In the Afghanistan desert, a group of mercenaries and U.S. soldiers are trapped in a Taliban cave after an explosion seals the opening. They have to find out how to work together to make their way through the system of caves and tunnels to find their way to the surface. What doesn’t help matters at all is that they’re not alone.

They’re about to meet Karnoctus.

If you head into this movie hoping for it to be a Danny Trejo film, you’ll be disappointed. He has a cameo role. But if you come in wanting a homage to Predator, good news. You’re going to be pretty happy.

Directors Cire Hensman and Matthew Hensman do a great job of getting their budget on the screen and making the film look way more expensive than the budget. The caves and tunnels make a great dark location. And the effects look great too!

Between Tagger (Nick Chinlund) and his right hand Reid (Kevin Grevioux), two CIA-employed agents who must move some secretive crates, and the frightened men and one woman under the command of Sgt. Griffin (Justin Arnold), the monster has plenty of targets to go after.

There’s also a nice cameo for Adrian Paul from Highlander: The Series.

While I wish this movie wasn’t so blatant about the sequel it sets up, it’s still a blast. Dead bodies everywhere, secretive drug labs, monstrous spiders — there’s something for every horror fan to love here.

The Prey: Legend of Karnoctus opens in Los Angeles June 3, 2022 at the Regency Theatres Van Nuys Plant 16 for a weeklong run. On June 7, it’s available nationwide on all major Cable VOD platforms, including Comcast, Charter, DirecTV, Cox, and Verizon Fios and will be on all digital platforms, including iTunes, Prime Video, Vudu and Google Play, on July 7.

With one arm tied behind his back, Jimmy Wang Yu had already played the One-Armed Swordsman in two films for Shaw Brothers, One-Armed Swordsman and Return of the One-Armed Swordsman. He also became incredibly popular after The Chinese Boxer, the movie that kickstarted the unarmed combat genre. Then, he broke his contract with Shaw Brothers and lost the lawsuit that resulted, which meant he needed to go somewhere other than Hong Kong to work.

That’s where former Shaw Brothers executive Raymond Chow comes in. He started the rival studio Golden Harvest in 1970 and Wang Yu became his star, writing, directing and playing the main role in One-Armed Boxer.

Yu Tian Long (Wang) is the best fighter to come out of his local martial arts school. However, when he stops the Hook Gang from roughing up customers in a restaurant. The evildoers are part of the Ching Te school, which is the most prominent martial arts academy in town. Yet more than that, they run all sorts of businesses, legal and illegal.

After being defeated in combat twice, the Hook Gang return to their master Chao Liu (Yeh Tien) and tell him that Tien and others from the Ching Te school attacked them for no reason and insulted their group. Chao heads off to the school and is easily defeated by Master Han Tu (Ma Kei).

Chao has no honor and uses his money to get revenge, hiring a group of martial artists from Shanghai that includes Okinawa karate expert Erh Ku Da Leung (Wong Fei-lung) and his students Chang Ku Chua and Pan Tien-Ching, two lamas from Tibet (Ko Fu and Cho Lung, who are the disciples of the Fung Sheng Wu Chi from Master of the Flying Guillotine, which is about him trying to get revenge for his students against Yu Tian Long), Muat Thai fighters Mi Tsu (Blackie Ko, who went on to be a car stunt expert) and Ni Tsai, judo master Kao Chiao, Taekwondo master Chin Chi Yung and yoga fighter Mura Singh. They murder every single student in the Ching Te school, as well as the Master, leaving only Tien Lung alive yet only with one arm after Erh Ku Da Leung chops his arm clean off.

Hsiao Yu, a nurse, and her father bring our hero back to health and explain a special sklill that could help him get revenge, a method that will make his fighter super powerful even with just one arm. He only has to destroy all the nerves in his arm so he places his arm into an open flame in an incredible scene that shows just how devoted he is to avenging his master.

The end of the film is an example of why I love martial arts movies. Tien Lung fights every single one of the killers in a quarry while the Hook Gang throw bombs at him. There’s blood spraying everywhere and non-stop kicking, punching and violence.

When this was released in the U.S. by National General Pictures, it was called The Violent Professionals and used the theme from The Big Boss, a Bruce Lee film that was also made by Golden Harvest. As for the original film score, it outright takes the theme from Shaft — minus the talking about Shaft — over the opening credits, which is pretty much as outlandish an act of theft as it gets.

