“We used to use cow and goat blood, but sometimes it would go rotten and people would get sick if they accidentally swallowed it,” Hofmanis said.

Hofmanis works with the Ugandan studio Wakaliwood and Ramon Film Productions, and he screened their film “Bad Black” at the Lake Placid Film Festival on Oct. 26.

Originally from Long Island, Hofmanis always had an interest in film, especially the technical and editing aspects, he said. He began volunteering with the Lake Placid Film Festival from the very beginning. He’d drive up for the weekend and sleep in the back seat of his car. After a few years of that, he became the festival’s programming director, the person responsible for picking which films get screened.

In 2011 Hofmanis said he had bought an engagement ring and was all set to propose to his then-girlfriend. She dumped him and less than two days later he discovered Isaac Godfrey and his over-the-top action films. The clip he watched began with Godfrey’s phone number.

“The films are treated like pizza there,” Hofmanis said. “You call him up and he hand-delivers you a movie.

“I watched a short trailer for one of his films, and I just knew I had to go and meet this guy and understand why he does this,” he continued. “So I sold everything and went to Uganda and just started looking for him.”

Hofmanis now does production work, acting, editing and pretty much anything for which Godfrey needs help.

“If I married that girl, I would’ve left her for this,” Hofmanis said. “What wife of any kind of reasonable disposition would put up with a guy living in poverty in a slum in Africa?”

The films are otherworldly in terms of action movies. Most of the movies pay homage to insane 1980s movies like “Rambo III,” “Predator” and “Commando.” Cars are blowing up left and right. A lone gunman will take down a seemingly endless series of enemies. Everyone knows some type of martial art. One actor goes by the name of Swazz, which is apparently Ugandan for Schwarzenegger. One of the child actors, who can’t be older than 10, is called Wesley Snipes. His joke is that he slaps and beats up adults.

Because the dialog is Ugandan but the audience is so diverse, the films incorporate a sort of live commentary called video joker, or VJ. At live screenings, a person will stand off to the side and ad-lib a narrative and jokes while the movie is playing. If a firefight breaks out, the VJ might say something like, “It’s dangerous. Everybody run for your lives.” Sometimes the VJ seems so unnecessary yet still hysterical. In one scene in “Bad Black,” a man sets down a briefcase, and the VJ says, “briefcase” as if the audience didn’t know what it was.

The VJ also said “supa” (super) before a lot of things, letting you know it’s important and awesome.

The films are made with little money. “Bad Black” had a budget of $65 U.S., and about half of that went to renting a tent for scenes involving a medical center. Hofmanis played the American doctor turned commando.

At that time, a lot of the people in the village had never been to a doctor before, so they didn’t know how a set with medical equipment was supposed to look, Hofmanis said. The next day, he showed up for the filming and found the set full of pill bottles and containers of bloody syringes.

“I asked them where they got all this stuff, and they said they raided the dumpsters at a nearby hospital,” he said.

The movie posters are hand-painted on barkcloth, a material that, in Uganda, is really only used for wrapping dead bodies, Hofmanis said.

“We’ll pick up these big rolls of it at the morgue and drive back to the village with it on the back of a motorcycle,” he said. “One time the cops stopped us and they were like, ‘You can’t just be driving around town with a dead kid on the back of your bike.’ We had to go down to the station and took us a little bit to explain what we actually use it for.”

Though wacky and exhilarating, Hofmanis said Godfrey incorporates social commentary into all his projects. “Bad Black” is a movie that depicts the differences between the haves and the have-nots. A rich father beats and disowns his son for falling in love with a girl from the slums.

Though low-budget now, Hofmanis said the films are starting to get recognized, and some studios see Wakaliwood as a fairy tale they want to see come true. Previously, folks weren’t too keen on getting a low-budget African action film in their festival or theaters, Hofmanis said.

“In the first few years, we were kinda cut out of all the film festivals and that stuff,” he said. “Festivals were terrified of us. They felt that this was glorifying violence, and also at that time in 2012 and 2013, Uganda was pushing through all this anti-gay legislation. No one would touch us. They were afraid of the violence, and they were afraid if they showed anything from Uganda that would tacitly endorse the politics of the country. I get that, but it’s really absurd because if anyone is against what the government is doing, it’s going to be an artist. That’s like saying if you’re an American musician, you’re pro-Trump.”

The beautiful part about the Wakaliwood films is that they’re fun. The actors are having Kung Fu fights in the middle of the street and pretending to shoot machine guns in back alleys. The movies aren’t corny or trying to wink at the audience. It’s all genuine enthusiasm. The actors look like kids, having the time of their lives.

“Being on set feels like when you were a kid and a Wiffle ball bat was a lightsaber and your dad’s belt was Indiana Jones’s whip,” Hofmanis said.