A samurai named Yoshimitsu (Hiroshi Fujioka, the original Kamen Rider) is overwhelmed in battle and falls into a frozen lake where he freezes over the decades before skiier find his body. Soon, Dr. Richard (John Calvin) forgoes the traditional autopsy and revives the swordsman with some blue lights and introduces him to a modern world he can’t come close to understanding even with the help of an Asian studies expert named Chris Welles (Janet Julian, Humongous). Then one night, a janitor breaks in and tries to steal the thawed Japanese swordsman’s katana and gets sliced in half, sending Yoshimitsu on the run (but not before listening to watching the WASP footage of them performing “Tormentor” from The Dungeonmaster).

He wanders Los Angeles, saves an old vet (Charles Lampkin) from a street gang and getting into no small manner of trouble. Unlike so many frozen out of time movies, things in no way go smoothly or end happily.

Also known as Swordkill, this shot in Richmond, Virginia film was one I’ve been trying to find for some time. It was co-produced by Arthur Band, who must have had a calming influence on Charles for this one (Richard did the music making this a Band family effort).

It was directed by J. Larry Carroll, who edited Roar, Dracula’s Dog, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Massacre at Central High and The Hills Have Eyes before writing Tourist Trap and tons of cartoons, as well as directing only this one movie and written by Tim Curnan, who wrote the wonderful Forbidden World.

It’s 81 minutes long which is exactly how long this movie should be.

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.

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.

Charles Bronson, his wife Jill Ireland, J. Lee Thompson and producer Pancho Kohner had purchased the rights to this novel in 1980 and tried to bring it to Cannon after Death Wish 2, but they didn’t want to pay for all of the costs, so Bronson used it as the last movie on his contract with ITC.

The writer of the book. R. Lance Hill, wrote the first draft under the name David Lee Henry, with the script being finished by John M. Crowther (who was a MAD cartoonist and also wrote Kill and Kill Again). Don’t feel bad for Hill, who went on to write Road House.

Fielder Cook (How to Save a Marriage and Ruin Your Life) was the original director, but he was dealing with late career Bronson who had his whole family on set and would work eight hours a day and then be done. Obviously, J. Lee Thompson would need to come back and direct.

Clement “The Doctor” Molloch (Jospeh Mahler) isn’t a healer. He’s an expert in torture used by governments all over the world. He kills anyone in his way, like journalist Jorge Hidalgo (Jorge Humberto Robles) and can even outwit the Mossad.

When Holland (Bronson), a retired killer for the CIA, learns of his friend Hidalgo’s death, he decides to make it his business to do what assassins worldwide have never been able to do: bring Molloch to justice. His plan involves taking Jorge’s widow Rhiana (Theresa Saldana; Ireland was originally going to play this role, but as associate producer she advocated for Saldana, who had survived being stabbed ten times with a hunting knife by an obsessive stalker only two years earlier) and her daughter Sarah (Amanda Nicole Thomas) into Guatemala, where the Doctor is based, under the guise that they are a family.

Holland is a deadly and driven man, someone willing to physically manhandle a man who gets too close to Rhiana and then work with her to lure a henchman to their hotel for a threeway and then immediately stab the man right in the neck as she looks on absolutely shocked.

It turns out that Moloch has more power — and connections — than Holland believed, but then again, Holland is also Charles Bronson. No matter the setbacks, he’s going to do all he can to stop a man who he may have more in common with than he’d like to admit.

Hey — Jose Ferrer and John Glover are in it too, so Bronson and team weren’t skimping when it came to the supporting cast. And the ending is stark and totally perfect.

EDITOR’S NOTE: The Cannon Canon has been celebrating Bronson Don’t Like May(onnaise) all this month, which is the perfect time to watch lots of Bronson movies. This originally ran on the site on March 18, 2022 as part of Cannon Month. In August we’ll have our second Cannon Month so get ready.

You can listen to The Cannon Canon 10 to Midnight episode here.

Producer Pancho Kohner had worked with Charles Bronson and director J. Lee Thompson several times, so when they purchased The Evil That Men Do, it seemed the perfect movie to pitch to Cannon, who wanted to make more films with Bronson. However, the rights to that novel and the screenplay were way more than Cannon wanted to pay, so as Menahem was in Cannes, he asked Kohner to come up with a new movie and title, which ended up being 10 to Midnight, which was sold at the festival with no script and just Bronson. It sold immediately.

Warren Stacey (Gene Davis) is an incel before we knew what that meant, a man that has taken the rejection of women so hard that he starts killing them, showing up nude in their homes and butchering them, usually after they turn him down. We first see him kill an office worker named Betty Johnson after she makes love to her boyfriend in a van. Stacey easily takes out the man, then chases Betty through the woods, making her beg for her life before snuffing it out.

Stacey even attends her funeral, where he hears that her diary — which goes into detail on all of her sexual conquests — is somewhere in her home. He breaks in to find it and ends up killing her roommate, Karen.

The diary is already gone and in the possession of Detective Keo Kessler (Bronson) and his partner Paul McAnn (Andrew Stevens). They think Stacey is the killer, but he always has an alibi and as he does his killing nude and with gloves covering his hands — and this was made in the days before DNA, mobile phones and surveillance cameras watching our lives — so he evades being jailed.

Kessler becomes even more involved once Stacey targets another nurse: the hardened cop’s daughter Laurie. His mania over catching the killer even makes him plant evidence to get the man arrested, a plan that McAnn disagrees with. As a result, Stacey kills all three of Laurie’s roommates.

As a naked Kessler is finally caught, surrounded by police cars, he tells Kessler, “Go ahead, arrest me. Take me in. You can’t punish me. I’m sick. You can’t punish me for being sick! All you can do is lock me up. But not forever. One day I’ll get out. One day I’ll get out. That’s the law! That’s the law! That’s the law! And I’ll be back! I’ll be back! And you’ll hear from me! You and the whole fucking world!”

Kessler replies, “No, we won’t,” and blows his brains out.

Shot both as a hard R rated and TV-friendly film — in which Stacey’s nudity is covered — this movie is wild, with Thompson fully unleashed and Bronson waving masturbatory devices in criminal’s faces screaming, “You know what this is for, Warren? It’s for jacking off!” while Wilford Brimley tries to get him to simmer down. I mean, Roger Ebert called it “a scummy little sewer of a movie” and that seems like him telling me to watch it as many times as I can.

You’ll also see appearances by a very young Kelly Preston, future Orange County Real Housewife and ZZ Top video girl Jenna Keough, Michael Jackson’s girlfriend in “Thriller” Ola Ray, Robert Lyons as the D.A. and Geoffrey Lewis as Stacey’s lawyer.

You know, in real life, I’m very measured in how I view police militarization and brutality. But when it comes to Bronson, I cheered when he shot a criminal surrounded by police right in the forehead. I don’t know what that says about me.

For more info on all this great film, get Austin Trunick’s The Cannon Film Guide Volume 1: 1980-1984.