This movie is just magical. I was on the edge of my seat throughout and was astounded by how intense the fights were and I was beyond on the side of the hero, despite how brutal and cool Erh Ku Da Leung is, a man who takes an arm when someone breaks an arm. If you haven’t gotten into kung fu yet, this is a great place to get started.

Consider this movie highly recommended.

The Arrow blu ray of One-Armed Boxer has a 2K restoration from the original elements by Fortune Star. Extras include commentary by Frank Djeng from the NY Asian Film Festival, a never released career retrospective interview with Wang Yu, a trailer gallery that includes the Hong Kong theatrical trailer, The Chinese Professionals U.S. version and over half an hour of trailers for other Wang Yu classics including One-Armed Swordsman and Master of the Flying Guillotine, a gallery of images from the movie, a reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Ilan Sheady and an illustrated collector’s booklet featuring new writing on the film by Simon Abrams. You can get this movie from MVD.

Look, you can watch any one of these three movies in any order you’d like. Things just seem to happen, plot lines stop and start with no reason behind them and most of the movie is fight scenes, which is as it should be. If you’re the kind of person who needs things to make sense, run fast and run hard.

These were directed by Joseph Kuo, the same man who brought the world Mystery of Chessboxing, World of the Drunken Master, Deadly Fists of Kung Fu, The Old Master, 36 Deadly Styles, 18 Bronzemen, Shaolin Kung Fu and so many more. His movies are all pretty wild but these ones, well, they take that level of strangeness to unseen levels.

Ninja Death I (TUBI LINK): The description of this on Tubi says that it’s “A late-‘80s martial arts film about the owner of a prostitution brothel who is also a secret kung fu artist on the side with a powerful master.”

Sure, OK.

Tiger (Alexander Lo Rei, USA Ninja) is a bouncer at a Hong Kong brothel who learns that another house with red doors has opened across town but it’s all a trap. That jack shack’s owner, The Grand Master is hunting for a fighter with a plum tattoo across his chest and that man is, of course, Tiger, who is trained by The Master to battle that man’s various ninjas and fighters.

Also, this movie begins with a baby being protected from an unstoppable warrior who kills everyone he touches including taking a man’s eyeballs out. There’s also a credit sequence of ninjas battling in front of a red seamless background and I could watch an entire movie of just that.

There’s also a torture scene where The Master keeps poking Tiger in all his pressure points and asks him if he saw Drunken Master because he sure has. He then has dudes beat Tiger with sticks, pours snake venom all over him and makes then freezes him inside a block of ice. He also makes him drink vinegar because that’s training. How this so-called training teaches you to fight is a mystery; I get the wax on, wax off lesson of Miyagi, but how does this make Tiger a better fighter? And when Tiger asks for a lesson about ninjas, the Master tells him a long story that’s mostly a long and involved sex scene.

The Master is also a ninja — with a baby mask for a face — and he ends up facing Devil Mask, who is controlled by The Grand Master with a flute and also has the power to become a tornado.

There’s also a girl named Sakura in love with Tiger and Devil Mask is probably The Master’s brother. So much happens that you may be bewildered but that’s OK, there are still three more parts to make your head spin.

Ninja Death II (TUBI LINK): “When his master is killed, a young martial artist must continue his training with other teachers to prepare to fight the evil ninja in his pursuit.”

Spoiler warning, Tubi!

The second chapter uses its first half to explain what we just saw but it helps it make more sense: In the flashback that started the last movie, The Master was the man who ran away with young Tiger, the man who lost his eyes has become a blind fortune teller and Devil Mask is Tiger’s brother and The Master’s brother. Then, he kills himself by karate chopping himself in the brain as his injuries from the last movie are too much to handle.

Oh yeah — that entire sequence feature’s John Barry’s score for You Only Live Twice.

At one point, Tiger is poisoned by ninjas and falls down a waterfall and yet lives because he’s nursed back to health by a kindly old man and his granddaughter. Tiger is nearly insane from the poison and he pretty much assaults the girl because he dreams that she’s Sakura and is poisoned which is a defense that would not work in any country. He apologizes when he’s healed as if it helps. The grandfather gives him the antidote as long as he promises to come back and marries the girl, but then as soon as Tiger leaves, ninjas kill them all and it’s basically the good guys cleaning up the mess of the bad guys.

