In this first episode of Weird Cinema, we take a look at everyone’s favorite ninja factory: IFD Films and Arts. This was a very large and arduous production and this episode only skims over the plethora of information that has been dug up on IFD. An entire episode could have been made based on the archivist work done by many fans (notably Jesus Molina) that have tried to track down all of the various Taiwan black movies, Thai, and Korean films that were used by IFD in the pursuit of flooding the market with their ninja adventures.
This episode was a work of pure love. Although these ninja movies aren’t “great,” there’s something about them that draws an audience. Myself included. So, sit back and enjoy this overview of IFD, Godfrey Ho, and some of the key talent behind their wildest movies.
Credits:
Much of the information used in the Richard Harrison segment comes from the book “Actors of the Spaghetti Westerns” By James Prickette. This book covers, in detail, much of Harrison’s work in Italy (he was a big Peplum actor), but also goes a bit into his post-Italy phase as well.
The Richard Harrison interview used in this episode comes from nanarland.com and can be found here: http://www.nanarland.com/nanarland-tv-2-richard-harrison.html The interview has much more than what is shown in this episode and comes highly recommended!
While looking at nanarland, also check out the following interviews that helped make this project possible:
Bruce Baron interview: http://www.nanarland.com/interview/interview-brucebaronvo-en-page-1.html
Stuart Smith interview: http://www.nanarland.com/interview/interview-stuartsmithvo-en-page-1.html
Mike Abbott interview: http://www.nanarland.com/interview/interview-mikeabbottvo-en-page-1.html
As mentioned in the episode, Pierre Kirby information is tough to come by, but this fansite is a good place to start: http://pierrekirby.toonfur.com/index.htm
Jesus Molina is thanked during the credits (and mentioned above), but he definitely deserves a mention here as well. His work in tracking down the original source films from the IFD catalog is essentially unmatched. His blog is something that all fans should have bookmarked: http://goldenninjawarriorchronicles.blogspot.com/
Kenneth Brorsson and sogoodreviews are also mentioned, but once again, Ken deserves so much credit for this particular episode. Not only does he regularly spotlight these movies on sogoodreviews.com and sleazykvideo.com, but he also went through this particular video almost as many times as I did. He helped with fact-checking and generally helped with quality control. So, special thanks to Ken, and please subscribe to his channel as well: https://www.youtube.com/user/KnetanB
There are many others I should thank. My friends Jay, Rufus, Will, and Mike. Thanks for viewing this stupid video that will probably never be watched, but your advice and encouragement was very welcome and helped make this possible.
Another name that probably should be in the final scroll is of course Mike Leeder. The man who used to work for IFD and who has helped give us a lot of great information, and even an interview with Joseph Lai (http://www.forcesofgeek.com/2013/03/the-man-from-hong-kong-chats-with.html). Mike definitely deserves some major shout outs!
Anyway, I think that about does it. I would like to go through my video and list every single movie clip used, but perhaps I will do that at another time. It would, obviously, be a very long and detailed project.
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#videoessay
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