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Starscream posted:I don't know the musical cues but I want to pitch in with my two cents. This film is one of the best pieces of Bruceploitation eber created. A Korean, who looks nothing like Bruce Lee, fights a Village People-esque gang of henchman (a Mexican, a Cowboy, a Chinese, a Japanese swordsman and a tall black dude) while investigating his friend's death. Truly a product of the mid-70's! Many of these would get taken from PSAs and like those surreal 70s educational short films you often see spoofed by Rifftrax. Not everyone was as bold as Godfrey Ho or Robert Tai where the entire soundtrack would just straight up the theme songs from Miami Vice, The Warriors, Rambo etc. 
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Sep 14, 2013 01:59
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CloseFriend posted:As I've watched more of these movies, I've noticed a common thread emerging: most, if not all, Shaw Bros. films portray the state negatively. I remember reading a Bruce Lee interview where he basically says outright that this is the reason the villain in Enter the Dragon is Chinese and that the other good guys in it are western dudes. It was also to differentiate it from how the villains in a lot of mainland Chinese movies prior were outsiders in some way.
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Mar 17, 2014 02:58
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I saw a clip of a seventies martial arts flick that had an awesome fight scene in and around a cable car in Hong Kong, with the actors hanging out of it and everything while brawling with each other, anyone remember? I know there's a help us remember thread, but I could have sworn I saw the clip via the previous martial arts thread on this board, supplied by a fellow goon.
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Apr 9, 2014 23:36
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Tharizdun posted:would this then be the appropriate thread to bemoan how bad Man with the Iron Fists turned out then? Is it true that Rza's initial cut of the movie was FIVE HOURS long? Did no one really realize it was that long until the last second, causing the huge cuts and massive amounts of voice over narration in the final film? What the heck happened? Nektu posted:"Iron egg skill" "It is also called 'Groin Skill,' or 'Gold Armour.' This is a mysterious skill of soft techniques. It is to practise the testicles." Too good.
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May 1, 2014 05:08
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moller posted:ability to shrug off life-threatening injuries and continue filming. How is being able to consistently deliver on this not hard work?
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May 5, 2014 21:16
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It's a little light on straight up martial arts confrontations, but for ridiculousness I LOOOOOOOOVE Fantasy Mission Force. An incredible historical drama set in the 30s and/or 40s: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GqJQK3ey_M4 Angry Lobster posted:Project A is really good and has a lot of commedy, it's only flaw is a week villain. "I....I THINK YOU'RE A FAKE!"
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Aug 7, 2015 16:14
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We just watched Kid with the Golden Arm on Netflix last night and it's awesome. They also have Disciple of the 36th Chamber which also looks great and is rad as hell.
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Sep 3, 2015 22:30
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chaos rhames posted:What's the weirdest depiction of a foreigner in a kung-fu film? Flying Guillotine has some good ones, especially the sinister japanese and thai fighters, but there's got to be stuff that goes way further into hilarious nationalism. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ek0MvW3eh1U
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Oct 2, 2015 07:44
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Anonymous Robot posted:Watch 5 Element Ninjas. Everyone should follow this advice. Chas McGill posted:Just tried watching the new Crouching Tiger. God drat. I wasn't expecting it to be too good but it was reeeeaaaaally bad. Like unbelievably uninteresting both to watch and the story was pretty pointless. Jason Scott Lee is cool but is given almost nothing to do as the film's villain. Unlike the first movie's characters he's just this really stereotypical evil guy that's gonna rule the martial world by killing everyone because... I mean I know that's the plot for a ton of martial arts films and that's fine but not when everything is shot and scored in this ponderous THIS IS THE MOST SERIOUS AND IMPORTANT STORY EVER way even for some of the weakest action. They got Michelle Yeoh back for this but the way Donnie Yen's character and her interact and their back story is pretty dumb, even by being stubborn because honor wushu flick standards their relationship gets very tedious. There's a lot of CG in the movie, generally it's used to good effect, just for establishing shots of which city they're in and that kind of thing, but now and then it's used in some elements of the fighting and it just looks awful. Part of this is because of the film's look. Everything is really drab and the CG stuff like chunks of ice someone is breaking stand out a lot more because of it. It just reminded me of how much more awesome good editing looks when Master Wu is like POWERFUL HAND GESTURE and lifts up and throws a