There’s a lot more training because the big battle is coming.

Ninja Death III (TUBI LINK): “The blind fortune teller and his crew, Tiger and the Japanese brother and sister prepare to battle the Grandmaster, Devil Mask and infinite ninjas.”

After the second problematic and repetitive part of the series, Ninja Death III rebounds with moments like Tiger nearly being able to fly, Devil Mask becoming a horizontally flying force of ninja magic and The Grand Master, who has gold clothes and hammers that he can throw. Actually, that weapon is called the Double Sky Hammer and I better get it right.

Also, that description is correct: there are so many ninjas in this I lost count.

Tiger learns a new style from the blind fortune teller — who remarks after everyone in a village “I can’t see anything” — and learns who his mother the Princess is.

You have to respect a ninja series that not only has ninja battles but goes all in on the sleaze. If you’re going to have a hero who runs a cathouse, you better show the cats — and cat — in action. I mean, the second movie goes wild with a bloody ninja attack while people are in the midst of people exploring the clouds and rain, as the Chinese say.

In my magical dreams, there are action figures of every character in these movies.

Poliziotteschi is but one of the many waves of Italian exploitation and one that takes American inspiration — Dirty Harry, The Godfather, Death Wish — and uses it to explore the Years of Lead, a time of social unrest, political upheaval, political and terrorism, rising crime and outfight mob warfare from the 1960s to 1980s. Much like the vigilante films that followed in the path of Paul Kersey, many of these movies exploit conservative fears of crime and protests.

Umberto Lenzi is a maniac, as we all know and potentially adore. From his Eurospy (008: Operation Exterminate, Kriminal, Super Seven Calling Cairo, The Spy Who Loved Flowers) and giallo films (I recommend anything he did with Carroll Baker, such as Orgasmo, Knife of Ice, So Sweet…So Perverse, A Quiet Place to Kill and Spasmo as well as non-Baker giallo such as Seven Blood-Stained Orchids and Oasis of Fear) to inventing the cannibal film with The Man from Deep River and expanding on it with Eaten Alive! and Cannibal Ferox, as well as wild later films like Ghosthouse, Nightmare City, Hitcher in the Dark and Nightmare Beach, I’m a big fan. I even love his TV movies House of Lost Souls and House of Witchcraft.

As with most Italian exploitation filmmakers — as you can tell — Lenzi jumped genre often. He also made a ton of poliziotteschi like Gang War In Milan, Almost Human, Manhunt In the City, Syndicate Sadists, Free Hand for a Tough Cop, Violent Naples, Brothers Until We Die, From Corleone to Brooklyn and The Cynic, The Rat and the Fist.

What sets his take on the form apart is apparent in a review from Variety that says that this film contains “…little idealism and much violence for the sake of violence.”

You say that like it’s a bad thing.

Lenzi had been sent a spy script for Roma ha un segreto (Rome Has a Secret) that he felt was boring and made no sense. He wanted a movie that was about the violence that Rome was living through and wrote the script for this movie — Roma a mano armata (Rome at Gunpoint) — in a week.

Inspector Leonardo Tanzi (Maurizio Merli) looks exhausted. And if you were him, you would be as well. He’s dealing with gangsters operating in his beloved Rome and he’s just one man against an onslaught of criminal activity that doesn’t operate under the same rules that he’s forced to obey.

His latest case has him tracking a French criminal and even when he arrests one of his henchmen, the one-armed Savelli, he’s forced to release him without charge. Hours later, he kills a guard during a daring bank robbery. To track him down, they try to question his hunchbacked Savelli’s hunchbacked brother-in-law Vincenzo Moretto (Tomas Millian, who pretty much runs away with this movie), a slaughterhouse worker who refuses to even speak to the cops, even after they plant drugs on him. He’s smarter than them, as he uses his watch to slice his own wrists and promises to tell the newspapers that the police did it. Fearing a scandal, he’s released and Tanzi gets demoted by Vice-Commissioner Ruini (Arthur Kennedy, who after The Living Dead at Manchester Morgue I always see as a gruff and overbearing bad cop) to a desk job writing licenses and permits.

