I’m kind of obsessed with John Liu. If all he did was New York Ninja or Ninja In the Claws of the CIA, I’d still be into him. But I keep finding his movies and they’re all as strange as the next. What a shame that there’s only one more that he made, Dragon Blood, for me to check out.

And yes, this also goes by a ninja title.

Avenging Ninja.

Beyond being the founder of the Zwen Kwan Do fighting system, Liu also directed and wrote this movie. And stars in it as himself.

Now you see why I’m so fascinated.

Liu was once a martial arts teacher but now he’s part of the Hong Kong film world. Well, for now. Because his father, an American aerospace scientist, has just been kidnapped and now he has to go to Paris, as the title promises us. What it delivers is a plot that literally confounds all attempts to explain it.

Let me try.

Liu had a romantic scandal that rocked the world of Zen Kwan Do. He fell for a wealthy woman named Catherine and her father came after him, which left one lover dead, another as a nun and Liu’s daughter somewhere out there, out where dreams come true like Fievel. But not in America.

Instead of finding his father, John fights goons. And fights a guy in an American flag gi. And fights more henchmen. He even fights when he goes to put flowers on Catherine’s grave. And then he meets two girls who are pretty much going down on an ice cream sundae and he follows them onto a little yacht, gets knocked out and has to fight again, this time Roger Paschy, the same guy he’s fought numerous times in this movie but never on a little boat before.

He mentions that he still has to find his daughter, but then the movie ends. What about his dad? Maybe he had another fight to get ready for.

Living up to the spirit of all martial arts movie that I love, this uses “My Way” and “Live and Let Die” with absolutely no concern for copyright. It also uses music from Lipstick — the disco music, not the baffling audio soundscapes that Chris Sarandon will sexually assault you to — and that really freaks me out in the best of all ways possible.

Honorable fighting, yes. Music rights, no.

There’s nothing like a martial arts vanity project. I have no questions in my mind that the real John Liu also impregnated every woman in this movie and they all ended up in French convents too. Then he flashed that smile, titled down his sunglasses and screamed, “The Budokan spirit will never die!”

You can watch this on Tubi.