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Now Available from RiffTrax…21 Replies to “Now Available from RiffTrax…”Commenting at Satellite News
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Wow. On the one hand, this thing seems like it was made to be riffed, but made with sincerity, rather than smirking at itself like HOBGOBLINS.
On the other hand, it’s probably pretty challenging to riff, unlike movies that are at all grounded in reality as we know it.
judging by the cover it seems to be a Japanese movie about jiangshi (or “hopping vampires”)… but with robots!
Hong Kong, actually. None of the cast or crew were involved with any MST3K films that I could determine, with most of the cast being members of the Single Digits Club. However, director Godfrey Ho had been assistant director for the infamous Hammer Films production Legend of the Seven Golden Vampires, which should have been featured on MST3K.
A similar Godfrey Ho movie is “Devil’s Dynamite,” in which silver super-hero Shadow Warrior intervenes in an organized crime war between vampires and ninjas.
Actually, there are no robots in this movie. The figure on the cover is a drug agent who has been transformed into a cyborg called Robowarrior (like RoboCop, get it, get it?) who might be more accurately described as a “Robo Vampire-Slayer.” In that he’s a vampire slayer who’s “robo,” not that he’s a slayer of robo-vampires. He also appears in “The Vampire Is Still Alive” aka “Counter Destroyer”, also directed by Godfrey Ho.
I can’t GUARANTEE that there aren’t any movies that have both robots AND vampires, let alone robot vampires, out there, but I’m not aware of any as of yet.
(this third-in-a-row post and then I’ll shut up for a while)
A review of “Phantom Ninja Heroes” spells out most of what one needs to know about the Godfrey Ho oeuvre:
“Godfrey Ho…bought any number of low-budget Hong Kong films that never would have seen the light of day in the West, spliced in some Ninja footage (sometimes combining three or four movies!) to create something that could conceivably have the word NINJA on the video box, and unload them in the product-hungry video market of the 80s. The more perceptive among you will reckon this might produce a movie that may not be very good. I applaud your insight, and admire your understatement: this produces movies that are abominable.
“Which is what we’re here for, right?”
It is indeed. ;-)
Not necessary if it keeps these posts alive ;}
Touches:
So Godfrey Ho was the Sandy Frank of Ninja films?
Well, clearly, not JUST ninja films, since AFAIK “Robo Vampire” has none of those, but yes, that’s his main claim to immortality in The Annals of Bad Movies. :-) I’ve only watched a couple of his films but I’ve read about significantly more of them.
However, Sandy Frank was a PRODUCER while Godfrey Ho was a DIRECTOR (and, on rare occasions, a producer). Per IMDB, he directed 148 films, over fifty of which have “ninja” in the title.
https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0061792/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0
I rarely see evidence that correspondents visit the links I post, but in this case, I think it’s worth one’s trouble to take the time to READ THESE TITLES. Seriously, folks, this is b-movie gold here. :-)
sidebar: He’s not the only director who pulled the same trick in the same timeframe, which means there are even more patchwork ninja films out there than the ones he directed.
A lot of the “new” ninja footage Godfrey Ho used and re-used featured actor Richard Harrison, who thus “appeared” in movies that he didn’t even know about at the time (most of them ninja films in which he’s basically the same character again and again). He was not well-pleased upon learning about the caliber of said films. Still, it’s a better legacy than any number of other actors have left.
https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0365835/?ref_=tt_ov_st_sm
Besides, he’s also been in peplum films (aka the Hercules genre), spy films, spaghetti westerns (of which AFAIK none have been riffed by any Brain to date, unlike peplum and spy films), and sex comedies, among others, so it’s not as though he was all THAT finicky, anyway. ;-)
Oddly, IMDB offers no information on which films Godfrey Ho spliced together to form “Robo Vampire.” At a guess, the part about a team of operatives rescuing a woman from criminals was from one movie, the part about the ghost and the vampire beast from a second, and the Robowarrior material was new footage to sort of tie the two together. Sort of.
As another example, he assembled “Devil’s Dynamite” (1987) from:
footage from 1979’s “Du cheng feng yun” (tr: “The Giant of Casino”), a relatively straightforward Hong Kong crime film
footage from 1982’s “Du wang qian wang qun ying hui” (tr: “The Stunning Gambling”), a somewhat less conventional Hong Kong crime film in which a gangster uses a voodoo doll to extort a Taoist priest into sending vampires to attack rival gangsters
(which in itself sounds pretty wild but wait, there’s more)
and new footage that added ninjas and silver-clad super-hero Shadow Warrior to the mix
Resulting in a film about a gang war between vampires and ninjas into which a super-hero intervenes. Frankly, I think the world needs more of those.
