Overseas For Z-movies
In the 1980s, Harrison found himself mostly stranded in B-movie action films made in the Philippines and Hong Kong. Although generally considered the lowest point of Harrison's career, some of his 80s' films have gained a cult audience of their own.
In the Philippines, Harrison acted in five ultralow-budget actioners, best classified as Z-movies, produced by K.Y. Lim for Silver Star Film Company (called Kinavesa in the Philippines). Three, Fireback, Hunter's Crossing and Blood Debts (1983), were directed by Teddy Page, and two, Intrusion Cambodia (1984) and Rescue Team by John Gale. All were bad, but the three Page films exceptionally so, mixing near-sadistic violence with childlike, enthusiastic naivety reminiscent of the films of Ed Wood. In the books Gods In Polyester and Gods In Spandex, Harrison states that he wrote some of the screenplays for the Filipino films practically overnight, using a pseudonym. The Fireback screenplay Harrison wrote is credited to "Timothy Jorge", a pseudonym usually used by Don Gordon Bell, one of the expatriate American actors working for Silver Star. Harrison also mentions that the Silver Star films he acted in didn't have complete shooting scripts and many scenes were improvised on the spot, which contributed to their disjointed narrative.
Silver Star recycled the same group of American and European expatriate actors from film to film, all of whom appeared in the Harrison vehicles. Mike Monty, an old acquaintance of Harrison from the Italian days who had migrated to the archipelago, James Gaines, Romano Kristoff, Bruce Baron, Ann Milhench and others. Harrison struck a friendship with Kristoff, one of the leading Silver Star actors, and later invited him to Italy to act in a film he produced and directed, Three Men on Fire (1986).
At the time they were made, the poor quality of the Filipino films hurt Harrison's reputation. Over the years, they have attracted some cult interest in bad movie fandom. Although he remembers Teddy Page fondly, Harrison doesn't have too many kind words for Lim and working for Silver Star.
In Hong Kong, Harrison starred in what was supposed to be a small number of low-budget martial arts "ninja" films, directed by Chinese filmmaker Godfrey Ho, with whom he was already familiar from working for the Shaw Brothers in the 1970s. However, Ho later re-edited his scenes into several more films in a cut-and-paste style of filmmaking that has since made him infamous. Harrison found himself the unwilling star of almost a dozen different movies, with titles like Cobra Vs. Ninja, Golden Ninja Warrior and Diamond NÃnja Force. Like the Silver Star productions, the "ninja" films have since become cult films.
Disgusted with that outcome, Harrison returned to the United States, slowed down his film work and quit acting in the early nineties. His last films to date were the 1993 erotic thriller Angel Eyes, directed by the prolific cinematographer/director Gary Graver and starring Erik Estrada, John Phillip Law and Monique Gabrielle, and the 2000 film Jerks.
Some of the more noteworthy movies in Harrison's later career were the Moroccan film Amok (1982) and Dark Mission (1987), by the both loved and hated Spanish director Jesus Franco. The latter might not be much better than Harrison's Filipino films in terms of quality, but did have a more-interesting-than-usual cast featuring Christopher Lee, Christopher Mitchum and French adult film star Brigitte Lahaie (also known from the horror films of Jean Rollin).
One of few serious roles that Harrison portrayed in the 1980s was that of American President Andrew Johnson in Ali Hatami's Iranian production Hajji Washington. The film was completed in 1982 but was not screened in Iran until 1998.
Although Harrison remains little known in the English-speaking world, he is a cult figure among B-movie, sword and sandal and Eurospy (a fan name for European, usually Italian, spy movies) fans. The recent resurgence of spaghetti western fandom has also generated new interest in Harrison's work in the genre. Despite that, he is still often somewhat unfairly labeled as a camp Z-actor, probably because Harrison's worst movies are the easiest to find today. Many of the Godfrey Ho Ninja films are available on midprice Region 1 and Region 2 DVD, while most of Harrison's 1960s spaghetti westerns are available only on ex-rental video tapes (usually in European PAL format only, often not in English) found at fleamarkets, second hand movie stores and eBay, if at all. Before the damage done to his reputation by the Z-movie era of the 1980s, Harrison had a long, solid career in European B-movies, which is often overlooked by fans of his weaker films.
He has now founded a multisystem electronics company named Gladiator Electronics with his son Sebastian.
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