Released under so many names — Matching Escort, Fury of the Silver Fox, Wolf-Devil Woman 2, Wolfen Ninja, Venus the Cavalier, Venus the Ninja and Venus: Wolf Ninja — some of those are due to director, producer and star Pearl Chang, who was also the auteur who made Wolf Devil Woman even if this was made a year before. Chang is amazing because she was making her own kung fu movies in Taiwan and as a woman in the early 80s and that’d be a big feat even now. To add to the odd charms of this movie, it was written by the man who would unleash a hundred or more ninja clones, Godfrey Ho.

Wronged by the warlord who killed her family — and seventy-four other leaders — Chang is a princess who trains in an underground cave filled with neon-hued colors and homemade skeletons prepping for the final battle with that very same final boss, a man who has a Nintendo Power Glove seven years before the rest of the world and knows how to use it to break swords and shoot out on a long metal coil. He also has on a sparkling costume that looks like Frank Brunner drew it.

Pearl Chang’s movies probably won’t be getting a high end blu ray release anytime soon — the fact that I missed out on the Gold Ninja Video microrelease kills me — so the ultrabright colors and hyperkinetic wirework is lost in multiple transfers as this movie moved from the East to the West.

Here’s just one reason why this movie is so great: as a child, the princess had to wear concrete boots. That way, when she grew up, she’d be used to be weighed down and as an adult, she can run so fast that she can walk on water.

The final battle is filled with spraying blood every few seconds before the good guys take out the eyes of the evil warlord. It’s super graphic and very fake at the same time, which is actually perfect when you think about it. Sometimes, people get stabbed so well that blood sprays ten feet directly upward.

Movies have never been more magical.

You can watch this on YouTube.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Jennifer Upton is an American (non-werewolf) writer/editor in London. She currently works as a freelance ghostwriter of personal memoirs and writes for several blogs on topics as diverse as film history, punk rock, women’s issues, and international politics. For links to her work, please visit https://www.jennuptonwriter.com or send her a Tweet @Jennxldn

1990 saw the release of the Category III hit Erotic Ghost Story. Directed by Lam Ngai Kai, the softcore art film boasted an engaging story, beautiful sets, costumes, and cinematography. Not to mention good acting by attractive people. Inspired by The Witches of Eastwick and Pu Songling’s Strange Tales, a scholar seduces three fox spirits who, having attained human form, learn later, that he is a demon. The supernatural conclusion where the three band together to fight said demon before they lose their human privileges was well-executed and scary. It’s one of the rare films of its type to be considered a classic to this day.  

Erotic Ghost Story 2 not only dishonors its memory, but actually serves as a perfect example of the stereotype that all Category III films are, in fact, throwaway sex films. This movie was absolutely pointless and horrible. The story was non-existent; the acting was atrocious and the sex scenes had the air of late night made for cable movie with the entire production looking as if it had a fraction of the budget of the original. Even the accomplished Anthony Wong taking over in the role of the demon Chiu-Sheng a.k.a Wutung couldn’t save this mess as he does little more than parade around with a white lion’s mane on his head in kabuki make-up making scary faces. Overall, the film was just boring save for the threesome scene with having sex on a swing. Even then, it’s only interesting because of the sexual positions on display. 

There’s also an underwater scene that woke me from my stupor because it made me wonder how long the actors had to hold their breath. My best guess is that they finished that day’s shoot with a sigh of relief much the same as I felt when the credits finally rolled on this piece of crap.

You can watch the trailer on YouTube.

The Devil’s Mirror is the story of the Jiuxian Witch and her Bloody Ghouls Clan battle two other clans who both possess magic mirrors known as the Wind and Thunder Magic Mirrors. If the three-eyed witch can get both of those mirrors, she can break down the walls of the tomb of Emperor Wu, take the Fish Intestine sword and the Thousand Year Ganoderma and, one surmises, take over everything. Well, the sword is for invincibility and the herb will allow her to live forever.

The elders of the clans, Golden Lion Chief Wen and the awesome Chief Bai who can fight harder than anyone despite only having one leg, can’t get along. So it will have to be their youngest clan devotees, Wen Jianfeng (Lau Dan) and Bai Xiaofeng (Shu Pei-Pei), who will keep the witch from winning it all, even if she has a spell that turns even the toughest fighters’ faces into wormy scabs and forces them to join her side for the cure.

This movie is also not afraid to spray blood all over the place and features a geyser-spraying beheading. There’s so much blood that it fills up an entire pool. And the witch is horny, I mean, she’ll tell you throughout. In fact, were I a martial arts witch of great power that could fly and had three eyes, I’d be worked up all the time as well.

If you watch one movie where a large martial artist kicks ass while having a spiked peg leg, well, honestly I can’t think of another film that has that.

The first movie that Sun Chung directed for Shaw Brothers, he would go on to make Human Lanterns which is a movie that you must watch and if you’ve already watched it, go ahead and see it again.