Three of the hunchbacked maniac’s associates kidnap Tanzi’s girlfriend Anna (Maria Rosaria Omaggio) and threaten her in a junkyard, showing her how they plan on crushing her in the wreckage of a junked car. She’s so traumatized that she can’t even recognize them; Tanzi replies by tracking down Moretto and making him swallow a bullet. By attacking his manhood in that way, now Moretto plans to kill the cop one on one by using the very bullet Tanzi made him eat.

Any time Tanzi thinks he’s getting ahead of the case and getting close to finding French gangster Ferrender or Savelli, Moretto is there to kill witnesses like heroin dealer Tony Parenzo (Ivan Rassimov). He also stages a bank robbery, which Tanzi interrupts by emerging from the air conditioning ducts a decade or so before Die Hard and wipes out most of the Hunchback’s gang, leading to the criminal stealing an ambulance and killing numerous innocent bystanders.

The game between Tanzi and Moretto only increases in ferocity until by the end of the film, there’s no alive in dead or alive.

When Aquarius Releasing distributed this film in the U.S., they changed the title to Brutal Justice and replaced establishing shots with American locations in an attempt to make it seem more like a domestic film, which only makes the resulting remix an example of surrealism. They also recut the movie for video release as Assault with a Deadly Weapon, creating a new title sequence with a skull-faced police officer and adding credits for cast and crew members who do not appear and did not make this film.

This movie was a huge deal in Italy, as the character of Tanzi would return in The Cynic, The Rat and the Fist and also appear in nine more films in this genre. And despite the way this movie ends, Millian would play Moretto again in Lenzi’s Brothers Till We Die, a film that has him play a dual role and also bring back his character of Sergio Marazzi from Free Hand for a Tough Cop. This movie is like the Italian crime cinematic universe, as we learn that Moretto and Marazzi are twin brothers. Millian would go on to play Marazzi in Stelvio Massi’s Destruction Force, Bruno Corbucci’s Uno contro l’altro, praticamente amici and Francesco Massaro’s Il lupo e l’agnello. By those last two movies, the character had moved past its crime origins and began to be the protagonist of more comedic films.

The Grindhouse Releasing blu ray of The Tough Ones is the best way to watch this film. It has the original unrated and uncensored director’s cut in 4K. The extras — as always from Grindhouse — go way beyond, such as audio commentary by Mike Malloy, director of Eurocrime!; in-depth interviews with director Umberto Lenzi, actors Tomas Milian, Maria Rosaria Omaggio, Sandra Cardini, Maria Rosaria Riuzzi and Corrado Solari, screenwriter Dardano Sacchetti and composer Franco Micalizzi; a special tribute to Maurizio Merli with appearances by Enzo Castellari and Ruggero Deodato; a vintage VHS intro by cult movie superstar Sybil Danning that was on the Adventure Video VHS release; the original international theatrical trailer; liner notes by Italian crime film expert Roberto Curti; a deluxe embossed slip cover and an original soundtrack album by Franco Micalizzi.

You can get it from Grindhouse Releasing with my highest recommendation.

Watching a Godfrey Ho movie, you often ask yourself, “Have I seen this before?”

That’s because he reuses so much footage and has so many similar titles that it can be incredibly frustrating to know if you really have just spent a small;l part of your life seeing the same ninja movie again.

If you already saw Ninja Masters of Death or Ninja Project Daredevils, you’ve already seen G.I. Joey.

Also, if you’ve somehow already checked out the Korean war movie 13se Sonyeon (At 13 Years Old), you have also already seen this movie.

Or some of it.

That means that some of this movie is about the eternal struggle between capitalism and Communism. But with ninjas, so it does feel as dire as a Thanksgiving dinner when someone has just come back from college and wants to fight their Fox News parents and you just want to eat some cranberries.

Nothing in the description of this movie happens in the movie.

In fact, I wish that all arguments over belief structures had easy-to-follow color-coded ninjas for me to cheer throughout their battles, because then I’d actually care about politics.

