Third Clue: January's Mystery Movie

Clue #3: This month's film is one of the few of the 67 films Godrey Ho directed between 1986-1988 that did not feature ninja.

Tape Freaks Presents: January's Mystery Movie at the Trylon microcinema, Wednesday, January 4th@ 7:00pm, only $5!

****Purchase advance ticket here****

The Films of Godfrey Ho: Counter Destroyer

Based on the box, Counter Destroyer looked like it had everything to do with a Nightmare on Elm Street rip off and nothing to do with Robots or Vampires, so we were SUPER surprised when a Robo Vampire appeared out of nowhere in the last 15 mins of the movie...

The plot sort of unfolded like this: A group of vampires controlled by a local priest (or monk) are making a local crime syndicate's lives miserable. The same vampire-controlling priest also feels it's his responsibility to warn a group of women that the house they're renting is cursed. (Or maybe it was haunted?) The group of women renting the house are part of a film crew that's shooting on location. One of those women is the writer of said film, and she's hard at work finishing the script for the movie that's being shot... Unfortunately for that plucky writer, a Freddy Kruger type character who has been tormenting her in her dreams has started tormenting her in reality as well! Will she be able to finish the script before shooting wraps? Will the crime syndicate be able to continue selling drugs or guns or whatever? (Did you forgot completely about the local crime syndicate?)

Rip offs abound: A Nightmare on Elm Street rip-off was absolutely being poached for footage in this movie. Multiple scenes are straight forward rip offs from films in the Nightmare series, including one that somehow mashes together the infamous bathtub scene and the Johnny Depp death scene.

And that's not all: Robo Vampire inexplicably shows up at the end to add to the climactic battle! Because why not?

But don't take our word for it: The above barely scratches the surface on the layer-cake of surprises that is Counter Destroyer (aka The Vampire is Still Alive), and it's currently available on YouTube:

Second Clue: January's Mystery Movie

Clue #2: This month's film utilizes (or more likely lifts) the music of Tangerine Dream and Wendy Carlos, as well as parts of Richard Band's score to Re-Animator.

Tape Freaks Presents: January's Mystery Movie at the Trylon microcinema, Wednesday, January 4th@ 7:00pm, only $5!

****Purchase advance ticket here****

First Clue: January's Mystery Movie

Clue #1: The theme for January's screening: The Films of Godfrey Ho.

While watching Godfrey Ho films we have witnessed a wedding between a ghost and vampire, ninja fights cut into movies that otherwise feature no ninja, and recurring appearances of a Garfield phone. These are a just fraction of the gems we’ve uncovered while watching Godfrey Ho movies, its high time we shared one with you!

Tape Freaks Presents: January's Mystery Movie at the Trylon microcinema, Wednesday, January 4th@ 7:00pm, only $5!

****Purchase advance ticket here****

Genre Mashing: Robo Vampire

A gem from the box art alone ----------------------------------------------------->

 The sleeve and credits said one “Joe Livingstone” directed this masterpiece, but a quick look on the IMDB told us it was actually Godfrey Ho, director of a-hundred-and-nineteen surely wonderful movies including gems like Ninja Terminator, Robo-Kickboxer, Clash of the Ninjas and a few more we own but haven't gotten around to watching yet.

Plot unfolds something like this: Some crafty drug smugglers have decided to train vampires to guard their drugs during transport. During an altercation with said vampires, a narcotics agent gets himself killed and then brought right back to life –by some questionable lab coated folks– to become a robot-cop hell bent on defeating the drug lords and their vampires.

And if that isn't amazing enough: There's a sub-plot that culminates in the wedding of a ghost and a vampire.

Things to watch for: Basement-sale budgets for everything, over the top run-on-sentence-exposition overdubbing, and a robot costume that seems like it was a very generous gift from a high school theater troup.

What we learned: This time we learned an actual thing! This movie is what we'd always called a “hopping vampire movie”, which we have now learned are called Jiang-shi. Behaving more like zombies than vampires, Jiang-shi hop as their mode of transportation due to rigamortis setting into their rotting corpses, they feed on qi (our life-force) rather than blood, and can be stopped by everything from the blood of a black dog to spilled rice.

Things you shouldn't care about: Every single actor in this movie (as well as almost all of the crew) never worked on a single other film, with two exceptions: Ernst Mausser (36 films) and Sorapong Chatree (57 films). Neither of those actors were even given credits in the original film!