This week, The B-Movie Boys enter genuinely uncharted territory with Ninja Terminator, Godfrey Fucking Ho’s gloriously strange collision of ninjas, crime syndicates, inexplicable plot threads, tiny robot couriers, and one extremely memorable Garfield phone. What starts as a seemingly straightforward quest for the Golden Ninja Warrior quickly becomes a cinematic game of “wait, who the hell is that?” as Jaguar Wong shows up, kicks approximately everyone's ass, and immediately becomes the most important person in the movie simply by being incredibly cool.

But the real fun begins when we start pulling apart how Ninja Terminator was actually made. We dig into Godfrey Ho’s cut-and-paste filmmaking machine, the bizarre economics of 1980s Hong Kong martial arts movies, Richard Harrison’s accidental starring role in approximately eleventy-billion ninja movies, and the strange little ecosystem of producers, pseudonyms, and unfinished films that made all of this possible. Add in a camouflage ninja suit that absolutely does not camouflage anything, nonstop martial-arts genital trauma, and an increasingly beloved Garfield phone, and you’ve got one hell of a conversation. The Schlockometer is deployed. The plot is optional. Jaguar is mandatory.

Mentioned in this episode:

• The Uninvited Guest of the Star Fairy (1984)
• RoboCop (1987)
• Godzilla, King of the Monsters! (1956)
• Cobra Versus Ninja (1987)
• Diamond Ninja Force (1988)
• Jim Davis
• Fred Rogers (Mr. Rogers)
• Joey Tribbiani from Friends
• Dolly Parton
• Hwang Jang-lee
• Bruce Lee
• Walton Goggins
• Richard Harrison
• Jeff Foxworthy
• Donald J. Trump
• Bass Pro Shops
• Garfield
• Power Rangers
• Futurama
• The Shrine of the Silver Monkey from Legends of the Hidden Temple
• Indiana Jones
• Willy Wonka
• The Devil in the White City

Our Links:

• BMovieBoys.com
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Incoming transmission. Incoming transmission. Let's boogie.

Welcome to The B-Movie, boys. I'm Dave Michaels.

And I'm Bryan Betz.

Did you dub that voice in? I don't know if it's like, the lag of us talking here or if, like a different white man just dubbed your voice.

No, I'm definitely here right now.

I was, like, waiting for you to actually, like, keep moving your mouth after you said those words.

Totally.

We are approaching. Yeah. This is a wild territory. This feels uncharted.

Uncharted for sure.

And brilliant.

Definitely something.

Exactly. What a movie. What a story behind this movie. And a lot of movies, a lot of movies.

I don't know why this one in particular stands out, but I'm happy it does, honestly.

I have a theory. I have a theory.

Yeah, there's a really good theory, actually.

It involves Jim Davis.

That's pretty fair. And that's one of my favorite Wolgethers ever, ever, ever. I don't know how this thing is going to do as a B movie.

I have no idea. I mean, it's like you said, uncharted territory. This is kind of all over the.

Place, but all over the place by design. Maybe this is.

2000, But at the same time, he might have also only directed 80 if you go off of what was actually shot by him.

That's true. That's true.

I like how we're like degrading 80. Like, what a schlub.

This guy only averaged three to four movies a year, not six to seven.

Hey, come, come, look at this guy over here. He only directed 80 movies in 21 year span. What a loser.

Yeah, and he took off five of those years. It's crazy.

What an idiot. And 32 of his movies have Ninja in the title. Oh, boy. We're going to get there.

Oh, yeah.

I'm so excited for this thing. What's it gonna score? What do you think?

I think it's gonna be somewhere in the middle. I don't think it's gonna do crazy. It could. It has the potential.

Challenge accepted.

Yeah. All right, well, let's find out. Let's. Let's plug this thing into the schlockometer. We have one movie, 10 categories. The first catego Audacity.

But before we can decide how audacious this is, we need to tell you the tale of Ninja Terminator.

An evil ninja empire ruled by the supreme ninja owns the Golden Ninja Warrior, which definitely isn't a gold shrine of the silver monkey with a sword. And it makes whoever holds the assembled statue completely immune to blade attacks.

That could be really convenient for say, a ninja.

I was going to say literally any American would kill this thing like in no time.

Just Indiana Jones style.

That's it. We're just going to pretend you had the flu and you're done. So I wish we could just Indiana Jones things more often.

I do too. Sometimes you need that build up and then that just instant bam.

That's it. Not everything has to be exciting.

Sometimes you just want to get it over with.

Just like hearing Mr. Rogers in the back of my head. Just like the world's a loud place. Got to calm down for taking off my shoes so Quentin can look at my feet. Won't you be my ninja?

Realizing that the Supreme Ninja is too dangerous.

