THE GHASTLY ONES (nominee for "most boring movie?")

[Scott H.]

Delving deep into the mines of movies in time I have happened to cross one name that will forever send a chill through my soul.

Godfrey Ho.

The man made kung fu. No, better yet, the man attempted to make kung fu. He would often take footage from an unfinished asian flick, then begin filming with American actors and forge together an unholy combination of the two projects where actors of the same scene might be in dialogue with each other, but have never met in both real life nor in the movie. This cut and paste form of movie making has left such scars in me that shall never be healed.

Sworn testimony:

"Review: Director Godfrey Ho made a living from producing terrible films. This comes as no surprise when you learn that much of his work is the result of glueing together exerts from other people’s unfinished movies, and box office flops that nobody saw the first time round. Often filming short sequences to abridge these random chunks of kung fu, they were usually released onto the American market during the home video boom of the early 80’s. "

Reviewed by Russ Houghton KFCCinema.com

"He is considered a master of B-movie Hong-Kong actioners. However, a number of his movies are Z-grade movies made with a "cut-and-paste" technique. He would shoot footage for one movie, often using caucasian actors for exportation, then edit the scenes into several other movies, mixing them with footages from old, unfinished or unreleased Asian movies (using Thailandese as well as Chinese or Philippino footage), then trying to make the story somewhat coherent through dubbing and voice-overs. He would then have four or five movies (of rock-bottom quality, of course) while having spent the budget of one."

IMDB Staff Writer

"With these ninja movies, Godfrey Ho took unfinished movies that seemed to cover a number of different genres (the other Godfrey Ho pseudo-ninja movie I've seen - I forget the title - seemed to originally been a kind of a clone of Fatal Attraction!), then hired some anonymous Caucasian actors dressed in multi-colored ninja suits and wearing headbands that read "Ninja". (Actually, not all of these Caucasian actors are anonymous - Italian star Richard Harrison is also a regular. Reports I've read claim he was hired for  one Hong Kong movie, but his footage was used for dozens of these pseudo-ninja movies!) Then for each uncompleted movie, Ho shot several minutes of footage of these Caucasian ninjas beating the crap out of each other, then edited them into the movie, using dubbing to attempt to link the old footage to this new footage. The result is, as you might be thinking, a big mess."

Coastnet.com Staff Writer

I hate Godfrey Ho. He is a stain on the world's movie world.

Scott H.
(the other Scott)

[Dave Munger]

We were probably both in some post Road Warrior frenzy of Austrophillia when we first saw it, so when I catch in now there's that nostalgia factor. Is the Gyro Captain guy in ever Australian movie? Come to think of it, I'm pretty sure he wasn't in Breaker Morant, but not totally sure.

[BoyScoutKevin]

The Gyro Captain was played by Australian actor Bruce Spence. While he was not in "Breaker Morant," he will be in "Star Trek Episode III," where he plays Tion Medon.

[Ozzymandias]

Did they make a video feature called Night Crawlers? I saw the star of this is Larry Palonia. I think he is also director.