Revenge of the Ninja (1983)

PLOT: After the majority of his family is murdered by ninjas, a Japanese ninjutsu master relocates to the United States with his young son, and partners with his American friend to start an art gallery. How will this single dad raise his son while trying to juggle dating, American tax codes, betrayal, and a pretentious art scene?

Director: Sam Firstenberg
Writer: James R. Silke
Cast: Sho Kosugi, Arthur Roberts, Kane Kosugi, Ashley Ferrare, Keith Vitali, Mario Gallo, Virgil Frye


PLOT THICKENER
There are a lot different angles a film can use to approach the ninja archetype. In many Western films, the non-ninja characters are clueless and dumbfounded by what they previously considered to be the stuff of foreign legend. In other cases, the ninja is a superhuman alter ego shrouded in secrecy. For the majority of films though -- especially in the 1980s -- I’d submit that the ninja is used as a disposable henchman (e.g. action movie window dressing). Save for its brutal opening scene, Sam Firstenberg’s 1983 film Revenge of the Ninja instead treats the ninja as a sort of weekend athletic hobby like indoor climbing or squash. (e.g. “Bob, I had no idea you were a ninja. Want to join my co-ed intramural league?”) It’s hard to argue with this casual approach since the results are so awesome and ridiculous.

Cho Osaki (Kosugi) has been fending off ninjas for most of his life in Japan, and the latest encounter finds him arriving home just moments too late. His entire family has been slaughtered by ninja assholes, with the exception of his mother and his infant son. His American friend, Braden (Roberts) convinces him to escape the chaos of Japan and emigrate to the United States for a new start. Cho obliges, and a few years later we see the humble beginnings of the Japanese art gallery -- creepy miniature dolls, above all -- that he runs with the backing of Braden and his assistant, Kathy (Ferrare).

Cho’s son, Kane (Kane Kosugi) is struggling to adapt to the American way of life as a kid. He has occasional skirmishes with older neighborhood boys, who he thoroughly destroys in fights because he’s good at martial arts and using fistfuls of dirt to blind them. Cho admonishes his son for inviting the conflict but simultaneously teaches him appreciation for the traditions of ninjutsu. When Kane’s emerging skill is combined with his age-appropriate curiosity and a bit of clumsiness, he makes a powdery discovery in the art gallery that totally unravels the Osakis’ peaceful life in their adopted homeland. Before you know it, people are catching shurikens to the dome in broad daylight, captives are being boiled alive in hot tubs, and the Italian mafia is reinforcing unfortunate ethnic stereotypes every fifteen minutes. If Cho is going to survive a fresh round of chaos, he may need to resurrect his ninja past and accept help from his sparring partner, Dave (Vitali). Dave’s a nice guy.

This film succeeds where others have waffled or failed outright in the most important element of the ninja movie: wild, unhinged action. From the brutal opening to the gushing conclusion, the action scenes here are creative, strange, and spectacular. It features solid sword-fight choreography, one of the best rooftop climax fights in the history of action cinema, and my favorite interior moving vehicle fight this side of The Raid 2. Ninjas throw fire, disappear in smoke, and flip effortlessly between buildings. Kane Kosugi and Ashley Ferrare have a scuffle that I didn’t totally hate, and even the octogenarian grandma gets some time to shine. When the shot selection is iffy or the hand-to-hand choreography is less than crisp, there’s still an element of energy and fun in every frame. Of the three originals in the Cannon Films “ninja trilogy," this features the best action scenes, by far.

This film was also the blueprint for future Kosugi works that lay waste to the family structure of whichever character he happened to be playing. In 1985’s Pray for Death, his character’s family is tormented and one family member is killed. In 1987’s Rage of Honor, his character’s friend is killed. Notice a consistent theme? Getting involved with Sho Kosugi on screen in any familiar or friendly capacity could get you seriously fucked up. Gordon Hessler -- director of the two aforementioned films -- seemed to especially enjoy putting Kosugi’s characters through the emotional wringer, and we’re forced to wonder why. If Kosugi ate the last donut in catering, I get it. If he won Hessler’s last twenty bucks in a poker game, I can see the need for some form of retribution. But if the thought process was “how else are we going to generate audience sympathy for this average actor with amazing hair who speaks stiff English other than to slaughter the people he loves the most?” that’s a seriously lazy and cold-hearted approach to character development.