With that kind of power, the immunity to blade attacks his three top warriors, Tamashi, Baron and Harry, steal the statue, split it into three separate pieces and go into hiding.

Did you get those names? Yeah. Doesn't matter. You're good to go.

All you really need to remember is that one of them is Harry.

Tamashi, Baron and Harry.

Harry, who wears his eyebrows outside of his hood.

That's how you know it's Harry Tease. Later, the ninja empire hunts down Tamashi and kills him, recovering the statue's torso piece.

If you aren't following this story right now, you're watching it, right? You're doing a good job.

Baron, who is now running a crime syndicate, sends his top lieutenant Tiger Chan to interrogate Tamashi's siblings to see if they have the missing piece. Tiger's goons murder Tamashi's brother in the process. And if you're still not following, you're still doing it, right?

Harry learns of the murder and dispatches his smooth talking agent, Jaguar Wong to protect Tamashi's innocent sister Machiko from Baron's thugs. It's time to start following along because Jaguar is here.

Hell yeah. This guy has screen presence.

When Jaguar enters this movie, you just start paying attention all of a sudden.

Yeah, there's stuff going on now. We're kicking some ass.

But we have to because this movie just tells us Jaguar's going to kick every ass that he Sees and he's going to look awesome about it or whatever they think awesome looks like. He's going to look like that.

Yeah. Jaguar's in the scene. People are going to attack him and he's going to beat them.

I feel like if they were to hear me out for a second, I understand what I'm about to say here. But if they were to Americanize this movie, they would cast, like, Joey Tribbiani, like, not even Matt LeBlanc. Joey Tribiani in this role.

Yeah, I could see that.

It's that type of vibe the whole way through.

The Empire's top enforcer, Yamato, attacks Harry using Baron's signature throwing stars. And then he attacks Baron using Harry's signature throwing stars. See what he's doing here? You see this?

Oh, I can't believe it.

He's attempting to frame the former allies and make them hate and try to destroy each other. But Jaguar isn't in the scene, so you really don't have to pay attention.

It's true. Like, all of what we're saying right now. Take it for whatever you want.

It's like, hey, let's go see what the white guys are doing now.

Pretty much. And I love our leaving out the entire movie because the entire movie's not part of the plot. Somehow, somehow they made a movie outside of the plot.

There's two separate things happening.

There's the plot and then there's the movie.

But there's also nothing at the same time. So there's three things I.

Didn't get until I read about it afterwards.

Yeah, we're definitely gonna get there for sure. While on the mission. JAG fucking war. He's back.

He runs into his ex lover, Lily, only to learn that she's now dating Victor Lee, the right hand man to Baron's lieutenant, Tiger Chan. You got all that. That bouncing ball names Jack fucking Noir does the sex with Lily. They loved each other. At some point she's dating someone else.

That's not gonna stop them. Jack War. Jaguar, over here.

Jack War. She's like, hey, we can't do this again because I'm with the bad guys.

I feel like the vibe of Jaguar is. Just because there's a goalie in that doesn't mean you can't score.

Right, Right. That's not.

Okay.

Fuck now, ask questions later.

No, no, that's. That's bad.

No, I'm saying that's Jaguars mo. I'm not saying it. And that's not advice.

So you're saying that this extremely cool man named Jaguar. He could become, like nearly perfect if he just Willy Wonka's his life a little bit.

Just a little bit.

Strike that. Reverse it.

Reverse it. Ask questions, then do it.

Maybe that's what Willy Wonka's planning was about. That was his question asking time to himself of, do I kill these children or do I lure children here to kill them?

Interesting. Yeah. Do you think he planned on killing them before they got to the factory or once they arrived?

Like, I feel like Erik Larson really bitched out when he wrote Devil in the White City about like the killer doctor and the killer house during the World's Fair, the Chicago World's Fair, because if he had any real talent, he would have done like the murder house of Willy Wonka and his factory. Like a devil in the chocolatey city, the brown city.

The real question is, is it first degree or second degree murder that we're trying him for?

Honestly, I think he would walk.

He probably would. Corporations have that kind of benefit.

They do. They can kill at will. Really, when you think about it, what did Will do?

Harry and Baron meet up and they realize that the planted throwing stars were an inside job orchestrated by Yamato and agree to an uneasy truce to fight off the empire. And if you're still wondering who to root for in this movie, you are officially now doing it wrong.

It's way too long. You should have asked this question probably 30 minutes ago.

By now you should know. It's Mustache, Watermelon man in his camo ninja suit and Jaguar maybe.

Probably most likely it's not a yes. And it's not because they're complicated characters. Don't get confused there.

No, no. They're very one dimensional.

You have Jaguar, who's very cool and kicks a lot of ass. And you got the white guy who's really good at being the white guy and also kicking a lot of ass. Actually, even though it's not him, we'll get there.

