11.22.2014

Lethal Ninja (1992)

PLOT: When his microbiologist wife is kidnapped by an evil rich white dude, an art therapist and former “company man” must rely on his ninja training and the help of his kickboxer friend to find her.

Director: Yossi Wein
Writer: Norman Coombes
Cast: Ross Kettle, David Webb, Karyn Hill, Norman Coombes, Kimberleigh Stark, Frank Notaro




PLOT THICKENER
The martial arts b-movie genre has a problem with traditional naming conventions that occasionally borders on full-blown identity crisis. A few years back, we covered a David Heavener film that was titled For Hire in every country except Canada, where it was called Lethal Ninja. As the coup de grace for this year’s Ninjavember, we’re covering the 1993 South African film, Lethal Ninja. However, if you saw this film in South Africa, it was probably called American Ninja 5: The Nostradamus Syndrome. This causes the star of the *actual* American Ninja 5, David Bradley, to cry bitter tears of brand confusion and lost royalties. That’s right. United States copyright law makes shotokan and kempo practitioner and former movie star David Bradley weep openly.

Somewhere in Africa, a group of biochemists is working frantically in a makeshift tent laboratory to determine why a freshwater lake is growing lethally acidic. The scientists are ambushed by a group of ninjas backed by the perpetually grouchy and borderline transluscent industrialist, Kray (Coombes). No one is left alive except a statuesque blond named Dominique (Hill). Will she be held hostage in a darkened cell with no access to food, sunlight, or Internet? Nope, she’s held hostage in a luxury hotel suite with fresh produce, a great view, and dial-up access to Prodigy bulletin boards because it’s 1993. Kray intends to exploit her knowledge of microbiology for nefarious but non-specific purposes.


Unfortunately for Kray and his goons, it’s only a matter of hours before Dominique’s husband comes looking for her. As he leads his students through an outdoor meditative hippie-dippie art class in San Francisco, Joe Ford (Kettle) is roused from the sleepy lesson by a visit from a former “company” associate with some bad news about his wife. When Ford demands to know what the “company” plans to do about it, the colleague reiterates that “company” men only do what the “company” brass tells them to do. And Dominique’s rescue isn’t on their checklist. (If you guessed that the “company” is just movie-speak for “C.I.A.” you’d be wrong. The “company” referenced here does catering and party entertainment).

Abandoned by his former employers, Ford seeks help from the one man upon whom he can rely: kickboxer and moustache enthusiast Pete Brannigan (Webb). The two pack a few bags full of  crossbows, ninja gear, and clean underwear before heading for the unnamed-and-imaginary African country where Ford's lady love is trapped against her will. Can they rescue Dominique before her knowledge is put to evil use? Could Kray’s chemical factory be related to the toxic lake water? And why is hotel proprietor Mr. Osman (Notaro) such a greasy fucking creep?


The first thing that struck me about Lethal Ninja was its flippant approach to ninjas in general. They’re not terribly important to the story and receive no explanation or context. Why are black-clad ninjas running around the orange and brown backdrop of the African grasslands cutting people to pieces in broad daylight? We get katanas, but there are no smoke bombs. No shurikens. No flying. Not even Ford’s ninja wardrobe or tactics get a proper backstory. Yossi Wein basically comes to the table with a confused look on his face and says, “ninjas?” No thank you, Yossi. Just give me the check so I can leave now.

The action is very hit or miss. The fight sound effects are occasionally amusing but the application is uneven. There’s a car chase between two vehicles I wouldn’t be caught dead driving in the 10th grade, and it’s set to PIANO MUSIC. There’s a showdown between Ford and Kray’s head ninja where the former blocks an overhead katana strike with his bare fucking hands, but things are otherwise pretty uninspired. (Aside from the electrified “see-saw” contraption for the requisite “shirtless heroes torture scene” -- that shit was pretty cool). On a very positive note, Brannigan spends at least half of the climax in unabashed “cheat mode” by haphazardly using exploding arrows with his crossbow to solve all of life’s problems. The final damage tally was like 42 buildings and two humans. I would love to see how that guy shovels his driveway during the winter because you know the crossbow is coming out if it’s more than four inches of snow accumulation.


If anything, the legacy for this film will be a classic YouTube-ready scene where the hero is accosted in a poorly lit warehouse by a group of rollerskating ninjas. The roller skates themselves have shiny, retractable blades and the ninjas have choreographed a nice little synchronized skating number to accompany the deadly confrontation. (No waltz music, but it’s still good). This scene alone elevates the film to rarified air; the only other movie that I can recall to feature the ninjas-on-wheels trope was Godfrey Ho’s 1984 cluster-eff Ninja Thunderbolt. Great cinematic minds think alike, or something.

VERDICT
While I enjoyed the dynamic between Kettle and Webb, and Wein’s attempt to merge espionage, ninjas, and industrial wrongdoing in a sub-Saharan setting, this didn’t quite put its hooks in me the way I’d hoped. Wein and company jumped on the ninja bandwagon well after the craze had crested, and didn’t inject enough originality to make it a compelling film. For cinematic exploding arrow enthusiasts only.

