Godfrey Ho
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Godfrey Ho (1948–) is a Hong Kong-based movie director. He is best known for his "Ninja" films, a series of 1980s martial arts films made with a cut-and-paste technique. Ho would film footage for one film, and then edit and splice the shots together in a different order, often adding in footage from other films, and then dubbing over the result to create an (almost) coherent finished product. This allowed him to create four or five films with the budget of one. According to the IMDB, Ho has directed over 90 films, of which approximately 40 contain the word "ninja" in the title.[1]
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[edit] Background
Reliable biographical information on Ho is difficult to come by, due to his obscurity and his recent relative inactivity (he directed only one film between 1995 and 2005, compared with more than 60 from 1980–1990). The problem is further exacerbated by his frequent use of pseudonyms. He has been credited under more than 20 different names during the course of his career, although his motives for doing this are unclear. Interestingly, neither Godfrey Ho nor any of his other pseudonyms are his real birth name, which, according to the Internet Movie Database (IMDB), is Chi Kueng Ho (何志強).
In the Chinese-speaking world, Ho is usually credited by his real name.
Ho's pseudonyms include Godfrey Hall, Zhi Jiang He, Benny Ho, Chi-Mou Ho, Chun-Sing Ho, Charles Lee, Stanley Chan, George King, Tomas Tang, Bruce Lambert, Tommy Cheung, Tommy Cheng, Tommy Leung, Charles Lee, Alton Cheung, Ho Jeung Keung, Fong Ho and others.
[edit] Career
A notable feature of many of Godfrey Ho's films was the presence of the B-actor Richard Harrison in a lead role. Harrison, a reasonably well-known American B-movie actor in the 1960s and 1970s, agreed to act in several of Ho's films in the early 1980s, although this footage was later spliced into many more of Ho's films without Harrison's knowledge. Harrison has stated that the damage done to his acting career by this association with Ho's films led him to retire in 1990. [2]
Another curious aspect of Godfrey Ho's career is his connection with a man by the name of Joseph Lai. Lai is credited as the producer for many of Ho's films, although the relationship between them is unclear. The IMDB, until recently, listed Joseph Lai as one of Godfrey Ho's pseudonyms, implying that Ho produced his films himself under a different name. However, this has recently been changed, and the two now have separate entries in the IMDB database. Additionally, Richard Harrison referred to the two separately in an interview, lending further credence to the theory that Lai is more than another of Ho's pseudonyms.
None of Ho's films have received a rating over 6.0 from IMDB users [3], with most being rated at 4.0 or below. Only a lack of votes serves to keep many of Ho's films out of the IMDB bottom 100 list [4], as it takes at least 625 votes to be eligible for the list. Many of Ho's movies are revered by aficionados of bad movies as being among some of the most unintentionally hilarious movies ever created, featuring, among other things, Benny Hill-esque car chases run on sped-up film, roller-skating ninjas, and superfluous rape scenes which often have little or no connection with the already disjointed plot. Ho is also noteworthy for his uncredited use of music from Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, Star Wars, Wendy Carlos, Miami Vice, Iczer One, Pink Floyd, Tangerine Dream and Steve Hillage among others, as background music in his films.
[edit] Latest information
Godfrey Ho now teaches digital movie-making in Hong Kong at the Hong Kong Film Academy(http://www.filmacademy.com.hk/structure_en.html).
[edit] Quotation
- "I used to be a movie maker. Now I am teaching people to make movies. It really makes me glad when my students are happily showing me their works. Only if you've been through the whole process, can you understand how satisfactory and delightful it is."[5] (translated from Chinese)
- "I never edited footages in my movies! Who told you that?" (from now inactive ultimateninja.com)
[edit] See also
- Richard Harrison
- Stuart Smith
- Alphonse Beni
- Grant Temple
- Bruce Stallion
- Pierre Tremblay
[edit] External links
- Godfrey Ho at the Internet Movie Database
- MIC SPEED Professional Training Program and Courses (in Traditional Chinese; Big5 encoded)
- (French) Nanarland A French website that hosts a big section about Godfrey Ho's ninja movies, often making fun of them