He's throwing knives at crabs and doing all sorts of cool stuff.

I don't care that this movie uses, like Chekhovs throwing stars or tries to. It can't wait till act three. It has to wait like two scenes because it's like we have to bring it back now.

Is this your throwing star? Is this your throwing star? I like the way they chucked it into each other's handles on their swords.

It felt like it was an understanding of like. This is just the most efficient way to get these to each other across this room.

I could hand it to you, but.

No, I'm not going to walk all the way over there. I don't trust you that much. And frankly, we both know we're going to land this. It's going to be great. It's going to be awesome looking.

It's going to be cool.

There are a lot of cool things in this movie. There's a lot of not cool things in this movie, but there's a lot of cool things in this movie.

I agree.

There's like more cool things than not cool things by a lot.

There are definitely. We're definitely trending on the cooler side than the not cool side.

Yamato begins escalating his threats against Harry and Baron by sending them messages delivered via tiny toy robots and videotapes. Declaring himself a ninja. Terminator.

That's the name of the movie.

A finally hot tub time machine. Yeah. I don't know if they actually. This is so uncomfortable.

Like, now that I know the story behind the movie, it's so uncomfortable watching it again.

Oh, yeah.

I loved every second of it again. I watched it twice, by the way, because I had to. Like, the second we were done watching as a group, I threw it on like minutes later.

Oh, wow. That's amazing.

Yeah, but I feel like you're overlooking something. Like you're just being too cavalier because you're like, this movie's so awesome and there's not a lot happening. So I can go to bed.

Oh, there's Jaguar. I'm ready again. But you're back in. You are overlooking something very important. Tiny robots delivering videotapes.

Like it's fucking Robocop or something. And there are so many nuts that get destroyed via karate or martial arts or whatever. This kicking is. Whatever.

When you do the kick and you catch the other foot with the other. With the kick. And they do that a lot. They do that so much. And I got to imagine their shit is fucked. Could be robocop though. Dick's getting wrecked.

Absolutely. It's non stop genital trauma. What's the name of my band?

That's funny. Mine's RoboCop. Shot a man in the dick. Never forget he did it.

So Tiger Man. Tiger Man.

It might as well be.

Sure. Tiger Chan's men kidnap Macheco.

Wait, Tiger Man's bad. It's the guy.

Yeah, he's got that blonde wig, so you know he's evil.

I was thinking Tiger King. No, he's kind of Tiger man now, though. Like you. You can't keep the title of king when you go to prison for all the Bad you do.

I think once you're in jail, you lose your royalty standing. You're just the tiger guy now.

That's gotta be like much more painful than anything. Like, even remember. Like you're the guy Trump wouldn't pardon. Like being known as the tiger guy is worse. That's not.

I don't know.

That's the one criminal that Donald J. Trump wouldn't pardon. That's not how this man's going to be known. And it should be.

No.

Because he's the one man.

Because he's the one man.

Dad, can you please explain the world to me? I'd rather fucking not go back to watch God re ho movies.

Okay?

He only made 80. Because he's a bitch.

He made 80, but he spread him out amongst 160.

As you do.

Made 160 half movies.

Oh, this is insane. We're like burying the lead all around right now. And I'm okay with it.

Yeah. Oh, totally. We will get there.

Imagine we don't do the whole thing.

We never told them how they made the movie.

They got eyes. They presumably know how to read. If they're listening to us, they might.

Not figure it out.

I don't know. But.

So, yeah, Tiger chan's men have kidnapped Machiko. So Jaguar kidnaps Lily about it and now they have to do the old hostage swap, a roo.

But shenanigans are afoot when the bad guys try to trick Jaguar by involving a fake Machiko and a time bomb or a remote bomb, some sort of splody thing with a clock. So Jaguar races against the clock to rescue the real Rach Machiko, just in time.

How'd you know it was the real Machiko? She wasn't wearing hockey pads. This clock dynamite bomb thing bothered me much more than it bothered you or anyone we watched this with.

And that bothered me even more that it bothered me much more than it bothered all of us. Weren't like, I don't understand how this didn't bother people.

He goes out of his way to say, if I push this button, you press this, Machiko's gonna blow up. And then we see Machiko and she's got dynamite there and she's tied up and then there's a clock on the dynamite.

So are there multiple ways of blowing this up or is this going to blow up either way? Just depending on the clock, I think.

Yeah, I think it's got a fail safe. If he doesn't have the button, the clock will still take care of it.

But what's the Point of the button.

It's always been my understanding of bombs.

What's the point of the button? What's the point of telling me he has the button? What's the point of telling them? And Chico's even on a bomb. He's not trying to ransom anything.

All of these are great questions, you.

Know, Like, Lily's part of the prisoner exchange. She is kind of wanders across because Jaguar's like, fuck that.