The bloody parrot of this film’s title is a legen of a bird that was born on the devil king’s birthday when all of the lesser demons gave him their blood, creatin a bird that grants three wishes to whomever discovers it. Those wishes, however, have a tendence to go poorly. One exampe is Guo Fan, a government worker who has lost a treasure and begs the bird for their return. The prize does come back at the cost of his son’s life. He then monkey’s paw wishes for the son back, so his wife kills him and commits suicide.

The treasure disappears again and that’s when fighters from around the world learn that if they find the parrot, they will become rich. Swordsman Yeh Ting Feng (Pai Piao) an constable Tieh Han (Tony Liu) start hunting for the truth, which ends up with Tieh killled and Yeh carrying his coffin like some Shaw Brothers Django. There’s also a Parrot Brothel where Pei-yu (Jenny Liang) works. There’s a whole hall of mirrors for her to show off her curves in.

If you liked the gross-out side of Shaw Brothers — Hex, Black Magic, Human Lanterns — then this is what you’re looking for. It also has plenty of sleaze and Wuxia moments to make one strange cocktail. Director Hua Shan has so many cards to deal you, from nudity to martial arts battles, sword fights, maggot eating, autopsies and demonic possesion to just name a few. Who are we to deny the man who made Infra-Man?

I mean, this is a movie where a woman sews a man’s face onto a Frisbee and uses it as a weapon.

If that doesn’t make you watch this, is there any hope?

As a warning, this movie makes no sense whatsoever and I’m not advising you to engage in mind altering substances — you may not even need them — but if you can’t get high and watch a movie that combines Bava colors with kung fu and obscene levels of puking, then what are you living for?

According to Taiwan Black Movies in Variety, this genre of films was “Known at the time by the polite description “social-realist crime films,” the genre was a broad church, combining over-the-top sexual and physical violence with stories involving either political or economic gangsterism.”

I’m telling you this because IFD Films usually involved filmmakers like Godfrey Ho taking multiple ninja movies and surgically fusing them together into one never all that conhesive narrative. This one claims to be directed by Joseph La with Ho as story developer, yet nearly the entire movie come from the Taiwan black movie Ma! Don’t Die On My Back!

The Ninja Master (Louis Roth) of the Silver Ninja Empire tells his students that Rodney and Janet — the characters from Ma! Don’t Die On My Back! — have broken the first law of being a ninja: no premarital sex. They have been exiled and oh yeah, Gordon (Richard Harrison), needs to go get the Sword of Valour.

Rodney (Chun Hsiung Ko) and Janet (Elsa Yeung) aren’t having a good time of things after being ninjas. He’s gambling all over their money, she works scrubbing floors despite being pregnant. When he wins a big game of dice, a gang sets him up and he goes to prison, leaving Janet as a single mother and to make things worse, an accident burns her face.

As their son Danny grows up, she’s too ashamed to tell him that she’s his mother and says that she’s just his maid. It takes him growing up and searching for his birth parents to realize that he’s always known his mother. She’s now dying and he puts her on his back to run to find his father, who has hung himself under a bridge. Yeah, this movie gets dark and you thought you were getting brightly colored ninjas.

Well, they’re still here. As the master sent away Gordon, he has denied Stuart (Dave Wheeler) from being his successor. Stuart responds by killing him but somehow, he keeps breaking into the movie to tell us the ninja commandments, living up to this film’s title. And then Gordon uses a ninja umbrella and defeats every other ninja and we’re just supposed to forget that we watched all these ruined lives.

Seriously, this is one of the strangest and most oddly perfect mixes of two movies that don’t belong together.

Basically, if you’re a ninja, get married before you make love.

Monkey King With 72 Magic is another take on Journey to the West and as you may have learned this week, that means monsters against our hero Monkey King (Ting Wa-Chung). This one takes place before that, so you’ll learn how he was born from a large stone on the mythical Flower Fruit Mountain and tells how he led an army of other ape children.

The title refers to the 72 forms that Monkey King can transform into and you’ll see all of them — and one more because Yang Chien (Lung Siu Fei) knows 73 different arts — in a wild battle scene. There’s also a scene where the Monkey King transforms into the wackiest looking octopus ever. Thanks to Die Danger Die Die Kill, I now know that these effects come from Gozo Matsui who also made the gigantic reptilian menace in King of Snake.

Monkey goes to Heaven, steals some magical peaches and gets pursued by all manner of celestial avengers, including the wheels-on-magical feet adversary Na Cha (a male character played by female actress Liu Chuan Hua). Yes, this is a movie where a monkey goes absolutely wild and makes a mess out of Heaven and needs to be admonished by Buddha.

Taiwan, never change. I mean, you probably have changed a great deal since 1979, but I just saw a Wuxia puppet movie from there, Demigod: The Legend Begins and the art of making movie drugs martial arts fantasy movies with animal heroes and villains is still strong.

You can watch this on YouTube.