(incidentally, I didn’t JUST HAPPEN to know all of that; I compiled the information months ago for use in a different venue)
Proving what a total maroon I can be, the very movie that I mentioned, “The Vampire Is Still Alive,” features robot vampires. At least, based on the summary:
Joyce rents an old haunted home to pen her horror script, which releases an evil army of robot vampires, a knife-wielding demon and a battalion of otherworldly creatures.”
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0416664/?ref_=tt_urv
Touches:
Thank you.
Your research is much appreciated.
HOWEVER, consulting several film review sites indicates that NO, there are in fact no robot vampires in “The Vampire Is Still Alive” so thanks for NOTHIN’, IMDB summary writer. :-|
It does, however, feature gangsters, NON-robot vampires AND zombies, ninjas, and a Freddy Krueger-like dream demon who works for a film producer. And Robowarrior turns up at the end.
Directors like this are just a matter of budget. If he had $50 million to spend, he’s be Michael Bay.
And it used to be an accepted practice for authors to take several short stories, sometimes completely unrelated, and patch them together into a novel called a “fix up”. The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler is perhaps the most famous example of this, but it has some plot holes because of this.
So happy they finally did a Godfrey Ho (or Tomas Tang or whatever) movie. This one is so off the rails. Some of this movie makes more sense when you’ve seen Mr. Vampire, which was a very popular comedy/horror/martial arts movie about Chinese hopping vampires in the 80s. It inspired a lot of sequels and ripoffs. So he mashes that movie up with Robocop as cheaply as possible and randomly puts one of the vampires in a gorilla mask and then films about 40 minutes of footage to sandwich a probably unfinished action hostage movie someone else made that he found in a dumpster.
This one was really funny and they should do a Godfrey Ho ninja movie too. Or Thunder Ninja Kids: Hunt For the Devil Boxer which is his ninja schtick crashing together with hopping vampires. There’s also this bizarre series he made called Catman and it just seems like there’s an endless supply of “movies” this guy made mashing up old footage with new.
Because there’s…just something wrong with me, I offer this abridged version 9f a review of “The Vampire Is Still Alive” (the link to the full review (written by someone else on someone else’s website, I should perhaps clarify) is at the end of the post). I’ve marked characters (and one particular passage) in bold and my own commentary in italics.
===
Joyce, Cindy, and her other friend, who was driving them to the villa, come across a Taoist monk, doing something with smoke and paper. Despite the guy[her other friend]’s warning to not go near the monk, as evil spirits might go from him to them or something, Joyce and Cindy go over and talk with the monk, who’s dubbed with a hilarious squeaky-pitched Elvis voice! He’s amicable enough, warning them about evil spirits, but when he points the bone he’s holding towards the guy, Joyce pulls a gun on him! Eventually she puts the hardware away, and the three walk off and the monk does some ritual with a human skeleton and two skulls, one of which hovers off to spy on Joyce and her friends without the monk’s knowledge (and apparently vanishes from the film).
The three arrive at the villa, and Joyce pulls a curtain away, revealng a large cutout of a Chinese emperor, which gives Joyce the chills for some reason. As she walks away, the cutout suddenly gets human eyes and spies on her. Then she gets a call from Dixon, an overprotective friend (boyfriend?), and after that, she disconnects the phone and tells her guy friend (it’d be nice if we had a name but nothing doing) to take it with him when he leaves, as she doesn’t want any distractions. The guy goes to his car, but before he can drive away, the phone rings. Then the cord leaps up and strangles him to death [1st character death].
We cut to Lawrence, a movie producer and Joyce’s boss, who’s talking to an Asian woman who I totally believe is in the same room as him. The woman is Jackie, a private detective, and the guy from before {1st character death, remember?} was a driver for this Lawrence. Jackie theorises that the driver’s murder was possibly linked to the “last emperor of China” film, and Lawrence explains that there are several other film companies making their own last emperor of China movies to cash in on this one. He gives her a file full of info about these other companies.
Jackie drives randomly in the night, and sees a guy with a gun yelling and chasing after a woman. Jackie shoots the guy dead [2nd character death] and tells the woman to hop in her car. Next, Jackie and the woman are at a cafe, and Jackie sees one of the rival company producers, so she follows him to the bathroom amd shoots him in the head with a crossbow [3rd character death].
Then the movie switches back to Movie A, where there’s a storm at the villa. Joyce is researching for her script when blood starts dripping from the ceiling. She goes upstairs to investigate, and the movie uses four animal jump scares in quick succession. She goes downstairs again, and we cut to Freddy Krueger taking the sleeping Cindy to a rock.