If you ever have a conversation with me in person, please know that all I really want to talk about is cannibal movies, mondo films, the crossover between Gary Garver in porn and horror movies, Cannon movies and Godfrey Ho. No one ever wants to talk about those things. I never want to talk about politics because the world is a ratchet effect: one side blocks movement back to the left, another turns everything to the right and you are a spoke on their wheel. There is no two-party system, you are being lied to, there are only poor people and those that have everything and all we can do is take care of our immediate circle of people and attempt to start a better world on a small scale, if we can, except you know, the world is heading toward a climate change that will negatively impact everything on earth.

Can we just talk about fucking ninjas now?

You can watch this on Tubi.

Gadis Berwajah Seribu (Dream Girl) stars Barry Prima, who was in Golok Setan and I don’t believe that he could have been in a normal movie if he tried. This is supposedly about the hero and his magic necklace, but it’s also about a bunch of dudes in a post-apocalyptic vehicle with machine guns and rocket launchers and you’ll wonder, “When is this movie set?” but come on, I’m not watching this for period accuracy. I’m watching it for fistfights. And yet there are hardly any ninjas, but there are zombies.

Prima is Kiki, the muscular hero, Dana Christina is his lover Maya and Advent Bangun (the blind swordsman from — you knew it — The Warrior and the Blind Swordsman) is the man in black with throwing stars which I guess is your ninja. He also stomps a hunchback’s hunch until it’s just a regular back at one point.

There’s also an evil sorcerer, zombies, resurrection by flying bloody heart and skull, organs ripped out of people’s bodies, people blowing up, dune buggies, smoke bombs, torture sequences and yes, the worst in dubbing.

There’s a decimated print on YouTube.

A remix of Du wang qian wang qun ying hui (The Stunning Gambling) which was directed by Chung Ching-Woon and changed beyond comprehension by the demonic entity known as Godfrey Ho, this movie is all about Stephen Baker, a gambling magician who uses the powers of the North and South Gambling Kings and dice taken from the mouths of dead people to become a Gambling King in his own right.

He then challenges the Gambling Master, Mr. Myer, to a card game with both of their lives as the bet. He cheats to win and even though there’s proof of his bad sportsmanship, Myer keeps his word and blows his brains out despite his son Leslie begging him to stay alive for their family.

Now, the ghost of his wife Rose appears to his brothers Roger, a white ninja, and Ken, a green ninja who is also a priest, to avenge his death. As they battle Chinese zombie vampires, Leslie and his father’s best friend seek out an alcoholic by the name of James Webber. He’s only lost once and that was enough to make him crawl into a bottle. At this point, the movie decides to pile on the characters, including a bar brawling girl named Ann, a stuntman named Ricky and a special effects girl called Lily and they combine fighting and gambling while the ninjas throw grenades.

I don’t know how anyone can dislike a movie that somehow combines the thrill of gambling with jiāngshī hopping into fisticuffs against multicolored ninjas. Seriously, how sad is your life if you look down on something so wonderful?

You can watch this on Tubi.

Also known as Ninja in the U.S.A., Ninja U.S.A. but not American Ninja — but if you told someone to get you that movie at the store and they brought you this the name did its job — this movie knows what you want right off the bo staff, showing Jerry Wong (Alexander Lou) fighting tons of ninjas to the death while also beating the absolute bark out of a tree for no reason at all. This movie gets the message that Ninja 3: The Domination laid bare for us all to never forget: start your movie with ninjas killing people and don’t connect it at all to the plot and you will be better for this experience.

Tyger McPherson has put together an army of ninjas to wipe out any witnesses to his drug dealings and the NYPD is stumped. This ninjitsu army follows Tyger so devoutly that they will die for him no questions asked. But Tyger has another side. He’s a Vietnam vet who adopted two kids, Jerry (who grew up to be the Jerry the ninja we already met) and NYPD cop Ronny (Alex Yip), who is devoted to putting drug dealers in jail. To add insult to injury, Jerry is getting married to Penny (Rosaline Li), a reporter also out to expose her new father-in-law and somehow, she gets evidence on the wedding day and gets kidnapped. Man, I thought the cops coming to my first wedding was bad.

If you hate your dad, at least he never kidnapped your wife, had some thugs assault her, videotaped it for you and then sent it to your house.

You can watch this on YouTube and see if it makes any sense to you, I guess.