Yeah. She is the least hostage seeming hostage ever. She's just kind of hanging out.

Well, it's crazy. As they cross, like, the Rainbow Bridge, which is just a cliff. It's a giant fucking cliff side. This is dangerous. Is so dangerous.

But they're walking past like you have. Lily is, like, trotting through like, this was great. I got kidnapped by a handsome one.

And Machiko is walking by like, they hit me with fucking clubs and shit. She's not looking good. She's got to deal with this going forward. And this movie doesn't seem to care about Machiko's safety.

Not at all.

But they allegedly secure her safety, I suppose, via this Hotch exchange. And now it's time for Jaguar to fight Tiger Chan. And it seems like this is the appropriate time to talk about Tiger Chan because he's a man wearing.

I understand how insensitive this is going to sound, but it's Dolly Parton blonde wig.

Ooh, ooh.

Tell me I'm wrong.

I mean. No, you are completely right. It's. It's Dolly Parton blonde. It's just an interesting time to make that connection.

Why wouldn't I make that connection? I would have made it even if Dolly Parton was still alive and kicking.

I suppose that's fair.

It doesn't change the facts that Dolly Parton had a blonde wig multiple there. This is a blonde wig, this guy.

It's not very Dolly Parton esque, though.

It's not.

It's not high enough, tall enough.

It's not nearly any of that.

But it's a blonde Bob.

This should be offensive, like all of this that's happening to this man, because this man, Tiger Chan, is portrayed by an actor named Huang Zheng Li. Are you familiar with Huang Zheng Li?

I am not familiar with Huang Zhengli.

Huang Zhengli was a massive deal in the Hong Kong martial artist movies. Like, I don't want to say he's Bruce Lee level, but he's flirting with that. He's South Korean, so he's like a massive star with all that.

He was known as the King of Kicks.

Okay, that explains the kicks.

And he had certain little moves that he was known for doing with, like, his kicks where he would do, like, jumping off the guy's leg and stuff, because he was able to really control his body in just ridiculous ways because of how strong he actually was.

That's insane. I love.

To the point that, like, a lot of the stuff that you see him doing is him doing it. I don't know how much, but it's a right. Like he does some silly things with his body because of how massive of a star he was.

And now he's doing this movie because he had a pretty huge fall from grace.

Okay, interesting. I'm afraid to ask. Do you know why the fall from grace?

I'm not sure fall from grace was the right word to use words, phrase, turn of phrase. It wasn't really a fall from grace.

Ended up hooking up with a producer named Thomas Tang, and that was it. He got stuck. He got oversaturated, and no one really wanted to watch him anymore. He completely diluted his brand.

And then the Walton Goggins effect there.

Now he's wearing a blonde wig in this movie and a fake hand. I forgot to mention the fake hand.

I forgot about the fake hand.

Yeah, it doesn't come up ever again. But he had a fake hand also.

Love to see it.

Shouldn't say it's all bad news for Huang Zheng Le.

Like, don't feel bad about the guy because he fell from grace after being a massive martial arts movie superstar and then had to do these roles because he eventually became a businessman and opened up a factory that makes golf tees and things like that. And he's doing well, successful.

Oh, good for him.

Complete pivot.

Sometimes you got to pivot good on.

You can't really be upset. And he gets to look back on this and look at the blonde wig and just go, yeah, I did that. That's not a stuntman. That's your old man.

That's me in a blonde wig.

Do you know the way that Jaguar is going to defeat this man who used to be one of the biggest martial arts stars in the world?

Tell me.

Well, Tiger Chang keeps getting stuck in the sand. Literally gets buried up to his waist. And then he just gets. Just boxed. That's it. He's done. That's the end of him. Jaguar wins. Yay, hero.

Yay. So let's see what the white guys are up to.

Finally,.

Harry and Baron meet Yamato to face him together. Also, everybody can teleport now, but who cares if Jaguar's not there?

I do. I care.

Oh, you care about the teleporting?

No, I care about the Jaguar.

Yeah, same.

It's so cool.

Yamato kills Baron during the fight, but Harry overpowers Yamato and unites all three pieces of the Golden Ninja Warrior to claim its ultimate power. And it defeated Yamato just kind of blows himself up through sheer force of will.

Credits. Hard credits. Smash credits.

Yep.

Do you still not know what's going on in this movie? Because you did it right.

It's got a lot of what just.

Happened energy, but it also has a lot of but do I care energy.

There is a whole lot of that. Like, does it matter what just happened? It doesn't, because I'm thoroughly entertained.

Anytime Jaguar's on screen, there's going to be a large fight, and you're going to see things that you've probably never seen in fight scenes before. And then as the movie keeps going, you just expect awesome things to happen. And then it goes farther than your expectations every single time.

Every time.