Other than the occasional beer before liquor or undercooked pork, I’m not one for risky behavior, but I’ll go out on a limb here: the makers of the classic 1985 boxing game Punch-Out!! stole Braden’s stilted cackles for the Bald Bull character’s victory taunt. Don’t believe me? Check out this brief side-by-side comparison.

Still not convinced? The NSA has some sophisticated audio analysis and visualization software that I’m sure would reveal a match. Tweet at them. (Or maybe don’t -- I’m pretty sure you get put on a “list”). In all seriousness, the juxtaposition is a pretty close call. Close enough to keep me up late at night for days until I finally woke up sweating like Billy Blanks with a eureka moment that will probably be the only lasting observation of anything I’ll ever write.

VERDICT
For me, Revenge of the Ninja is the measuring stick by which all other Western ninja films are evaluated. Some folks swear by the first two American Ninja films for nostalgic reasons, I have a strange fondness for Pray for Death, and others might prefer the technical polish of recent Adkins-Florentine collaborations -- Kane Kosugi’s involvement with the latter provides a compelling link to his father’s work -- but this film ticks nearly all the boxes on the cult action film checklist (e.g. gore, wacky plot, despicable villain, action, drugs, nudity, etc.) A must-see and should-probably-own.

AVAILABILITY
Amazon, YouTube, Netflix, eBay.

6 / 7

American Ninja 2: The Confrontation (1987)

PLOT: When Marines go missing from a military base in the Caribbean, two Army Rangers are brought in as reinforcements. Before they can help in the investigation, however, they must plaster the neighborhood with "LOST MARINES" posters and raise enough money for a $10,000 reward to incentivize the local population.

Director: Sam Firstenberg
Writers: Gary Conway, James Booth
Cast: Michael Dudikoff, Steve James, Larry Poindexter, Michelle Botes, Gary Conway, Jeff Celentano, Mike Stone, Ralph Draper

PLOT THICKENER
When I publicly acknowledged in my review of the first American Ninja movie that the entire series was a shameful blind spot, it felt as if a huge Dudikoff-sized weight had been lifted off my chest. Without any fears of sentimentality coloring my critique, I could enjoy these classic films on their own merits: the limp grasp of ninja mythology, the whiteboy-in-Eastern-philosophy adventuring, the frequent fight scenes, and the lasers -- my god, the lasers. I was apprehensive, still; to break the seal of reviewing the first film was daunting considering the sequels to come. As a general cinematic rule, sequels tend to diminish in quality, but as evidenced by franchises like No Retreat, No Surrender and Ring of Fire, that rule goes out the window with martial arts b-movies. More accurately, it gets jump-kicked through the window during a bar fight.

In this case, on the other side of that newly broken window is Steve James, and he's laughing and flexing all the while. Returning to the fray as Army Ranger Sgt. Curtis Jackson, he and Sgt. Joe Armstrong (Dudikoff) have recently been assigned to a Marine base to help protect the American embassy on an island in the Caribbean. Life is good for the local Marines. They surf, chase girls, get hammered, and due to some anti-American elements on the island, must rock Hawaiian shirts and Bermuda shorts instead of their standard uniforms to blend in. Even the base's brash commanding officer, Capt. "Wild Bill" Woodward (Celentano) is dressed for a Jimmy Buffett concert.

