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"This month, Spectacle brings you an embarrassment of riches pulled deep from the vaults of Joseph Lai’s IFD Films & Arts. If you’ve seen a questionably dubbed actioner from the 1970s or ’80s with the word “ninja” in the title, chances are you’re already familiar with this oeuvre.
Founded in 1973 by Joseph Lai, International Finance Development (not to be confused with Intercontinental Film Distributors, his sister’s company where he got his start (trust us, it only gets more confusing from here)) began as a modest distribution company that specialized in bringing European films to colonial Hong Kong’s English-language theater circuit—a rarity for a Chinese-owned distributor at the time. But with limited resources, regular trips to Greece, Cannes, and Rome to source new titles proved untenable. Lai realized it was both simpler and cheaper to get movies from South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, the Philippines, and elsewhere throughout the Asia-Pacific region, dubbing them into English so as not to lose his foothold in the English-language circuit.
In the late ’70s, Lai teamed up with fellow former Shaw Bros. acolyte Godfrey Ho, who had helped pioneer the “cut and paste” film—works mostly spliced together from existing ones with new plots dubbed in. Between them a new, supremely economical business model was born. Over the next two decades, IFD would release upwards of 200 titles, ranging from wholly original masterpieces to movies cobbled together from sources so disparate that they supposedly didn’t even know who to credit as director. These four films showcase the variety and sheer audacity of ideas in the IFD catalog." -Spectacle