Yeah. Every time. You're like, what could they possibly do now? Teleportation Smoke bombs?

This is like that episode of Futurama where Hermes is like a limbo champion and the bar keeps getting lower and lower. But it's like, this is a really good thing.

Yeah.

I feel like B movies are at their absolute best when they're in a.

Limbo competition just racing to see who can get to the floor faster.

But you can't just race to the bottom.

No.

You have to gradually lower because you have to keep of. No. I know. This is a goof troop. This is fantastic, though. The audacity. This movie is the Audacity High. It might be a zero. Yeah.

And the only reason this thing is going to probably be a zero is because of the way that this movie was made. And it's about time we talk about it. Because all the shit that we said doesn't make sense with the plot. It felt very cut and paste is because it was.

Yep, 100% Godfrey Ho only made half this movie. The white half.

The white half. He's responsible for the MacGuffin and Harry.

And really just getting the movie from beginning to end and calling it a movie. That's it.

Yeah, that is it.

There is no audacity in this movie. In my mind. There's nothing audacious about it because there are a couple Hollywood producers called Just Fly Betty Chan.

They had a company called IFD Films. And what they did was, was buy unfinished Hong Kong movies for pennies on the dollar.

Yeah, that tracks.

And then they filmed other things with white actors. And it had to be white actors because that's what sold in Western video stores.

He shot half the movie and then just cut and paste those clips into whatever movie they had bought and are trying to make a full movie out of. And they understand that it's goofy as hell. And they understand that the dubbing is goofy as hell. Everyone's leaning into this in the most.

I don't want to. Maybe I will call a professional way. But it's just cutting and pasting from an old movie and filming new stuff and putting it on top of it.

Yep. That's all it is. And it's. And I like that you pointed out that there. There's an understanding about how goofy it is.

And I think it's very obvious when you get things like the toy robot delivering VHS tapes and like, the faces that you see from, like, ninja master Baron, he just makes some of the most ridiculous faces. And then, you know, the Garfield phone.

The Garfield phone. It's one of the most famous.

I can't believe.

I can't believe that the good guy or bad guy, the white guy has a Garfield phone.

He's got a Garfield phone.

He used it multiple times. Garfield closes his eyes whenever he hangs up. You've seen the meme.

You might think, Garfield's phone. That's a cool thing for this one scene. You don't expect it to come back.

It's so much better when it comes back, too. So much better.

We get another shot of the Garfield phone.

He says, go to hell. Hangs up the Garfield phone.

Amazing. My favorite letterboxd review that I saw for this was all about the Garfield phone.

It's insane how popular Garfield is. Insane. I'm going zero audacity for this movie. I have to go zero audacity for movie. I know that. Godfrey. Homemade 160 movies.

Not all of them are made this way, obviously, but.

Right.

The IDF films purposely went out of their way to do this.

This was their business model of making these movies, Buying these movies, then finishing the movies, getting them on video cassette rental walls as fast as they possibly could. That was it.

That is why he had so many credits in such a short amount of time.

1980S Hong Kong martial arts movies. They were enormous.

Absolutely.

Absolutely enormous.

I like your zero. I kind of want to give it a Garfield phone bump because the audacity of including a Garfield phone is enough for me to give it a 1.

The balls to include it. Yeah, the great big meatballs and lasagna of life. That's it.

Just. Just leaning into the Garfield phone.

One for the Garfield phone. None. He had the balls to bring it back to.

He got it. I mean, heart also.

I like it, damn it. 3.

That is kind of where.

Yeah, I was kidding. I'll do it.

No, let's keep it at two. I think two is a good compromise.

From zero for now. Okay, keep going.

Heart is the next category.

Not a whole lot there. Might even be negative.

Yeah, there's not a whole lot of heart because like we said, this thing was just kind of finished and pumped out.

The making movies is hard. And he still had to put his time and effort into this one.

Okay, fine. Yeah. One for time and effort. And scenes with throwing ninja stars at.

Crabs, which was very good. It was like Annie hall without the. Nope, nope. Oh, gosh. What else? Batman too.

Was. Not sure where you're going with that one.

I wasn't either, and I yuckied myself out of it.

Yeah, that's fair. Technical incompetence is the next category.

It's low. Again. This guy knows very much what he's doing.

Yeah, yeah. And it's also. You're really only judging half the movie because half the movie's already made.

Yeah. And he actually had to fit in the pieces to make this thing semi coherent, which is really impressive in itself.

I mean, Godfrey Ho made a ton of movies, and he eventually started doing, like, some little mainstream things here and there, but now he teaches at Hong Kong University. He teaches film. He's like a super respected professor now.

That would be such a cool class to take.

This guy knows what he's doing. He knows exactly what he's doing.

0.

1. I like it, damn it.

1. I like it, damn it. All right. Low budget ingenuity.

I couldn't find any information about what the budget on this was, but I assume it was next to nothing.

