Because we don't have enough budget level kung fu releases yet, Brentwood (aka Navarre aka BCI Eclipse) has launched their Kung Fu Theater line of double features, containing one movie on each disc in the set, and what an interesting pair of titles they've chosen to use in launching this line….

Ninja Connection:

Another Godfrey Ho film that's basically two movies that may or may not have ever been finished, chopped up and re-dubbed, and cut into some sort of all new beast in that inimitable style that only Mr. Ho can manage. Better known under the alternate titled of Ninja In The Killing Field (and released in Europe as Killer Ninjas, surprisingly enough this 1984 film doesn't feature Richard Harrison but instead showcases the fine acting ability of British stuntman, Stuart Smith in the lead role.

Like most of Ho's chop shop productions, this movie makes very little sense and bounces around like a really dysfunctional kid hopped up on too much sugar, but it definitely has enough of those stand out 'what the hell?' moments to make it worth a look for people who enjoy that type of thing.

A sinister leader of a gang of evil ninjas wants to bust into Thailand and take over the drug trade using his army of shadow warriors to take down the competition and avoid government scrutiny. The government clues in to the fact that ninjas are soon going to be invading their country for all the wrong reasons and so they set up a sort of task force to try and stop them before it's too late and the country is overrun by guys in black pajamas. The Thai government proves to be no match for ninjas, however, and soon enough the evil ninja boss' plan is in place and he's raking in the big bucks peddling dope.

Before matters get worse, the government officials decide to call in an American operative named Richard who is a tried and true expert in the field of defeating evil ninjas. He lands in Thailand, proves to bear an uncanny resemblance to Michael Dudikoff's character in Sam Firstenberg's Cannon classic American Ninja, and sets out to make things right for Thailand.

Now if that sounds like it makes sense, keep in mind that as the movie goes on characters are introduced and then never appear again, dialogue wanders all over the place, and ninjas pop up and do stuff for no reason at all. At one point in time the red ninja boss is sitting around watching a broadcast of someone robbing a gas station. No one bothers to explain why, maybe it was slow TV day in Thailand, but it does nothing to serve to plot in the least and the movie is full of completely random snippets like that and they only serve to confuse things. To complicate things further, the ninjas, of which there are many, are all named 'Ninja #1,' 'Ninja #2,' et cetera and you can't really tell any of them apart.

The movie meanders around nowheresville for a good portion of the middle of the film, loosing track of anything remotely resembling a plot, but then the ending comes where Richard finally tracks down the evil red boss ninja and confronts him…

SPOILERS!!!!!!!!!

When Richard shows up, he kicks the asses of many of the evil drug dealing ninja's assistant ninja henchmen. This scares the red boss ninja and so he and a few of his right hand ninja men hop into what looks like a 1978 Honda Accord and make a break for it. Just when it looks like they're going to make their escape all crammed into the little car, it gets stuck in a pot hole. Here, the ninjas all get out and start pushing the car but not even the mystical might of their martial arts can save them as Richard shows up again and kills them all, save for the red boss ninja. The inevitable showdown happens, Richard wins, and the red boss ninja turns into a bunch of toads, ending the film.

I can't claim to understand the significance of the toad transformation, but I swear to you, I am not making this up and it truly does need to be seen to be believed.

END SPOILERS!!!!!!!

This movie is terrible, but it's hard to stop watching, kind of like when you see burning bodies alongside the highway after coming across a car wreck. It's horrible to look at, but you can't turn away. The movie doesn't make a lick of sense, the acting is horrible and the dubbing is worse, but I sat through it from start to finish and somehow managed to feel quite vindicated by the last ten minutes of the film. Interpret that as you will.

Mr. X:

The onscreen credits attribute directorial duties on this bizarro-world hybrid film to an Ed Woo, but I suspect that Godfrey Ho might have had a hand in this one as well as his style of chop shop filmmaking is all over it and he's credited with a supporting role in the end credit scroll.

The basic plot of the film is that a gangster is getting married to his fiance. On the day of their wedding, a rival triad group come swirling in with guns blazing and lay waste to almost everyone who has shown up to celebrate. This pisses off Triad gang number one and they send in a guy who does a really bad Chow Yun Fat impersonation to get revenge.

While all of this is going on and the Chow Yun Fat guy is mowing through gangsters like they're warm butter (no word of a lie, he kills well over a hundred people in this movie and rarely runs out of bullets), an equalizer is brought on board in the form of one Mr. X (Joe Lewis) to settle things down and stop more people from getting killed. Mr. X is a noble man who answers to a wise, sage-like older monk who periodically infuses him with words of wisdom.

OK, first things first, this is so obviously some strange recycled version of an older Hong Kong film with inserts put into it. You know how you can tell? Because all of the more modern footage, the footage of the newscasters and of Joe Lewis, is shot on video. When this is inserted into the material that is in Chinese and was shot on film, it's glaringly obvious. If that weren't enough, the filmmakers (or, the guys who chopped everything up) went ahead and added flashes to show you just where people get shot not on the muzzles of the guns where you'd expect them to be, but on the bodies where the impact occurs. What this means is that when someone gets shot, you don't see a flash on the muzzle, you see it on the target – the results are breathtakingly bad in such a delirious way that you can't turn away.

Before I tear Joe Lewis' performance a new one, let me preface it by saying that the man is a true champion. He's the master of many different forms of fighting styles, he's in phenomenal shape, he's made a lifetime career out of his work in the fields of self defense and training, and he even trained with the one and only Bruce Lee. The man is the real deal, and I would not want him to kick my ass, but wow, is his performance ever bad in this movie. Most of the time it looks like he's trying to read off of cue cards (and he might have been) and the fact that he's edited into a movie in which he obviously never starred gives the whole thing a truly hilarious tone that you just can't achieve on purpose. Whenever Joe pops into the movie, it instantly comes to a screeching and hilarious halt that pulls out your brain and craps on it for a few seconds.

The original version of this film, and I don't know what it was originally called before big Joe was put into it, could have been an okay John Woo knock off. There's plenty of bullet ballet, most of which goes down in slow motion, and a hero who wears trench coats and mirrored shades and who isn't afraid to jump sideways across the room, twin .45's blazing at the enemies. In this form, however, and chopped up as it is with inserts and weird added gunshot effects, it's nothing short of a true "disasterpiece" of modern movie making.

Video:

Well, both movies are presented fullframe, though neither of them were shot to be shown that way and whatever interesting compositions that might have been are sadly no more as this is pan and scan all the way. To add insult to injury, both movies have been taken from VHS source that weren't in the best of shape to start with and as such, they look a mess. Aspect ratios aside, the colors are faded, there are tape roles throughout, and there's very little fine detail present in the picture. Black levels are either muddy and grey or way too blotchy, covering up anything else in the picture. Reds bleed throughout, and everything is really, really ugly looking.