The Super Ninja (1984)

Directed by: Wu Kuo-Jen

Writer(s): IMDb doesn't know, so how the hell would I?

Similar to the Sho Kosugi films we have already described, this one starts with a one-against-many fight where some white ninja kicks some serious ass. Of course, it's all some kind of final test that certifies that the tested one has enough skills to become a ninja. The big difference this time is that this is not an ordinary ninja... it's super ninja!

 

You might think that with such a cool name he has to be some kind of superhero among ninjas, someone whose skills are as high above those of common ninjas as Superman's superpowers are above ordinary humans, but nothing could be farther from the truth. Pretty much everyone here shows approximately the same skill and The Super Ninja triumphs simply because he's a good guy. While we're here, the fights in this movie are really well done. Alexander Lou (the Super Ninja) and Eugene Thomas (his black sidekick) are very skilled martial artists and similar could be said for their antagonists, the supernatural Five Elements Ninjas (don't ask), so there's enough ninja stuff to please everyone. (Incidentally, pay attention to the fact that we have a leading yellow-black heroic duo some fifteen years prior to Jackie Chan and Chris Tucker).

 

They say that the Japanese and Chinese treatments of ninjas are very different. I wouldn't know about that since I'm just starting to get into this whole ninja thing, but this film certainly does support that statement. While the movies in the Ninja series are certainly no Palme d'Or candidates (even though the second one deserved to be!), they are serious in their treatment of both the story and the action (well, except for the last one, which was downright silly).

 

On the other hand, let's see what The Super Ninja has to offer us: We start with the fight scene we have already mentioned, which shares the same general characteristics of all fight scenes in the movie - heavy use of wirework, various manipulations of the filmed footage, including slow-motions, speeding up and reversing, etc., impossible moves achieved by said means, et cetera. Then we have a scene of an attempted rape, prevented by our two heroes (but not before some nudity is shown), which sets the tone for the somewhat surprising sleaziness of the whole thing. For example, the girlfriend of the Super Ninja is felt up by some bastards twice in the movie and there's also an absolutely ridiculous, totally unromantic, by the lack of chemistry only comparable to scenes from Samurai Cop, insanely long sex scene that's just a few seconds shy (no pun intended here) of the impressive five minutes length (!). That's a long one, even by Jim Wynorski standards. And it ends with an extreme close-up of the girl's ass being held by the Super Ninja. Subtlety is for them obviously just something that happens to other people.

 

Of course, horrible overdubbing is a must, and the biggest victim of this was the black sidekick who sounded like a total pussy, which was such a contrast with his general appearance that I had a smile on my face every time he opened "his" mouth. Add to this the obligatory work-of-art dialogue like "You are a murderer! A filthy dirty rat! I'll break your neck for you!" and you have a clear winner, but The Super Ninja doesn't stop here (he's a super ninja, after all) - another treat that warmed my heart, made my day and brought a nostalgic reminder of the days long gone, was the pervasive anti-white racism. Our heroes' boss, for example, is one mean sleazy racist son of a bitch who often spews various race-based insults (nigger and stuff like that) at our heroes. They, on the other hand, don't exactly go to length to hide their despise toward the "white man world" (meaning: the worst possible kind), and Lou says to Thomas at one moment "For the love of the whites, the people you despise, you betray me? Now shoot! SHOOT!" (okay, that's a bit of a spoiler there, I'm sorry about that, but don't worry, it's not as bad as it sounds like). I'm guessing if someone made something like this today, with, say, black people as bad guys, they would be promptly sent to jail.

 

This movie is a must see. With such hilarious action scenes and blatant in-your-face political incorrectness, if it doesn't get you, then you're already dead.

 

Ninja III: The Domination (1984)

Directed by: Sam Firstenberg

Writer: James R. Silke

 

 

After the great Revenge of the Ninja, it seemed that the producers Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus have found a winning formula for ninja movies. Ninja III: The Domination has the same writer and the same director as the previous movie, Sho Kosugi is here again in one of the leading roles, this time sporting a nice eyepatch over his left eye, and yet this movie is easily the weakest in the series. It's even worse than the first one.