Typically, they bought the movie for like 25 to $50,000, and then they spent maybe a few days, maybe a week shooting the white person stuff. I can't believe that's what we're going to call it. That's what I'm going to call it.

That's what we're calling it.

But they didn't cost much at all. And they were able to get more than one movie out of those filming days. Dot, dot, dot.

Pretty excellent.

Well, get there.

Okay.

I think that the low budget ingenuity is through the fucking roof with this movie.

Yeah, I'm inclined to agree with you.

Just the amount of creativity that you need to be able to take an unfinished movie, make something out of it.

Right.

And I mean, he wrote the script again in English, but he doesn't speak English well. Or at all.

I'm not quite sure what the situation was, but all the white actors and the white dubbers just looked at the people's mouths eventually and just dubbed shit over it.

Amazing.

He didn't care. No, not at all. But it was fine.

But he still managed to assemble a narrative.

He sure did. Godfrey Host seems like he's the absolute best. Just everything about this man. Not if you're Richard Harrison. We'll get there.

But he seems like he's the absolute best. Ten.

Ten.

No, no, no.

Oh, you're having second thoughts.

Yeah. It's an 11. I think it has to be an 11. I think it has to be an 11. The fact that they were able to do this this many times.

That's true.

I think that's crazy. Yeah. You don't hear about all the other ones. They have ninja. Other word. Just include another word. And that's what the movies are.

32 Different ninja movies.

I just think that this era of film is so cool. Like you hear about the bigger eras of film history. Like they're like, oh, the golden age of Hollywood.

And you have like, oh, the new American cinema coming out in the 60s and whatnot. It's like Hong Kong martial arts movies.

Yeah.

1980S. They're enormous.

The 80s. Kung fu boom.

Godfrey Ho is right at the center of it. And there's a reason why it's a boom and there's reasons why it lasted like a decade. It's an 11.

11 It is.

This is him at his absolute best. I think in this genre. Question mark. We'll get there.

Genre. We are going to get there. We're get there right now. Because I think this next category is also going to be a big boy.

We're talking genre, exploitation.

I think it's another 11.

What is more exploitive than taking a movie and going, let's throw some white people in it and rerelease it?

Exploit the shit out of it big time. And everyone knew about it.

You have these different producers Like Joseph Lai, like Betty Chan, like Thomas Tang, who are just doing this over and over and over and over.

Right.

For like 20 years.

That's crazy.

And I love how there's kind of like a rivalry in these cheap. They'll buy them cheap film, the rest formula movies.

Because you have Joseph Lai, who did this movie, and you also have Thomas Tang, who also this movie. They were close friends, but then they started competing with each other, as you.

Do with friends, and it became like.

A whole B movie studio system. Maybe Z movie, even I've seen it referred to as. But you weren't allowed to work for both studios. You had to, like, kind of pick and choose.

Oh, okay. Yeah.

So they just, like threw in the towel all of a sudden because they're like, oh, boy, that's not great. And they call it ninja exploitation, by the way.

I love that. I absolutely love that.

So, yeah, it's a weird history, but it's a history.

It's definitely a history. And I just keep coming back to Garfield phone. And how much more exploitative can you be?

The 80s, man.

Take another person's work and go, you know what this needs? Garfield phone.

Boom. Got to be 11. 11. Gotta be.

Yeah. And that brings us to the Holy Trinity. Blood, boobs and booms.

Do you remember some blood?

I do remember a little bit of blood. Yeah. We had some fingers getting cut off, some people spitting.

Remember some boobs?

Yeah, a little bit. Yeah.

And do you remember a boom?

I remember a few tiny little booms.

The movie ended with boom.

Sure did.

There was a boom and then it went right to black. And I lost my mind because we got ourselves a three out of three.

We did it three out of three on the Holy Trinity. It's full marks.

That is full marks. It's the second movie.

Yeah. It's only the second one to get it. The other one was from beyond.

And why wouldn't.

Of course, that movie had everything.

Full 10.

Full 10. I'd say go 11. But it barely had all three of them.

Barely had all three of them. It was like the shittiest special effect boom. I know we're getting away with one here and that's fine.

We're pulling a fast one. But I don't mind it. Memorable characters.

I'm never going to Forget Tiger Chan and his blonde wig.

Tiger Chan Jaguar.

And I'm especially never going to forget Harry. Harry and his Cabela's Bass Pro Shop camo ninja suit that he wears.

This.

He was walking around like, it's not an urban area, but it's certainly not the woods. Not even close to the woods. There's a lot more nothing than there are woods in every scene that he's in. He's not blending into anything.

Nothing. Nothing at all. Picture, if you will, If Jeff Foxworthy decided to become a ninja. That's it.