AVAILABILITY
Used copies can be had on Amazon for the price of shipping and handling plus one U.S. penny! Also on YouTube.

3 / 7

11.18.2014

The Last Ninja (1983)

PLOT: A group of terrorists infiltrates an important business meeting with national defense implications, and threatens to kill the hostages unless their demands are met. The tactical force charged with rescuing the hostages passes the buck to a guy who may or may not be a ninja, but definitely is an art and antiques dealer who can sniff out a good deal on a 19th-century chaise lounge.

Director: William A. Graham
Writer: Ed Spielman
Cast: Michael Beck, Mako, Richard Lynch, Nancy Kwan, John McMartin


PLOT THICKENER
Among other important lessons during my upbringing, my father taught me how to throw a football, hook live bait on a fishing line, and draw both cat and dog cartoon faces with relative ease. These details may strike most readers as ordinary fixtures of an American male’s formative years, but they’re totally boring to anyone who grew up as an orphaned caucasian adopted by a middle-aged Asian martial arts master. Michael Beck’s character in 1983’s The Last Ninja looks at your idyllic childhood and does a sarcastic jerk-off motion before disappearing behind an exploding cloud of ninja smoke. After all, playing catch can’t hold a candle to throwing your first shuriken into a tree.

From where did this whiteboy karate fantasy originate? I would think that Kwai Chang Caine in the 1970s Kung Fu television series served as the first model for orphans learning fighting skills under the tutelage of their older Asian masters. (Other examples include the protagonists in Bloodsport and American Ninja, respectively). It may surprise no one to learn that Ed Spielman, creator of the original Kung Fu series, wrote the screenplay for The Last Ninja, an ABC TV pilot that never took hold as a regular series. Did Spielman go to the well of head-scratching cultural appropriation once too many times? Fuck yeah he did, but read on anyways.


Michael Beck (Swan of The Warriors fame) plays Ken Sakura, an art and antiques collector who makes his home in California. By all indications, he lives on a sprawling estate with his step-sister, Noriko (Kwan), but this detail puts no cramp in his debonair life of bachelorhood. When he’s not appraising vases or charming strangers at soirees, Ken is a heroic ninja who breaks up dope rings and captures serial killers and rapists. Only Noriko knows of his secretive triple life of art-collecting, man-whoring, and crime-fighting.

Mr. Cosmo (McMartin), the government agent who was legitimately born with that name, may have an inkling about Ken’s post-work activities. He pays Ken a visit one afternoon and details a series of correlations between Ken’s whereabouts and the captures of criminals on various dates by a mysterious ninja. Despite the implication, Ken laughs it off and chalks it all up to (a shitload of) simple coincidences. Not to be dissuaded, Cosmo intends to reveal Ken’s vigilante deeds to the newspapers unless said ninja hero infiltrates a Dallas skyscraper where a group of defense industry employees is being held hostage. The ninja, quite simply, is the only chance they have to save them.


Not that head kidnapper Dr. Gustav Norden (Lynch) is such a bad guy. He’s professorial (tan corduroy coat), direct (“the mobile laser system, that’s what we want”), and extremely sweaty. A disgruntled former colleague of his hostages, Norden simply wants the plans for some nondescript military technology to benefit himself and his kidnapping brethren instead of the annoying assholes with whom he used to work. Don’t we all want that at the end of the day?

For the remainder of the story, Ken’s past is slowly revealed through a series of flashbacks. As a newborn, he was left on the doorstep of the Sakura family during a stormy night. After his biological sons are killed in the Korean War, Mataro Sakura (Mako) has no direct heirs for his ninjitsu wisdom, but tosses baby Ken into a pool as a test of his suitability for training. Ken survives! Mataro doesn’t get arrested for attempted infanticide! Mataro kicks adolescent Ken out of the house for a week to teach him humility. He gives him a kitten upon his return to teach him about balance. He performs sleight-of-hand tricks to teach him about misdirection. He shows him that the catch and release of a fly is more skillful and virtuous than catching and killing it. I’m sure there was an awkward talk about “the birds and bees” that involved a katana blade and a watermelon, but it probably ended up on the cutting room floor. THANKS REAGAN.


It should be noted that the showdown between Ken’s ninja persona and Norden’s gang arrives with about 20 minutes remaining in the 93-minute film. Most would agree that’s not a lot of time for insane ninja action. Ken has only two fight scenes that I can recall, and the most notable aspect of the action scenes is the raspy and oddly cosmic voice he uses when talking from under his mask. (Imagine Christian Bale’s Batman voice hooked up to a reverb pedal). Instead, the emphasis here is on the training and origins underpinning the central character -- keep in mind this was a pilot for a TV series -- and the central relationship between a father and son. There’s roughly a 60-40 split between flashbacks and “present day” footage, so viewers should be prepared for a lot of bouncing back and forth. And more clever disguises and silly voices than the transformation scene from Mrs. Doubtfire.