chunk of the earth in Swordsman II: Asia the Invincible. The "Sword of Destiny" in the subtitle of course refers to the legendary Green Destiny sword Michelle Yeoh and Chow Yun Fat pursue throughout the first film. But here it, uh, doesn't get used at all until the very end of the movie and isn't more or less capable of than anything else we see. This was kind of interesting to me as both movies are adapted from a five book series from the 30s. They cover events from books four and five respectively, but there's a huge time gap between them that makes it very obvious Michelle Yeoh's character is there just because they were able to get her back and needed to fit her in somehow, and then we have situations and characters that have no meaning because the didn't appear in the previous movie. The story is like a passing of the torch, old stuff from the past catching up with you, honor no longer exists in this lovely violent world story but the movie really fails to get all of that across in any way more interesting than Return to the 36th Chamber or whatever. And that's cool but not when the film's tone is so generally serious and when there's such a lack of adventure. The dourness of this flick makes The Dark Knight look like Batman and Robin, it's crazy. My favorite part of the movie is the five characters introduced in the pub fight and the pub fight itself but then the coolest one gets clowned and killed off very early and the rest basically have nothing to do for the rest of the film. The stealth fight over the sword early on in the movie is fun too. Also the film takes the The Crow: City of Angels / Ravage 2099 approach to plot exposition where its villain stay at the top of the tower for 90% of the movie while his blind seer magician woman prophesizes about stuff we already know is going to happen or just saw happen. Basically stay away, it's insane to me that this movie even got made. Reading more about it it was supposedly going to be a bigger deal and get a theatrical release while being on Netflix as well but had a ton of delays and less $$$ to make it with, and by the time it was finished no theaters wanted to carry it. Can't blame them. Neo Rasa fucked around with this message at 17:10 on Mar 7, 2016 |
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Mar 7, 2016 15:18
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A tv or early VHS cut of The Heroic Trio since it's a hilarious film but also has a scene where an infant gets stabbed in the head with a nail and another scene where the heroes shoot and blow up a large group of screaming infants.
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Mar 20, 2016 00:56
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I misread that as "Which channels have NOT good movies there?" and was about to strongly recommend the channel GodfreyHoCinema. Though he actually did do some fun and trashy John Woo ripoff flicks with people like Yukari Oshima and Sibelle Hu in them! There's one he did called Lethal Panther that's literally like if Canon Films made a remake of The Killer. Same plot and characters and a lot of imitated shots except now there's THREE assassins instead of one, and they're all women, and a shootout with lots of squibs or a brawl happens every ten minutes. It's ridiculously overwrought and fun. It also has this one (of several so don't watch with kids around) sex scene that involves a balloon that is definitely up there with the pool waterfall sex scene in Showgirls as one of the goofiest ever. A true must watch.
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May 23, 2016 03:17
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It's a lot of fun and has some really badass moments in it, but is definitely a step down from the first. I'd still watch it.
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Jul 5, 2016 05:05
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I feel stupid for not being able to find this with search, but a while ago someone in one of the MMA or maybe pro wrestling threads posted a clip of this old guy's video series of how awesome his martial arts skills are and it was all just him like waving his hand at someone three feet away and them falling over like you were supposed to believe you'd be shooting blasts of energy out of your hands if you were as good as this guy. It was absurdly fake looking with folks falling over or otherwise getting blown away conveniently. But then someone posted a clip of him fighting an actual martial artist who of course handily defeated him. Anyways the old guy seemed genuinely shocked his stuff wasn't working during this, does anyone have links to these or know what I'm talking about? Was this old guy a true believer? Are the 20~30 people he tosses around his videos all playing along with him knowing they're playing along? What was this?
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Sep 5, 2016 17:19
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moller posted:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mdUxPLIJVgI  Slim Dragonfists? Wonder what his real name is. Thank you for the links and information. I still can't believe he got enough people to buy into it that he himself bought into it and got into that fight.
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Sep 7, 2016 08:54
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Lobok posted:Heads up that Killzone 2 AKA SPL 2 is now on Canadian Netflix, which I have to assume means it's also on US Netflix (doesn't work the other way around though I just caught it on US Netflix today and it's loving awesome, everyone should see it.