That's it. You nailed it. It's perfect.

So good. Oh, my God. That's three very memorable characters right away.

You also got the robot who delivers the videotapes.

Right? The robot. And depending on how far you want to push it, the Garfield phone.

I'm okay pushing it.

It's a very memorable phone.

I'm going full 10 again.

Full 10.

I have to. I have to.

Yeah. When you. When you think about other movies we've talked about, this one definitely seems to have some staying power.

And that might just be a recency bias thing or. I like it. Damn it. But just the explosion of the Garfield phone in memes in just general culture.

This thing has seeped into the go to hell hang up on Garfield phone. Gif is everywhere.

I love that you are so focused on this Garfield phone.

I'm obsessed with the Garfield phone.

The only thing that's going through my head is, like, when they were making this, the reason why all the white people are in ninja masks is you pull a mask up. Yeah. I can't believe white people using masks. I can't believe it either.

Right. What about their rights?

They pull a mask up. Yeah. They're not doing those stunts. It's not even a secret.

No, of course not.

They're not hiding at all. But I think, like, you're focused on the Garfield phone.

I'm sitting here thinking that they got two dildos to dress up in a cabela's Bass Pro Shop camo ninja suit.

That's a good point.

I can't stress enough how distracting this ninja suit is on this man throughout the entire movie.

Yeah, it's very out of place.

Oh, man. It doesn't even look like a ninja suit most of the time. It looks like a ghillie suit.

That just like, ghillie suit. Yeah.

Got sheared.

Took a ghillie suit, gave it a buzz cut. It's all right now. You're a ninja.

It's an easy suit.

10 For memorable characters. Yeah. The next category is quotes.

I've been quoting one line from this movie since I watched it.

Very curious which one.

But will it blow up my enemies is such a good.

All right. Yeah, I'll give you that. I couldn't remember any of them.

That's the only one.

This movie.

That's it.

That one. That is fair.

Go to hell. The one you've been talking about the whole time.

Go to hell. Of course. Garfield. Huge. It's massive.

That's a five. Have I ever heard of one?

Absolutely. Two good quotes. One of them is a meme. That's a five.

Nailed it.

That brings us to entertainment value.

10, 11, Maybe. This is so good.

This is a goddamn blast.

You have to watch this with people or you don't. You're gonna enjoy it either way if you just.

This one of the ones where I feel like you could get away with not watching it with people.

Oh, my God. This is a fun movie. It's.

It's nonsensical, it's goofy as all hell, but it is entertaining.

Like, honestly, it might as well be a Godzilla movie. And I say that in the sense that Godzilla movies have just mumbo jumbo shit going on. And then a big dinosaur is going to fight a big something else.

And that's what we're really waiting for. And that's what this movie is, is things happen. Man beats up people in ways that are more fun than the last time.

Jaguar is our Godzilla.

Yes. I love it.

Yeah.

This is the coolest.

It's funny you bring that up, because there's something that I thought of when. During our midnight movie madness Monday during our screening, Phil had asked, do we get Power Rangers if not for this movie? You know, the.

Not dubbed in, but like edited in a white person. So it would have a wider genre or audience appeal.

It's not a new thing. No, but it's just a super exploited thing.

It's very exploited. And. And I. I do think this. Boom. Maybe not specifically this movie, but the. The whole genre is the reason we have Power Rangers.

Oh, without a doubt. I don't doubt the genre at all. I think this is it. This is exactly it.

I mean, when Power Rangers comes out, even this genre quote unquote, is still going strong. And this is just another. That's another part of it, when you think about it.

Right.

Great point. Really.

For entertainment value.

Yeah.

And our final category is cult ability.

I had never heard of it, and I know a lot of people who hadn't heard of it, so I don't know how cult it is, but, yeah,.

It's hard to find information on it, too. It doesn't have the huge following you'd expect from a movie like this.

It doesn't. And that's so strange when you think about it, because this feels like it's perfect for that. I know. Like, how did this get made? Has done it.

They've been around for so long. They've done everything at this point, which is awesome.

Right.

I'm not really sure about the cult ability of this movie.

Yeah, it feels like it has potential.

Maybe. Like, the cult ability of the genre is more what I'm thinking about.

Right.

Comes and does this movie, he films a Godfrey Ho and then finds out that he's actually the star of 24 different movies.

What?

Just from filming with Godfrey Ho once.

I did not know it was that many.

24. So ninja terminator is one of them.

There's.

There's Cobra Verse Ninja. There's Golden Ninja Warrior. There's Diamond Ninja Force. Yeah. This man went and filmed and he thought it was only one thing, and it was 24 things.

That's wild. So wait, how many of those movies is he wearing the camo ninja suit in?

I don't actually know the answer to that. But Godfrey Ho definitely pulled a bit of a quick one on him for sure.