If you peruse the user reviews on the film’s IMDb page, you’ll notice that it’s almost universally praised. However, it’s striking that many of the users recall seeing the movie when it originally aired, and I can’t help but feel that nostalgia may have influenced their opinions. (No judgement: nostalgia was the primary motivation for this entire site)! Despite my dissatisfaction with the action elements, I found myself really engaged during Mako’s scenes and I enjoyed Richard Lynch’s scenery chewing, because the man chews the fuck out of scenery. That said, these are decidedly non-ninja reasons to enjoy this particular film, which makes it a bit of an outlier: the unspectacular character study dressed up in ninja’s clothing.

VERDICT
The Last Ninja offers none of the harebrained plot points we’re accustomed to seeing in most American ninja films. Instead, it features a compelling character study with a well-written father-and-son relationship at its core. The action, while infrequent, emphasizes realism and illusion over the more fantastical visual tropes that would come to epitomize the 1980s ninja film (lasers, decapitated limbs, unexplainable flying). While not without its issues, this is a decent standalone “origin” story that also portended an entertaining TV series. It’s a bit of a shame it didn’t get an actual run, but I feel the same way about Poochinski, so I may not be the best evaluator of failed TV pilots.

AVAILABILITY
As an early 80s TV film, it never had an official home video release on VHS or DVD. There may be gray market copies out there, but YouTube is your friend. Go forth and plunder.

3.5 / 7


11.16.2014

Ninja Death (1987)

PLOT:  By day, Tiger is a Martial Arts expert…by night he is the bouncer of a brothel. Tiger is trained under the watchful eye of “Master” and in this process of training it occurs that the Grand Master and his merry men, AKA Ninjas, are trying to take over Tiger’s turf in Japan.

Director: Joseph Kuo
Cast: Lo You, Fei Meng






PLOT THICKENER: 
When it comes to story, Ninja Death is pretty damn jagged, and while you can fault it for the shoddy editing, it unapologetically turns into a comedy. As the film opens, we are treated to a group of ninjas fighting but there is something significant about this; it's as if the film is being fast forward on VHS...I got a little nostalgic, I will not lie. While some of the story is already tongue-in-cheek, it just goes all out, and for entertainment purposes you just accept it and ride it out. While the entire cast clearly tries to play this film straight and serious, so much is wrong technically but that is what makes it so funny to watch. To be honest, there isn’t much to do with ninjas, and I was deep down hoping for hundreds of ninjas just showing off their skills and bad acting. And while you do get to see some ninjas, it’s very short lived, but what they do have to offer will leave you content, not full. As the film progresses, we are exposed to random flashbacks which turn into really elaborate and strange sex scenes. I really do feel that the director lost faith in this piece and thought “Hrmm you know this film isn’t going where I want it to so here have a really long and awkward sex scene.” I was literally sitting there laughing because after several minutes there is only so much un-erotic sex scenes I could take seriously. I think I stopped taking those scenes seriously after 10 seconds…maximum. 

The plot itself doesn’t make a lot of sense, for the best of times, but the way I interpreted it was that Tiger was training in the ways of the Martial Arts while trying to prove his manhood on a nightly basis to the prostitutes he had to protect at the brothel. And then all of a sudden there’s several Ninjas that just happen to pop up and really not do much. Which left me wanting more. I found that once the momentum was finally up and running, it would all of a sudden just cut to another scene which completely left of field and left you thinking "What the hell?” In some ways, it did feel like two films were cut together at the best of times. 


The martial arts choreography did start off strong, which initially got me pumped, and yeah I fist pumped, don’t judge me. But you can’t help but get excited that at 2 minutes and 6 seconds, a guy has his eyes gouged out; how’s that for an opening? I think with a lot of the B-grade Asian cinema, you really can’t fault it for its choreography because a lot of these guys all worked together on a number of films. You can definitely see how the director, Joseph Kuo was influenced by the Shaw Bros, as a lot of the sets looked as if they were cast offs from Five Deadly Venoms, and as they say, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. But unless you have seen a lot of the Shaw Bros films, it may pass you by and go unnoticed. There was also a mini montage in this film, and straight away I could feel that locked door in my brain -- which consists of all of the movie montages I have seen -- was being unlocked. And that triggered something inside me which made me connect to the film just a little bit, because I felt you could see the side of montages we know and love in American Martial Arts films. 

You want dubbing? Oh, you will get dubbing with this, and it is so hilariously put together. If you listen carefully to the dubbing you will realise the accents change from American to English. Who am I kidding, it’s not exactly subtle. But it’s this kind of silliness in production which spills over into the film and it just creates a hilarious over-layer that you cannot help but thrive over…okay maybe that was just me?

VERDICT
So let's rewind! There's long, awkward sex scenes, fast-forwarding ninjas, eyes gouged out in the first scene, odd but hearty training montages, solid choreography, terrible editing and several stories rolled into one? I can see the effort that was put in for selected parts of the films and I can take that for what it is, because I thoroughly enjoy how bizarre this film is. Isn't that everything you need to enjoy a craptacular night in with your pals? Add a Cherry Coke in there and BAM! you are in for a good night in. 

AVAILABILITY
Amazon...and any bargain bin selling VHS leftover from 1987. 

4.5 / 7


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