of the western popularity of the ninja. He was also saying that the modern idea of a ninja is a western invention that bears little resemblance to how they actually were in feudal Japan, and therefore it is more realistic for them to be played by western actors. It was in its own way a Take That of racial stereotypes.
- One might call that racism, if Godfrey Ho himself hadn't been an Asian too.
- Also, the Big Bad Evil Sorcerer ninja from Ninja: The Protector was Asian.
- In the earlier movies, the common ninja Mooks were usually played by Asians, while their leading figures were Caucasians.
- Rage Quit: In Ninja Terminator, The killer from the ninja empire explodes.
- Suspiciously Similar Song: Almost all of the music featured in Godfrey Ho's movies is plagiarized from other works: from background music played at other films and TV shows like Nightmare On Elm Street, Miami Vice and even Super Sentai shows like Choudenshi Bioman and Dengeki Sentai Changeman, to actual songs such as "Never Never Land" by The Sisters of Mercy.