Fungicide / The Screaming / Born a Ninja & Commando the Ninja

Visual Vengeance is back with, well, with a vengeance. Their latest trio of discoveries feels less like a curated collection (they’re each sold separately, by the way) than a transmission from an alternate universe where regional horror, backyard martial arts movies and late-night cable access television evolved into the dominant media species.

Fungicide (2002) is the sort of movie that could only emerge from the 2000s DIY horror boom, where digital cameras, fake blood and a few free weekends resulted in a full-blown creature-feature spoof about carnivorous mushrooms. At least director Dave Wascavage has a sense of humor about the whole thing, bringing his monsters to life with sock puppets and spirit glue, interrupted by some early CGI work. It’s too long by a good half hour, but still earned itself a slot on RiffTrax, which is included as a special feature.

The Screaming (2002) gets bonus points for skewering Scientology before it was trendy. Indoctrinated into Crystalnetics by his sexy neighbor, a grad student discovers it’s really a secret blood cult ruled by a stop-motion alien vampire. Polished to the point of semi-professionalism, this one has some impressive old-school effects and better-than-average acting, justifying that hour-and-a-half running time.

And finally there’s the 16-bit epics Born a Ninja and Commando the Ninja (1988), a pair of redubbed SOV adventures from producer Godfrey Ho who specialized passing other people’s work off as his own. These cut-and-paste films form one long marathon of ninja insanity stitched together with a little espionage and Chinese mysticism. But the biggest magic trick are the action scenes, which hold up to a Shaw Brothers-level of scrutiny…even if the battles take place on a children’s playground.


As usual VV has loaded up each film with value-added extras along with fold-out posters and slipcase packaging. Fungicide gets four commentary tracks, outtakes and the aforementioned RiffTrax episode. The Screaming comes with a separate music score CD, commentary, Making Of, and remastered alternate version of the film, The Screaming: Reborn. Godfrey Ho’s Ninja films sport cool Sega Genesis era menus along with two commentaries, a pair of visual essays, interviews and liner notes.

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