Now when I (the film reviewer, that is, not me) say Freddy Krueger, what I mean is, an Asian guy with bad face-paint and long finger-claws! He sharpens his claws against a rock as two comic-relief vampires watch. Cindy wakes up and screams, and…the film’s visual dies for about ten seconds!
When the film comes back to life, Chinese Freddy has killed Cindy and is taking bits off of her and eating them. The two vampires are about to go over and eat Cindy as well, but the Taoist monk (remember him?) appears behind them and stops them. Then Chinese Freddy sees the monk and leaps towards him. The two fight…I think. Freddy blows some smoke from his mouth and growls, and the monk lightly waves a cloth around (which the vampires look at in awe) and gets his foot stuck in a bucket.
Chinese Freddy attacks the monk, and tears the monk’s shirt off, which is bad for Freddy, as the monk has…a weird laser beam light thing attached to his chest!…that does nothing, and Freddy tears it off. Then Freddy goes over to the two vampires, who are eating Cindy, and he fights them, just as Joyce leaves the house to look for Cindy. Joyce comes across Chinese Freddy eating Cindy and she screams…then wakes up! It was all a dream!
Cut to Movie B, and a guy is looking for Jackie, and he finds her assistant (the woman from before). The guy kidnaps the woman and takes her to his gangster hideout. Jackie comes home and finds out what happened (here it’s said that the gangster is named Ricky, and the woman is named Penny or Fanny). She goes to Ricky’s base, and after a conversation, she scratches him which kills him instantly, and necrotises his arm[4th character death].
Then Jackie and Fanny are in a nightclub, and film producer Jackson calls them over to his table. Jackson convinces the two to appear in his movie (which the two women are just using as a ploy to get to him and, one might reasonably presume, eventually kill him) and they leave. They go to a diner, and are saved from a couple of gunmen by two guys who know kung fu. A battle royale starts up between the four and the two gangsters, and they chase the gangsters away. Then the four have drinks. The guys are Paul and Joe, and they’re police officers.
Jackie later tells the two cops the whole story and that she thinks Jackson ordered the driver dead. Then Jackie goes with Lawrence and Dixon (remember him?) , who go see a fortune teller. They find out that while female members of their group are temporarily marked for catastrophe, the film will be a huge success. (“Well, THAT scene cleared up a lot of questions!”) They leave and Lawrence goes off on his own into a forest, and is attacked by hopping ghost-zompires and a hulk-zombie with exploding footprints!
After a beating, Lawrence (the film producer, Joyce’s boss, and the guy who hired Jackie, as you’ll recall) turns into a ninja (!) and attacks the hoppers, eventually tying them against a tree with linen-wrap. Then he uses exploding ninja stars against hulk-zombie! He destroys all three monsters [5th, 6th, and 7th character deaths], and the movie cuts to Joyce and Cindy, both at the villa’s pool. Chinese Freddy’s claws emerge from the pool and destroy Joyce’s inflatable thingie. She falls in the water, and when she surfaces, Freddy is gone and Cindy is confused on how Joyce fell into the pool. Joyce leaves to go to the showers, leaving Cindy alone in the room. Then the pool explodes with smoke and Chinese Freddy flies out…then vanishes.
Then the lights in the showers where Joyce is start to flicker. She inspects the room, and it attacked by Freddy. Cindy goes up to the showers and is knocked down by Freddy. She woodenly screams “help me, Joyce”, even though Freddy isn’t pinning her down at all, and then she must have thought “f*ck it'” and she attacks Chinese Freddy herself. She runs off and Freddy turns into Joyce. Cindy runs off and Joyce catches up to her. Joyce acts coldly, and not-herself though.
Meanwhile, Lawrence and Dixon talk hilariously stilted dialogue to each other, then they call Jackie for a progress report. A couple of gangsters (same ones from the diner? who knows?) plan to kill her and kidnap Roman, the film’s art director. Cue next scene and Lawrence is at the police station, angry that Roman has been kidnapped (that was quick). Then the cops from before, Paul and Joe come across a group of thugs beating up Roman and rescue him that too was quick.
Then the film cuts to an army of evil rifle-ninjas attacking Jackie and Fanny’s house. Then the scene abruptly cuts to Jackie talking with one of Jackson’s film crew, and she gives him a bunch of flowers to deliver to Jackson. The guy drives off, and the flowers explode, killng him [8th character death] (and the fourth “enemy” killed by Jackie; Lawrence is certainly getting his two bits’ worth.).
