Bloodmoon (1996)

Directed by: Tony Leung (not THAT Tony Leung, I presume)

Writer: Keith W. Strandberg

Here's a martial arts movie posing as a thriller. Or is it the other way around? Whatever the case, the fighting part of the movie is rather good, while everything else is pretty much horrible.

 

The structure is typical of serial killer movies: There's this guy that kills people left and right. In charge of the police investigation is a funny black guy who's of course unable to find the killer, so the chief of police (Frank Gorshin in yet another gratuitously over-the-top performance reminiscent of his Batman days) asks a retired detective (Gary Daniels) for help in order the prevent the crazy maniac from killing everyone on the planet and causing an apocalypse. Of course, the victims are not randomly selected and finding the connection between them means finding the killer and it will also give Gary Daniels an opportunity to win back his wife who's pissed off about something, blah blah blah... Fairly standard stuff, without a trace of innovation of any kind.

 

However, what's of interest here is the way the murders are committed - each of the victims is a champion of some martial arts discipline and the killer is beating them in their own discipline before killing them. He's like Michael Phelps among the serial killer martial artists. It should also be mentioned that he wears a dreadfully silly costume and he's a computer wizard who teases the police by sending them cheesy provocative messages.

 

The fights are numerous and well choreographed, which comes as no surprise since pretty much everyone involved in the movie is a martial artist of some kind (this includes the director, the writer and all the lead actors). Unfortunately, there are some scenes where nobody's fighting and instead they're trying to talk and what not and it's really embarrassing. The highlight of this cheesiness is the scene where Daniels wins back his wife. I blushed during that one even though I was completely alone. Having someone walk in while you're watching this scene is worse than being caught watching porn by your grandmother. Everything except fighting is cliché after cliché and it gets really boring and tiring after a while. If you're a fan of martial arts, I recommend fast forwarding through these scenes and if you're not, skip the movie altogether.

Ninja the Protector (1986)

Directed by: Godfrey Ho

Writers: AAV Creative Unit (story), Godfrey Ho (screenplay)

 

One thing you might be wondering is who the hell is this "AAV Creative Unit" guy that supposedly wrote the, ahem, "story" for this film. Was it a (very) young Ron Artest or perhaps some previously unknown daughter of Frank Zappa? Who knows. What's more important is that the director is the infamous Godfrey Ho, the Orson Welles (or was it Ed Wood?) of Hong Kong ninja cinema.

 

This is my first Ho movie so I'm certainly no expert on his body of work, but from what I gather from the reviews written by more knowledgeable people, Ninja the Protector is totally consistent with his general "style" of filmmaking. AAV Creative Unit came up with an intriguing story of an evil ninja organisation that threatens to screw everything up. The police can't do much because (see the poster) only a ninja can defeat a ninja (!). Now where have we heard that already? Oh yeah, in just about every single ninja movie in existence.

 

But all is not lost - the leader of the police, played by Richard Harrison, is actually a ninja (!), so he spends part of the time in his office, explaining the grimness of the situation to his subordinates, and rest by walking around in his nicely coloured ninja outfit, beating the crap out of the evil ninja organisation's members and leaving them handcuffed for said subordinates to arrest and bring to the justice. Such a nice example of a split personality. Robert Louis Stevenson, eat your heart out!

 

However, this is not the only thing going on in the movie. To prevent the viewers from getting bored by the nonstop ninja action, Ho ingeniously created another subplot by inserting footage from some lame drama about two brothers, one of which is a model or something. Of course, with all the overdubbing, it's hard to know what (if anything) was going on in the original film, but in this one it is turned into a subplot of a police agent going undercover to infiltrate a model agency, which happens to be the cover for the more sinister doings of the Evil Ninja Organisation.

 

One thing you must absolutely avoid at all costs is trying to follow the "plot", as it will cause irreparable damage to your brain. Godfrey Ho is an artist and he's doesn't let such trivialities as logic and continuity get in the way of his creativity. More than once you will be baffled by some character mentioning the consequences of some event before that event has actually taken place. There's also a moment in which a character, through a flashback, remembers a soft and tender love scene which he didn't witness. The dubbing also has its own quirks - for example, in one scene a pissed off girlfriend, wanting to kick her boyfriend out, tells him to get off instead of out. Or maybe she really meant it?

 

It's not hard to see that Ninja the Protector is rightfully considered to be a masterpiece of modern cinema. Not only has Godfrey Ho given us two movies for the price of one (or perhaps none), bravely challenged our perception of time and space through the lack of continuity and the supernatural powers of the ninjas who are able to (dis)appear in a puff of smoke, not only has he given us a heartwarming drama that treats not only family relations but also the dangers of modelling (so we feel a massive relief when our lead character decides, quote, "to give up modelling immediately and lead a normal life"), drama powered by numerous but tasteful sex scenes (at least those that don't feature rape) that increase our sympathy for the characters (especially the one on the beach between the lead character's brother and some bimbo) - in addition to all this, we have an opportunity to listen to some really great music, like Jean Michel Jarre's Ethnicolor, Pink Floyd's One of These Days and many others. This music brings such depth to certain scenes that it was definitely worth stea... paying large sum of money for it.

