Through the 1980s and early 1990s Ho created a series of
martial arts films made with a "
cut-and-paste" technique, which means they were created with the help of splicing various unrelated material (including the recurring
motif of ninja-themed scenes, often with little or no connection with the already disjointed plot) and
dubbed together. Several of the films' titles are an amalgamation of the word "Ninja" and the title of an already existing movie, for example,
The Ninja Force,
Ninja The Protector,
Full Metal Ninja, and
Ninja Terminator. He would film footage for one micro-budget picture, and then edit and splice the shots together in a different order, adding in footage from the various Asian movies, and then dubbing over the result to create a final product. This allowed him to create several Z movies with the budget of one, though it is often difficult to discern how much of the finished product was actually filmed by his crew. Godfrey Ho used American actor
Richard Harrison extensively as the lead role in many of his films. Harrison, a European
B movie star 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 productions without his prior agreement; the damage done to his acting career by this association with Ho's films led Harrison to retire in 1990. Other noted actors appearing in Ho's productions include
Stuart Smith, Edowan Bersmea, Gary Carter, and . Ho's filmmaking also included uncredited and unauthorized use of music from
Miami Vice,
Fight! Iczer One,
Kamen Rider Super-1,
Star Trek,
Star Wars, the
Super Sentai franchise,
Combat Mecha Xabungle,
Kyojuu Tokusou Juspion, and
Silent Running, and composed by
Wendy Carlos,
Vangelis,
Pink Floyd,
Tangerine Dream,
Clan of Xymox,
Hideki Matsutake,
Steve Hillage, and
Peter Schickele among others, as background score in his movies. The song "Just Like You" by
Chris & Cosey was used without permission twice in the film
Deadly Silver Ninja (1978) while "The Jet Set" by
Alphaville was used during a fight scene in the film
Untouchable Glory (1988). He also made some more mainstream movies, such as two martial arts films starring
Cynthia Rothrock:
Honor and Glory and
Undefeatable (both released in 1993), two
La Femme Nikita-inspired female assassin
Lethal Panther films in 1990 and 1993, and
Laboratory of the Devil, which was an unauthorized 1992 sequel/remake of
Mou Tun Fei's 1988 WWII shock film
Men Behind the Sun (further followed by Ho's
Maruta 3 ... Destroy all Evidence in 1994, in which Ho reverted to extensively re-using old footage). Ho appeared as a cameo actor twice, the first time in Siu-Pang Chan's
The Magnificent in 1979 and again in his own
Mr. X in 1995 (in the role of Godfather Ho). Godfrey's most recent credit is a cameo appearance in Scott McQuaid's
Space Ninjas in 2019, where he plays a janitor. Director Scott McQuaid noted that his B movie title was inspired by Ho's 70's ninja films and he wanted to pay homage to his work, so he wrote a scene specifically for Ho to appear in. == See also ==