Joseph Lai: The Animations

Back into the breach again. I'm not saying these are the worst movies I've ever seen, but they're definitely the worst I've seen since I became a member of this blog (and I saw Things a few weeks ago!)

I first wrote about Joseph Lai and his partner-in-crime Godfrey Ho back in July for my first real post on this site (see it here). In short, assuming you don't know who these guys are, their movies are despicable cash grabs and blatant acts of thievery, but that's about ~25% of their charm (the other 75% is for the ninjas and the bewildered white men who play them).

The movies I'm writing about this time are actually pretty big departures from Ho and Lai's usual. For a start, Godfrey Ho isn't even involved this time. That's assuming that Ho and Lai are actually different people in the first place. There isn't much Lai information available, but if he's anything like Ho's other frequent collaborator Thomas Tang there may be more than meets the eye. IMDB writes:

Enigmatic Asian producer, owner of the "Filmark" company, specializing in cheap B-movies. It is believed that the names "Thomas Tang" and "Tomas Tang" were used as aliases by several people in the Asian film industry, as successive owners of Filmark. The last person to use the name Tomas Tang died in a fire in 1993.

So at least by name Ho is not involved in either of these films. That's one difference. The other main difference is that instead of being shitty and live-action, this time they're shitty and animated. Referring to these efforts as animation is a pretty huge compliment though, considering they're animated in the same sense that a comic book is. But only if that comic book had the same picture panel after panel, page after page with nothing happening.

Anyway first up we have Beauty and Warrior. The most interesting things about Beauty and Warrior are that it was directed by Sukma Romadhon (take that fasting!), and that it was made in 2002. To my knowledge this makes it the most recent work produced by either Lai or Ho. I'm going to let IMDB user Tony Gregerson describe the plot:

In the mysterious world of Mataram, two warrior brothers, Batara and Mega, are chosen by the princess Sari to guard the Water Palace, home to a weapon of tremendous power. As Mega and Batara arrive on their flying stallions, Sari sends the mighty Green Knight to test their prowess in battle. While Mega meditates within an ancient cave, Batara defeats the Green Knight. After their meditation is complete, Batara's spirit is transported to the Water Palace, deep beneath the ocean. Again he is tested with an onslaught of mighty warriors, but he overcomes them all. When Batara and Sari meet, Sari is immediately enchanted, and the two fall in love. Sari entrusts the power of the temple's magic sword to Batara, bidding him to protect the kingdom of Mataram. After emerging, however, Mega is jealous of Batara's new weapon and steals it from him. The two brothers engage in an epic duel, each vying for the power of the sword. In the end, Batara triumphs, but his love for his brother prevents him from slaying him. Batara bids Mega leave with the sword and do as he wishes. Touched by his brother's words, Mega relinquishes the sword and sets off on a journey to hone his body and spirit.

Of course half of that shit never even fucking happens. These characters had names? Could have fooled me. Green Knight? Wasn't in it. Water Palace? So that's what that was. And that ending did not happen. The discrepancies can be accounted for by the fact that Joseph Lai stole what was probably a 90 minute film from Indonesia and turned it into a 43 minute boner.

I'm not really sure why I even did this but if you want to put butt in brain then please, by all means watch the entire Beauty and Warrior below. (Protip: watch the beginning of part 2 to see one of a few seemingly endless cave sequences. They are wonderful. Like playing Colon Blaster on a TI-86 or whatever the fuck).

PS: More ANIMEZ goodness following the videos.

Part1

Part2

Part3

Part4

Part5


One last Beauty and Warrior thing: are you familiar with the plot keywords function on imdb? You know this thing I'm talking about? You look up a movie on imdb and pretty close to the top there's a listing for plot keywords? Well, it's always covered up with a spoiler warning which doesn't disappear until you move your mouse over it. I suppose this is to prevent people from accidentally seeing THEY WERE DEAD ALL ALONG type stuff, but oh man, check out Beauty and Warrior. It is great.

SPACE THUNDER KIDS



Okay, so Beauty and Warrior was actually not Joseph Lai's first foray into animation theft (nor was it his worst...). Space Thunder Kids preceeded B&W by... well, I'm not sure by how many years, but I'm told it's from the 80's. Space Thunder Kids isn't listed on IMDB and has nothing to do with Lai's two Thunder Ninja Kid movies fyi.

Watching Space Thunder Kids fucked me up for real. A lot of these bottom-of-the-barrel movies exude auras that give off a pleasant, mild contact high while watching them. This leads to an enjoyable, dreamy sensation that allows one to ignore the otherwise boring sections of a movie. Space Thunder Kids on the other hand was like being dosed unknowingly with GHB. By the end of the film I'd lost all feeling in my legs and felt a strong urge to do flail my arms around or do pushups, which probably would have killed me outright at that point. It was like having night nurse's syndrome, where you're awake but can't move. I thank god I didn't watch Space Thunder Kids alone, because if I had I'd probably still be there, still watching those tanks roll past...

Unlike Beauty and Warrior, Space Thunder Kids is a full-on feature film. Well, in the sense that it's 90 minutes long. STK is also more in line with Lai's other work in that it's stitched together from multiple sources. Now, I just assumed that these sources were Japanese, since Space Thunder Kids is about giant robots and all, but I was wrong. I'll let Josh B from CollectionDX.com explain:

Come to find out, these are Korean Anime. Very popular in their native land, these movies were brought over and poorly dubbed and being sold for $1 each at your local Wal-Mart. As loyal CollectionDX readers know, Korean toys have borrowed liberally from the Japanese, so it is only natural that their anime would too. The characters are taken from a multitude of shows and mashed up in some kind of weird hallucinogenic robot nightmare.

Furthermore,

...Here's a quick list of things ripped off in this movie:

• Mazinger 7
• Sakan-Oh
• Raideen
• Getter Robo G
• Space Cruiser Yamato
• Gundam
• Denziman
• Tron
• Transformers
• Captain Harlock.

So, essentially what we've got here is a Frankenstein's monster ripoff pieced together from at least three separate Korean animes which are themselves ripoffs of various and sundry Japanese and American properties. That's gotta count for something. I haven't been this far down the rabbithole since I watched Passage to Marseille which featured a unique flashback within a flashback within a flashback Chinese puzzle box plot structure (can't imagine why that didn't catch on). Because I downloaded the movie I was unable to enjoy the further level of deception that the DVD box cover provides. Thanks to Joshb we can all enjoy:
Alright, first of all that cover clearly has nothing to do with anything and honestly I'm surprised they got the title right. The pictures on the back of the cover don't seem familiar in the slightest, the running time is off by at least five minutes, and the plot description has absolutely no bearing on anything contained in the movie other than the fact that yes, there is a Dark Army. Even part of a seemingly benign sentence like "The Space Thunder Kids, made up of three valiant youths..." is wrong almost immediately. There are Space Thunder Kids, yes, but there are at least three completely different sets of them used during the movie and one set actually has four members.

Clearly the joke is on me though, because why even nitpick something like this? I guess I came out okay, my legs are still pretty heavy with blood, but I've been up and walking again a little bit, so I won, I didn't let Space Thunder Kids beat me, so why? I don't know. I'm not subjecting the loyal readers (?????) of roosterflix to this shit though.

Okay granted that this is pretty hilarious:


but could you really stand to watch 80 minutes of this? (And no, I absolutely did not modify this to make it longer, this is as is, directly from the movie)



I kinda loved it though. I feel like I went through that machine in the Princess Bride that takes off years of your life but man it was kind of worth it. Space Thunder Kids is that really shady opium den your mother warned you about.