 

The main problem, as it often happens, is a lack of quality action. Sho Kosugi is almost totally wasted here - he doesn't really start kicking ass until about one hour into the movie and only has time for one final fight with some bad guy, which was OK, but certainly nothing special. In the meantime we have some mainly uninspired killings by a girl who's possessed by some evil spirit, which leads us to another problem...

 

... which is that the story is stupid beyond belief! I don't know what kind of weed did Silke consume when he was writing this, but he made some kind of horror-action story that features evil spirits, possessions and even an exorcism! Take that, William Friedkin! Your movie may also have demons and exorcism, but it certainly doesn't have any ninjas! While I'm generally not against this kind of genre mixing, here it simply doesn't work. There's no memorable antagonist and the lame "horror" scenes consume valuable time, which could have been better used for some real ninja action.

 

Actually, the only reason to ever watch this is an amazing opening scene, which is perhaps the best sequence in the entire series. It features an evil ninja (actually another man possessed by the evil spirit or some evil sword or similar crap) killing some people on a golf course and then having an encounter with the police. You don't see such a carnage every day and it will surely fill your heart with joy to see so many dead policemen. This ninja is one mean mother and the way he kills dozens of cops with so little effort is simply amazing. For example, he gets rid of a helicopter pilot by throwing a shuriken at him with his foot (!) and kills some other cop by blowing a dart into the barrel of his gun.

 

Unfortunately, when this wonderful encounter ends, you can just turn off the movie because the best part is over. While this was the end of the Golan-Globus Ninja series with Sho Kosugi, they immediately went on to create another legendary ninja brand, American Ninja. We will talk about that one (and its sequels, of course) some other time.

The Ice Pirates (1984)

Directed by: Stuart Raffill

Writers: Stuart Raffill, Stanford Sherman

Some movies are hard to describe, because their quality doesn’t lie in any particular segment that you can analyze, measure and put on paper (or screen). If I had to describe why this movie, without a shadow of a doubt, absolutely rules, I’d simply say – it has SOUL. And if that’s not enough for you, then go watch Lars von Trier or something and leave me alone.

Okay, let me elaborate this just a little bit: The Ice Pirates is a wacky space adventure with enormous quantity of... stuff. Stuff that happens, I mean. You have people dressed as pirates, swordfighting (for no apparent reason, powerful futuristic weapons are rarely used!), cheap sex jokes (so cheap, in fact, that they work), talking severed head, a frog woman, main music theme that’s an obvious rip-off of the Star Trek theme, Mad Max-like desert car chases, random alien parasites, unicorns, eunuchs, Templars, politically incorrect (without being offensive!) racial jokes that you’d never see in a today’s movie etc. etc. etc.

Of course, all this would have been a horrible mess if it weren’t for the glue to, well, glue it all together. And in this case, I’d say that glue are the surprisingly likeable characters, especially the main hero (Mel Brooks, take note!), played by Robert Urich, who really nails it down. He reminds me of John Terlesky in Jim Wynorski’s Deathstalker II, or, if you want a more mainstream comparison – Bruce Campbell’s Ash from the Evil Dead series. Take for example an otherwise amazing film like Spaceballs, being slightly less amazing than it could have been, due to Bill Pullman’s uninspired performance. Exactly the opposite happens here.

The main hero’s space crew is also great and it includes Anjelica Huston and Ron Perlman. So it’s really great to watch this characters going from one adventure into another, being completely aware of the tongue-in-cheek nature of the film. Although its inspirations are obvious (Star Trek, Star Wars, old pirate movies, to name a few), The Ice Pirates is not a direct parody of any particular movie or genre. It doesn’t try to pack jokes into every single frame, it lets itself breathe (so to speak) so it will never make you tired – and when something works (and that’s very often), it really does WORK!

 

My favorites here are the running joke with malfunctioning robots and an absolutely hilarious fight sequence near the end, where everyone ages rapidly during some weird time-space phenomenon. I allmost fell on the floor laughing during this one. Add to all this the special effects and set design that are way above the movie’s low budget and you have a clear winner. I know tastes are different, but if you don’t like The Ice Pirates, something is wrong with you and you need to see a psychiatrist.