Also known as Shaolin Quick Draw, Ninja: Champion on Fire and Ninja Operation 6: Champion on Fire, this Godfrey Ho-directed mix and match remake remix rip-off takes much of its story from Da di long zhong (Fury In Storm), a 1974 Chin-Liang Hsu-directed movie that features a guy named Anthony (Patrick Kelly), a Catholic who is such a true believer that he carries a wooden cross like Jesus. He carries it everywhere.

He’s nearly killed when the train that allows him on is taken over by a Japanese gang, but he’s the one that slowed the train down so they could attack it. They get what they wanted, a gold statue, and then double-cross him.

They crucify him, even placing a man on each side of him, but somehow he survives and ends up meeting a man named Dragon (Yi Chang), a martial arts master who teaches him how to withstand blows from weapons and walk through punches and kicks.

Does this seem weird enough for you? I mean, the original film was called Django – Im Reich der gelben Teufel (Django – In the Realm of the Yellow Devils) in Germany. That’s because just like Django’s coffin, Anthony’s crucifix — that he’s already survived being crucified on — has a Gatling gun inside it.

Master Gordon (Richard Harrison), the ninja who has been in so many of Godfrey Ho’s movies, shows up in this, battling other brightly colored ninjas and also meeting Anthony in a waterfall to warn him about a danger he is about to face. He’s also about to battle an evil ninja named Ringo (Stuart Smith).

This is also very much an Italian Western with an ambiguous hero — Anthony is a man of God but somehow has no issues slapping around the lover of the main bad guy, who has fallen for Dragon and he or her — and an ending where, like the best of the Eurowest, nearly everybody dies, including Anthony chasing most of the gang that put him up against a firing squad earlier and doing onto others as you would have them do onto you.

Also, as always, lots of Tangerine Dream. Some Mike Oldfield, too.

The movies of Godfrey Ho and the AAV Creative Unit are always going to be strange. But even I was not ready for this film which tears through pop culture, ripping off rip-offs, reducing film to some formless amorphous ever-changing Silly Putty that distorts but retains some of the story of the funny pages that it has stretched out upon.

You can watch this on Tubi.