Joyce is sleeping, until she’s woken up by Chinese Freddy. She gets her gun and shoots him several times, but that does nothing. Then Chinese Freddy explains that he is looking for a woman to be his bride, so he can be released from the spirit world. Then he lunges on her and vanishes into smoke. Cindy runs into the room and sees Joyce turning into Freddy. She/he kills Cindy [9th character death], then Joyce comes back and Chinese Freddy suddenly reveals that he’s working for Jackson!(as you’ll recall, the film producer who is, presumably, in league with the gangsters)
Then the film cuts to Jackie, who trails a gangster, then kills him [10th character death and 5th “enemy” dead at Jackie’s hands]. She drives away and gets in a car chase with a cop car for no reason, all while cool not-from-this-movie music plays! Then the film cuts to Lawrence, talking with the police again, and he says that he’s sick of the police not doing their job properly and arresting any of Jackson’s men, so he hires another private detective to help Jackie.
Jackie and the new PI talk, and he casually mentions how both Roman and Fanny have been kidnapped. He says that the two are being held on Jackson’s private boat, and that Joe is undercover there as a waiter. After a scene at the bar with Paul and another guy, the film’s editing and continuity start to dissolve!
After an assault on Jackson’s boat by Jackie and the cops, Movie B abruptly ends, and Dixon (we’re getting near the payoff with him now), at the villa, goes into the room where Joyce and Cindy were attacked. He comforts Joyce, then she starts turning into Chinese Freddy again. She holds her burned’n’clawed arm up, and a shocked Dixon proceeds to turn into Robo[warrior]!…
To somewhat summarize:
Joyce is friends with Dixon the Robowarrior and works for Lawrence the film producer ninja who is in rivalry with film producer Jackson who is [presumably] in league with gangsters……
And that’s the status quo when the movie STARTS.
……and who proves to have the resources to (in the course of the film) employ [if only via the gangsters as middlemen] a Freddy Krueger-like demon, (one might reasonably presume) three ghost-zombies, and (one might further reasonably presume) an army of evil rifle-ninjas.
If ever a movie needed a flow chart…
https://notthistimenaylandsmith.blogspot.com/2012/05/may-monster-madness-counter-destroyer.html
Annnnnnnnnd I screwed up on the bold font. Really, really sorry about that. :-| Curse you, lack of Edit function.
For what it’s worth, the free movie app, Tubi, has recently numerous additional Rifftrax releases I’ve never seen before. Spent some time over the weekend catching up! For those interested, they have an impressive amount of MST3K, Cinematic Titanic, and RT available!!!
Of course, the REAL oddity of “The Vampire Is Still Alive” is that the only vampires are purely incidental characters.
In a way, with a “good” ninja {from one side} fighting ghost-zombies {from the other side} and Robowarrior somewhere in the middle, “The Vampire Is Still Alive” fits the basic pattern of “Devil’s Dynamite” quite nicely (some sources claim that Robowarrior and Shadow Warrior are in fact the same guy but that doesn’t seem like the case to me). It even sort of matches “Robo Vampire,” in which drug lords employ a ghost and a vampire (but no ninjas). Godfrey Ho pitted vampires against ninjas yet again (except with no super-hero) in “The Vampire Raiders” (1988), where the stakes are the Hong Kong hotel industry.
Now, if only there’s some overlap between these vampire/gangster/super-hero films and Richard Harrison’s ninja films. Really, though, it’s entirely possible that even the ninja films that don’t feature Harrison *do* feature actors/ninjas who ALSO appear in the Harrison films and/or the vampire films allowing THEM to in effect be the same characters over and over, and by tying some of them together and then tying the rest of them together and THEN tying them to each other would be KIND OF like a cinematic universe, not unlike like the other KIND OF A cinematic universe I mentioned under “The Day Time Ended.”
Not nearly as much information is available about several other Godfrey Ho films, of course — IMDB’s mostly got plenty of nothing — so, among other things, there’s no way to know if any of his other films also featured super-heroes. And IMHO that’s a shame. That’s a darned shame. After all, is there really ANY film that couldn’t benefit from having super-heroes, or, for that matter, ninjas or vampires in it? Don’t answer that.
;-)
And now for something almost entirely different:
“Blood of the Vampires” (riffed by Cinematic Titanic) featured a female vampire and a male ghost (at some point Frank riffed something to the effect of “Can a Vampire and a Ghost find true happiness together? Find out this Fall!”). In “Robo Vampire,” it’s just the opposite. Which is absolutely meaningless, I just happened to notice it. :-)
And yet again I’ve killed the thread. I’m dangerous, I am…