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Dec 4, 2016 06:08
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Darthemed posted:I feel like this is probably a dumb question, but is there any record of mild stigma being attached to the actors who regularly played Manchurian officials? Just something I've been wondering after catching up on some of the '70s Shaolin movies recently and noticing some recurring actors in those roles. I'm sure this happened. Charles Napier just played Murdock in RAMBO: First Blood Part II and I saw in an interview he said for like fifteen years after people would regularly recognize him and be offended by his existence and ask him with a look of betrayal in the faces "WHY WERE YOU MEAN TO RAMBO?!?!?!" He has condescending "this is how movie is made" speech he had to have prepared to give at a moment's notice.
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Feb 6, 2017 04:16
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Tickets secured for 4K of Buddha's Palm and The 36th Chamber or Shaolin.. 
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Apr 7, 2018 02:41
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Masked Avengers gently caress YES.
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May 24, 2018 01:47
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Nroo posted:There really needs to be a remaster and blu-ray release of The Swordsman Trilogy. Prop horses cleft in twain in 1080p. Swordsman II is one of my favorite movies ever.
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Sep 9, 2018 16:28
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Franchescanado posted:Cross-posting in this dead thread cuz gently caress it: I absolutely love this movie. I completely realize why it's not necessarily great but it just works for me. I really love the amount of emotion they get out of having the flashbacks stylized like old timey sports footage and paralleling that with Daniel Rhee's training and conflict of wanting to cold murder said cabal leader in the ring or not. The choreography really is great to me, not "realistic" or accurate all the way per se but they do a good job having it on a line between watching a sports broadcast and watching a movie and I appreciate that a lot. I still have the VHS to this day. I really do like the ~~~MAXIMUM HONOR~~~ ending too instead of the "bad guys" actually being bad, and also everyone on the US team despairing as they for the most part just get clowned on. Best of the Best 2 is pretty mean in comparison oddly, with them not giving a gently caress and killing whoever. 3 is the one where the enemy is white supremacists so I like it. Stuff like that, Stone Cold, I give any movie a pass if it's about how white supremacy is a disease and how beating the poo poo out of constantly or/and murdering white supremacists is the way to go.
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Mar 9, 2020 21:54
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moller posted:As well, as, uh, Ninja III: The Domination. I believe most of the Sho Kusugi Canon Films stuff is on Prime now. Revenge of the Ninja fuckin' rules to this day, just super fun and worth a watch for anyone that even remotely enjoys 80s cheese or like NES Double Dragon and stuff like that, but the cast in it is awesome and having a blast with it which really holds it together.
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Mar 9, 2020 21:57
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And More posted:Revenge of the Ninja is the best. I like that it's got Sho Kosugi as the protagonist for once instead of as a bad guy. Also, his kid is equal parts adorable and a complete martial arts badass. The only thing that never works for me is the whole finale including hot tub murder followed immediately by an awkward tennis court battle. What were they thinking? Ahahaha I love and hate it at the same time. It's so absurd and stupid but it's like, the most 80s as gently caress setting ever so it's aged really well in that respect. The meditation voice overs before they run towards the net  His kid, Kane Kosugi, I mean the movie is crap but he played RYU HAYABUSA in the Dead or Alive live action film which is pretty cool. Ninja III takes it to the next level though with the massively long golf course struggle lol
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Mar 10, 2020 18:21
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G-III posted:I'm so mad that the only copy I can find of this with english subtitles is on VCD while there's an HD version out with only german and cantonese subs. Is there any way to double check the German version? Not optimistic but there's a few German releases of late 80s/early 90s genre flicks not from the US that don't have English subtitles listed because they weren't added as an option but are hard subtitles on the transfer itself or they're just like there and unlisted for some reason. Neo Rasa fucked around with this message at 16:05 on Nov 10, 2020 |
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Nov 10, 2020 15:53