And Richard Harrison's career kind of went in the shitter because of that, which isn't great.

That's unfortunate.

Yeah. But at least Godfrey Ho covered his own ass by making it feel like the industry was bigger than just Godfrey Ho.

Yes. At least two people.

It's much more than that.

Yeah.

Because you also have Charles Lee and you have Godfrey hall and Alton Chung and Bruce Lambert and Victor Sears and Tommy Chung and Joe Livingston and Benny Ho and Ed Wu and Wallace Chen and Tim Ashby and Ho Chi Kwang. They're all Godfrey Ho.

I was waiting for that. Yep.

Every one of these directors from this ninja exploitation era, where you see these names, it's the same person. He put pseudonyms on different movies to make the studio feel bigger than it actually was.

Incredible.

And I have to feel like there's a part of you, my dear listener, thinking, how are they able to get away with this? Because surely it's a copyright issue. And it would be if they didn't buy the film. Negative.

Oh, my God.

So they bought the only masters of these not completed movies. They bought the literal movies. It's theirs to do what they want. Damn, these are brilliant producers.

Can we put genre exploitation up to a 12?

I think we might need to for this one. This is a special one because that is wild. It's just so many. He used dozens of different names. That's dozens.

We've never done a 12.

No.

Never done a 12.

But it feels warranted. Feels like it's warranted. I have a good feeling he's gonna pop back up at some point, too. I just. I feel like that's gonna happen.

Wouldn't be surprised.

I mean, we could just do a Godfrey Hocast. And I'm okay with that at this point. Like, holy shit, I adore this man. It just turns out that he's.

He's really good at the movie industry and the industry is a huge part of the movie industry. Part of the industry.

Right.

He's so good at this and he's so respected now that he's a film professor at the Hong Kong Film Academy.

That's wild. Absolutely insane. So, yeah, maybe this movie itself doesn't have the cult ability, but I think.

I think if you did like the works of Godfrey Ho, you could get repeat. You could probably start something. You could start like a Godfrey Hoe Night, I think, at like a small theater.

Right.

These movies wouldn't have kept getting made that the pace and speed they were made at and put out. He was doing 15 to 20 movies a year.

That's so stupid. I love it. Oh, my God.

It's got to be. I'm okay. Going like a six or seven. Yeah, somewhere there.

Six.

And that's. That's generous and I know that, but still.

Yeah. Well, that does it. We have a final score.

Whatever it is, I like it. Damn it, damn it, damn it. This is a good one. This is one of my favorites that we've watched.

This is a biggie. So much fun. Before I tell you, I'm going to tell you that this does have some scores scattered around the Internet. Rotten Tomatoes.

It only has an audience score but it's a 63 IMDb it's only a 4.5. And on Letterboxd, it's a 2.8.

It's not bad.

It's. It's right in the middle there for all of those.

Oh, I know what I said.

Which is a little bit lower than where we put it.

A little bit.

A little bit.

Okay, we gave it a 68. I'm okay with that. I don't want to be okay with it, but I am.

Yeah, that's the exact same score that we gave to the Giant claw.

Sure.

It's real close to the beast from 20,000 fathoms and masters of the Universe. So, you know, it's. It fits in. It's got good company.

No, it's right in there. And I mean, frankly, that we have a score that's right in the good company and it's not even close to the highest movie.

It just shows how unbelievable B movies truly are.

What an insane segment of the film industry.

I'm absolutely loving it. I absolutely loved Ninja Terminator. I have to keep looking at the name because it doesn't matter because the.

Name doesn't mean anything. But yeah, it's definitely a recommend for me. With all that said and done, I gotta know, what are we talking about in the next one?

That's a fantastic question. And I wish I had a tinier robot to give me a videotape to give me the answer, but I only have this little piece of shit.

Aww. Why being mean to our robot.

Oh, this little piece of shit delivered. Okay, because for our next episode, two national icons trade championship rings for secret agent credentials.

Of course. Why wouldn't we be talking about that?

Why wouldn't we be talking about that and going off of what I just told you? Why does the world still know what this is? Why? And that's what has me most curious. Because I'm exactly.

The backstory is just so much more interesting than the movies themselves. And the movies themselves are pretty fucking interesting. I'm loving every second of this just by the title.

I'm very intrigued on why this has staying power. And I can't wait to dive into that next episode.

Santo and Blue Demon versus the Monsters.

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Bryan, you got anything else?

That is everything I have.

Fantastic. Thank you all for listening. Thanks for hanging out with us week after week, month after month, year after year. You are all the absolute best.

And we're going to see you next episode. When we talk Santo and Blue Demon vs. The Monsters. I have to keep saying it so I remember what it's called.

It's a hell of a title.

But until then, in honor of the patron saint, Tim Curry. I hope next episode makes you shiver with antici...