A murderer, with the help of Chinese vampires, does battle with the ghost of a dead gambling lord's wife and the gambling lord's living brother. Stephen Baker/Barker/Parker (the name is pronounced distinctly all three different ways) is aided by the magic of Taoist Collins, an expert in keung si, to cheat his way into becoming the Gambling King. He challenges Myer, a gambling master to a card game with their lives as the stakes, and wins via cheating. Even though Stephen cheated, Myer keeps his word and shoots himself, much to the consternation of his son, Leslie. Rose Myer, the ghost of his wife, individually comes to her brothers-in-law, Roger (a ninja in white), and Ken (a nerdy ninja in green, who also disguises himself as a keung si and a Taoist priest at various points) and wants her husband's death avenged. Collins sends his keung si after the two of them, while Leslie Myer and his father's best friend seek out the help of James Webber, a master gambler who became an alcoholic after losing one time. After Leslie calls him a coward along with some unprintable words, Webber agrees to help, but not alone. He recruits his friend Anna, whom we find participating in a bar fight, and his friends Ricky and Lily, working as a stuntman and a pyrotechnician on a movie, respectively. These three combine their fighting and gambling prowess to send dice flying into walls and so forth. Meanwhile, Roger and Ken recruit Taoist West in helping them defeat the keung si, bringing along a grenade so they can deal with Mr. B or P, who is obviously in a different film from what they are in. NINJA, THE VIOLENT SORCEROR is a typically madcap film from Filmark, once again the brainchild of man-child Godfrey Ho. Here, he writes and directs under two different pseudonyms - impressive! The film sees Ho up to his old cut and paste antics once more, this time liberally stealing footage from the obscure Taiwanese gambling movie THE STUNNING GAMBLING. The ripped-off footage is about rival gamblers cheating each other and getting up to all kinds of tricks but it's dull when compared to the newly-shot footage from Ho.<br/><br/>IMDb lists this film's release date as 1982, but 1987 would be a better date. You just have to listen to the music cues stolen from THE TERMINATOR to know that 1982 is the wrong year. Ho saw that hopping vampires and ninjas were big business at the Southeast Asian box office, so he decided to have the two fight for this production! Random actors fight ninjas, random actors fight hopping vampires, and occasionally ninjas fight hopping vampires. It's incredibly low budget and all rather inept, and how much you enjoy it depends on how much you enjoy trashy cinema.<br/><br/>Another interesting part of this production is Ho's willingness to cast uncredited former stars, an odd choice given that the English names listed in the film's credits are all made up. Angela Mao and Danny Lee are listed, but when they appear is anyone's guess. Ku Feng has a split second cameo but where Ho got the footage from I have no idea. The one actor who does make his mark is former Venom actor Lu Feng, playing the villain of the piece. He doesn't get to fight here (which is a mad omission) but he does get a fair bit of screen time and looks cool with his moustache. Baking him up is another veteran Shaw Brothers villain, Chiang Tao, playing the hopping vampire priest. You'll recognise those cheekbones anywhere… How bad is this movie? The voice over actors are listed as the actual stars. Those actually in the film are listed as uncredited. I am not sure what Director Godfrey Ho was thinking with this mess. Just because you have script, doesn't mean you should use it.
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295 weeks ago