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I think my favorite Godfrey Ho to introduce people to his work is Ninja Terminator. Elephant Ambush posted:I just saw Robo Vampire for the first time last week and it was powerfully funny. I haven't laughed that hard at a movie in a long time. If you dig Robo Vampire it's part of a loose trilogy!!!!! Part 2 IIRC usually has Devil's Dynamite somewhere in the title. The third one is called Counter Destroyer. That is something notable about the Harrison/Ho flicks. There actually is a line of continuity in the ninja parts of him beating Ivan the Red and getting his weapon, assembling the Golden Ninja Warrior statue, etc. that's consistent from flick to flick until Gordon is killed at the end of Power of Ninjitsu. So for those six movies or so I could actually see how he might have thought he was filming one or two flicks worth of stuff that got used in way more movies. But obviously he didn't give a poo poo since he was in plenty of one-off stuff with Godfrey Ho after like Scorpion Thunderbolt/etc. for years, and the guy is clearly a full of poo poo terrible person. I think my favorite thing about Godfrey Ho is that he was a good director, but he just was in for the quick $$$. But you can see in Ninja Terminator and Ninja: American Warrior that like, the way they're edited together and how the plots of the original movies+ninja stuff is mashed up wouldn't be fun to watch if the director was actually bad. Like Ninja: American Warrior has some great effort as they have a character from the new footage put on a mask and then cut to the old movie where the person in the next scenes is meant to be that woman in disguise as the character from the old movie, and when they're unmasked you can tell they sort of duplicated a set just for a quick shot of that happening (or maybe just filmed it in the same living room hehee). Then later in the movie there's a part in the original flick where someone who is hospitalized is reading a letter. In the new footage they have someone approach a nurse outside of a hospital room and hand them a letter from one film to another, it fuckin' rules. Also all the Godfrey Ho flicks have baller music thanks to him stealing from Genesis / A-Ha / Tangerine Dream / etc.  When some Pink Flloyd is blasting during the training montages, or like when Gordon's ally dies in Ninja Terminator that Vangelis-esque part of Jean Michael Jarre's Ethnicolor cuts in  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WCikDc_sAVM Like look at how much the music elevates Godfey Ho stuff https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nxCAPMzPZ-Q
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Aug 17, 2021 14:32
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4nabkzVmamo The back of chips being crushed for the neck snapping sounds https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pWh7JIAzGjU Neo Rasa fucked around with this message at 14:37 on Aug 17, 2021 |
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Aug 17, 2021 14:34
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One of my favorite things about Godfrey Ho is that he directed ~80 films and ~40 of them have the word ninja in the title. It's not one of his ninja flicks, but he directed a sort of remake of The Killer (with some scenes inspired by certain other action films too hehee) called Lethal Panther where the three leads are played by women. Good cast including Sibelle Hu and Alex Fong, and, like, there's a couple of goofy sex scenes early on, and from then on there's a pretty decent shoot out or fight scene, like, every 10 minutes to the end like the movie does not stop. There was a sequel too that stars Yukari Oshima! It's a category III rated action flick from 1990 though so there is a seen where someone is sexually assaulted about 2/3 in, so you know.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1g_ycRrf_g4 Chas McGill posted:I looked him up and he appears to be lecturing now, so hopefully there'll be more Ninja Terminator inspired movies out of Hong Kong one day. I forget which site had it (maybe Hong Kong Cinemagic?) but there's an awesome long interview with him about his career and stuff. EDIT: Here it is: http://www.hkcinemagic.com/en/page.asp?aid=230 Neo Rasa fucked around with this message at 16:26 on Aug 17, 2021 |
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Aug 17, 2021 16:12
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Chas McGill posted:That's a fantastic interview. Love the section where he evaluates all the actors. Shame Harris isn't the gentleman Ho thought he was it doesn't surprise me honestly, like I'm sure he was GREAT to Ho since Ho was the director and Harrison's biggest claim to fame was "the guy who turned down A Fistful of Dollars but suggested Clint Eastwood for it" I think there was a similar situation with Bill Cosby where like, Phylicia Rashad was a co-star and on equal footing which is why she seemed dismissive of his accusers a couple of years ago and made that unfortunate tweet when he got out. People lack perspective and don't realize, like "I worked with this person for years and am a huge part of their financial success so maybe they act a little differently around me compared to how they treat everyone else." Neo Rasa fucked around with this message at 18:45 on Aug 17, 2021 |
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Aug 17, 2021 17:47
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Elephant Ambush posted:It's a shame how many of those old Hong Kong movies had that kind of stuff in it. Speaking of which I saw this one recently called Devil Cat which stars Yukari Oshima as an immortal cat spirit who pops up in modern times to kick the poo poo out of another more evil spirit so the opening is quite goofy and fun so of course she's barely in the movie and the entire middle act is a completely unrelated story about a woman who gets a hostess club gig to pay the bills while her husband is hospitalized but then gets assaulted for way too much screen time by her boss after which she commits suicide because she "failed" her husband which causes her husband to attempt to kill the guy but he fails and gets run over by the guy. But another random woman witnesses this so the guy+his gang try repeatedly to kill her but she's the girlfriend of the guy who happened to adopt Yukari Oshima's character (as like a regular housecat he doesn't know) and that's how she kinda sorta gets involved in the plot again. 