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.

Revenge of the Ninja (1983)

Directed by: Sam Firstenberg

Writer: James R. Silke

That's more like it! This "sequel" to Enter the Ninja is a vastly superior movie in every possible way. Better action, better characters, more interesting story, more ninjas (!), more deaths, all in all - much more fun.

 

Of course (we'll see this again in another "sequel", Ninja III), the film opens with some cool ninja action and a massive slaughter, which, unlike the one in the previous movie, happens to be real. Some nasty ninjas invade Sho Kosugi's peaceful home in his absence and kill his entire family. He arrives on the scene with an American sidekick too late to save the dear ones, but just in time to eliminate all of the attackers. The only person that survived the massacre is his newborn son.

 

Disillusioned with the ninja lifestyle that had cost him (almost) his entire family, Kosugi accepts his American sidekick's offer to move to America. Six years later, he's indeed in America, where he runs some kind of ninja gallery. His son is now a small schoolboy, but no less an asskicker than his dad, as we will see. Right at the beginning he easily dispatches a small group (five or six, I think) of annoying American bullies, but he does much more later in the movie.

 

The last person you should trust, if you're a Japanese, is your American sidekick. Sho Kosugi's American sidekick proves this when it turns out that he's actually a vicious heroine smuggler that uses his friend's (Kosugi's, that is) ninja figures to hide the drug. Bastard! Chaos ensues when the American sidekick gets pissed off at a mafia boss who's his potential buyer. He goes on murderous rampage that you have to see to believe it. He sports a black ninja outfit, complete with a scary mask that hides his face, so we technically don't know it's him, except that we do know it's him. But what's more important, he eliminates so many people so easily that it's just insane.

 

Then the town officials get concerned that this insane bastard might eliminate the entire US population, so they enlist the help of Sho Kosugi, because only a ninja can kill a ninja (!). And by the way, that other evil ninja also kidnapped his son in the process. As you might expect, the ultimate battle between the two ninjas (both of them wearing fine black outfits, the only difference being the bad guy's mask) takes place. I won't say it's as epic as, say, Bruce Lee's fight with Karim-Abdul Jabaar in Game of Death, but it's pretty damn close. Sure, they do a bit of that silly hand stuff at the beginning, but when it gets to the actual fight, it's great. This fight is also a bit silly at times, because the evil ninja for some reason teases Sho Kosugi with some special effects. For example, he reaches out of the pool and grabs his leg and when Kosugi cuts off his arm, it turns out it's an artificial arm. Weird.

 

All in all, this is simply a must see, not only for ninja fans, but for any action lover and B-movie fan in general. Almost non stop action, great choreography, charismatic bad guy, Sho Kosugi, even a cute blonde thrown in for a good measure... everything you could possibly want from a movie!



Enter the Ninja (1981)

Directed by: Menahem Golan

Writers: Dick Desmond (screen story and screenplay), Mike Stone (story)

We're gonna take a short break from all those horror movies and go into something completely different - a ninja movie! Having ninjas in movies warms my heart and fills it with joy. I know nothing about martial arts, but I sure like ninjas! Having said that, this movie was rather crappy :-(

 

Franco Nero plays some American guy who at the beginning kicks some serious ninja ass and kills many people, only it turns out that they're actually not dead because it was all part of his ninja training. Why would they bother with all those special effects, I have no idea. For example, his final step was to cut off the head of some old dude (apparently his teacher or something), but it turns out he didn't really do it, it was just a doll. Anyway, he becomes a ninja (sporting a cool white ninja outfit) and everyone's happy except Sho Kosugi, playing a mean spirited black ninja who, as I have understood, hates the fact that some whitey has become a ninja.

 

After finishing his training in Japan, Franco Nero travels to Philippines to visit some old friend and his wife. They own some kind of property, complete with fruit, workers and stuff, but they have problems with a rich bastard played by Christopher George, who wants to buy the land from them by force because there's oil there. Nero steps in, kills an insane amount of people and goes for Christopher George and his goofy henchmen.

 

There are two main problems with this movie: First, it can't decide whether it wants to be a comedy or straight action film. Nero is dead serious in the lead role (and he looks like Oliver Reed, too!), while Christopher George's villain is some kind of buffoon who you simply can't take seriously, which takes a lot of the impact of the action. Speaking of action, that's the second problem - there are some good fights, but there's simply not enough ninja action! Franco Nero kick ass left and right, it's true, but he rarely wears his supercool white costume. Sho Kosugi is good, but he doesn't have enough screen time. The inevitable fight between the two of them at the end is too short. So, the best part of the movie happens to be the opening credits, where some guy dressed in black (Kosugi himself, I presume) does some ninja stuff over some nice percussive music.

 

This is the first part of a "trilogy" of ninja films which have nothing in common except that all of them are produced by Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus and have Sho Kosugi (but each time in a different role). I have already seen the "sequel", Revenge of the Ninja, and I can tell you already that it's much, much better than this one. It will be reviewed in a few days.