Joseph Lai and Godfrey Ho may have done their dark ninja magic to hundreds of films but this was the first. Lai had already been redubbing martial arts films for the rest of the world for years, but when he made it to Cannes that year, he saw that Enter the Ninja was a big deal or so the story goes. Yes, we’re in the world where Cannon is the giant to a studio, which is kind of like how The Incredible Shrinking Man eventually fell through dimensions as his atoms decreased in size and mass, changing the rules of how he once saw reality.

Richard Harrison was born in Salt Lake City, made his way to Hollywood and did some smal;l parts before marrying Loretta Nicholson, the daughter of American-International Pictures co-owner James H. Nicholson. Frustrated by his fortunes domestically, he headed off to Italy where he spent the next twenty years, making peblum (Perseus Against the Monsters, The Invincible Gladiator), westerns (the incredibly named God Was in the West, Too, at One Time), Eurospy (Secret Agent Fireball) and even appearing in Joe D’Amato’s Orgasmo Nero and writing Bruno Mattei’s Scalps before working all over Eastern Europe and Asia. Wherever there were movies, there was Richard Harrison. And after Godfrey Ho, well, there were tons of the same movie and similar titles all with his name as the star.

He’s also how Clint Eastwood became a huge star.

When Sergio Leone came to the set fo Rawhide looking for someone to star in his movies, he wanted Eric Fleming to the guy but was put off by his personality. Enter Harrison, who recommended Clint.

“In my opinion, it is a death wish for an actor to be in too many B or should I say C movies. Maybe my greatest contribution to cinema was not doing Fistful of Dollars, and recommending Clint for the part,” said Harrison.

As for working with Ho — who he first met when he made Marco Polo for Shaw Brothers — Harrison would tell Nanarland, “Twice I went to Hong Kong to work for them, and even though the quality of the films were very poor my wife and I enjoyed Hong Kong very much, and the crew was mostly made of nice people. Then Mr. Tomas Tang contacted me to make a film for him. I told Godfrey about the offer in strict confidence, but he told Mr. Lair, who told me I could not do the film. Naturally, I told him that after I finished my contract with him I was free to work with whomever I wished. Mr. Lai contacted a friend who was a tax man and was told I owed quite a bit of money in taxes. When I showed that my contract stated I would not be responsible for any taxes in Hong Kong, the man said it was not valid. I agreed then to do another film for Mr. Lai to pay the taxes. There was no script, only sides. Nothing made any sense, but the stories usually didn’t. Then a young English boy warned me to be careful because they were pulling some type of dirty trick on me. To be quite honest with you I was not too worried as all the work I had done for them was so bad I was sure no one would ever see them outside the cutting room. Also, during this last film or films, our living conditions were not good. My first call came from Germany telling me how bad the films were and they had only bought them because they trusted me. I have no idea how many films they made from my last filming, but some say as many as ten. I put a lot of trust in friendship, so it hurt more than just professionally.”

How hurt was he by this? Pretty hurt: “This experience made me feel very dirty. I really felt like a prostitute. They were thrown in my face all the time. I saw part of one once, it had something to do with witches. I don’t think I had more than a couple of scenes in it…I felt helpless in Hong Kong. This was the reason I stopped caring about acting. I really felt dirty and used. Again, I will say I had no one to blame but myself for being so trusting.”

As with most Godfrey Ho movies, Ninja Thunderbolt has twenty minutes of ninjas spliced into another movie, in this case To Catch A Thief. There’s also an actor named Jackie Chain in the cast. This would not be the Jackie Chan that you know.

The ninjas start the movie with all the rules of belonging to the ninja temple and saying badass black metal lyrics like “When the gods are angry, we must kill the gods! If the spirits of the dead rise against us, we must kill them as well! Our blood is motivated by ninja spirit!”

Then it turns into a caper movie about stealing a jade horse.

Then somehow, after a really explicit and almost pornographic scene — I’m no prude, I was just shocked that it was in this — ninjas on rollerskates chase someone and that’s what I’m watching these movies for.

So where’s Richard Harrison? He’s a cop named Richard Lawman, which of course he is, and he’s also a ninja. A ninja cop. He’s also the boss of one of the characters in the footage from To Catch a Thief and that means that they can only take via the multiversal phone that all Godfrey Ho movies use to bridge years and continents and films.

Whenever a ninja movie has a multicolored smokebomb go off, just know that I am smiling.

You can watch this on Tubi.