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Aug 17, 2021 20:41
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moller posted:The Cat was also a Wisely movie like The Seventh Curse, starring some pulp adventurer scholar character that I don't really get at all having watched two Wisely movies. Apparently had a bunch of novels starting in the 60s. There's a Seventh Curse novel? :O Is it available in English? Lumbermouth posted:I really want to find a copy of The Cat for this year’s challenge. I’ve shown The Seventh Curse to something like a dozen people since I first watched it. Rarelust has a good transfer of it. Neo Rasa fucked around with this message at 16:02 on Aug 18, 2021 |
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Aug 18, 2021 15:30
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Elephant Ambush posted:I saw Angel Enforcers a few weeks ago and loved it. Pretty much an all star cast for the time and tons of great fight scenes. There's two! The first one stars Ken Takakura.
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Aug 23, 2021 04:22
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Mantis42 posted:It came in a box set of Sonny Chiba films I bought a decade ago, so it's the only Golga content I've ever seen. From that perspective, it's just another sleazy Hong Kong 70s film. I can't recall the details except that I remember thinking The Bodyguard and The Street Fighter were better. The first one is a better film overall but doesn't have Chiba in it but does have a good amount of violence. Pretty solid flick imo, also interesting because they filmed a lot of it on location in pre-revolution Iran.
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Aug 23, 2021 05:06
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Just want to second that Duel to the Death owns. Some gorgeous locations too and I love the way the movie is shot and edited, like you can really feel how much work went into shooting it
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Sep 24, 2021 05:18
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TTBF posted:Why do so many older movies from Taiwan and China have ninja in them? I thought that was more of a Japanese thing. Hong Kong got way into this. Once Cannon Films released Enter the Ninja the ninja craze began in the US and companies wanted to their flicks to sell there. You can see the really abrupt shift with Shaw movies dropping "Actually ninjitsu was invented in China 800 years ago" and stuff like that Then not long after you of course got ninja/Shaolin vs. kinda flicks like Five Elements Ninja, Ninja in the Dragon's Den, Ninja: The Final Duel, etc. That mixing of the two was happening intentionally on the distribution level too. Like you could by multiple VHSes of Sho Kusugi saying "Hi, I'm Sho Kusigi, welcome to the Ninja Theater This is a weapon called sai." [brief historical cultural explanation followed by Sho Kusugi owning some fools with it] "And now I would like to introduce to you, one of the finest Kung Fu films" [a Hong Kong martial world shaolin flick starts playing] There's also the most infamous example of Godrey Ho taking whatever flicks and adding white people ninja characters to them so they'd do $$$ in Europe. Like the unintentional Chinese ninjas and other mish-mash of stuff in Mortal Kombat comes from that intentional mish-mash of stuff in those movies. Neo Rasa fucked around with this message at 18:02 on Feb 6, 2022 |
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Feb 6, 2022 17:59
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Anita Mui is fuckin incredible, taken too soon 
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Feb 6, 2022 18:03
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Lord Seo posted:I picked up the Pearl Chang collection Gold Ninja Video put out a few years ago. Her stuff is a lot of fun! She does colourful, creatively bizarre kung fu comedy like few others. Be sure to check out stuff she acted in as well, especially Fantasy Mission Force. Just want to confirm this movie owns
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May 19, 2023 15:40
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