Because of his culturally appropriated ninja-sense, Armstrong knows something is fishy right off the bat, and it's not the local shrimp tacos. (Shrimp are technically decapod crustaceans, not fish). Jackson and Armstrong are first invited to go water-skiing by a few of the dudes from the base. Guess what? There's no fucking life jackets. The boat mysteriously breaks down and drifts ashore to an isolated island beach. The shifty Marine is all, "oh, how strange... let's go swimming everybody" and Armstrong says "I'm afraid of sharks, I'll stay with the boat." Within moments, he's attacked by a gang of ninjas who throw every manner of ninja  weapon cliche at him: the spears, the confounding net, the stars, the swords. Even while dressed in a three-quarter-length wetsuit and white cross-trainers instead of his normal ninja gear, Armstrong prevails and the gang makes it safely back to base.

Even though Woodward has no idea what ninjas are (how typical), he grants Armstrong and Jackson a week to investigate further. They have a hunch that these ninjas may be related to a spate of kidnappings of Marines. Really, Joe? You think the random beach ninjas, kidnapped Marines, and shifty Marine who ran the boat ashore and into a sabotage might be connected? As it turns out, all of these things were mere coincidences and the kidnapped Marines were actually just busy with a bunch of sex workers, the ninjas were a local indigenous culture hostile to outsiders, and the shifty Marine was actually just a terrible driver. Kidding! Joe was totally right. A local heroin kingpin called The Lion (Conway) has been using a kidnapped biological engineer to create an army of ninjas out of kidnapped Marine DNA to protect his vast drug empire. Do you see why pro-lifers are so concerned about stem cell research? This is the shit that happens.

After exploring some super-serious dramatic territory with the first American Ninja, it was interesting to see that director Sam Firstenberg could lighten the tone with the second installment. The movie is zany throughout, and pretty much everyone got the memo. Dudikoff seems a little detached -- there's only so many Blue Steel glares I can tolerate -- and he makes some odd wardrobe choices like a leather jacket and jeans tucked into his boots. (We're in the Caribbean, mind you). James pretty much steals the show once again as Sgt. Curtis Jackson, so no surprises there. Mike Stone is pretty enjoyable as Lion's main muscle, Tojo Ken, and his build-up as the most threatening physical match for the heroes is well done, if completely illogical. (During quality assurance testing, he kills about 20 of the gang's own GMO ninjas). Jeff Celentano is a little stiff as Capt. Woodward, but sports a fine moustache and owns the best line of the film: "What is this? Ninjas? Drug pushers? My men getting kidnapped and murdered? This is really beginning to get on my tits." It's funny, because he doesn't actually have tits. If he does, they're pretty small.

While the movie treads a lot of the same action territory as the first installment -- heroes get jumped by ninjas, defeat ninjas handily, rinse, repeat -- there are some distinct differences. The most egregious is that Michael Dudikoff looks pretty awful in his fight scenes. A successful fight scene, in this humble writer’s opinion, requires that the stuntman act as if he’s getting hit, but also that the principal act as if he’s hitting him. Dudikoff acts like an interpretive dancer trying to complete a field sobriety test after a dozen Pina Coladas. When he’s not flailing, or throwing a weak kick, he’s doing movements without any regard for how the stuntman is moving with him. I counted at least three instances where he “threw” an opponent despite having no grip whatsoever on them. None of this is helped by the fact that Steve James brings intensity to his fight scenes, is deliberate but not stilted in his movements, and genuinely appears to be having a good time beating up those around him. It would be easy to point the finger at Dudikoff as a non-martial artist, but I think blame should be laid at the feet of Sam Firstenberg. The Koff looked passable in the first film, so what changed? One has to assume that director was lazy with the coverage and was forced to edit his way out of it.

VERDICT
Let’s recount: decent fights, a silly story, mostly unremarkable characters, and a lead actor who I may forever refuse to embrace as a martial arts action star. When all the critical elements are sort of neutral, your film would appear to be dead in the water, but you can still win a ton of points on overall form and pacing. I ultimately enjoyed the breezy runtime because there was always *something* happening: either a fight scene, a ridiculous plot point that moved the story forward, or some display of dated fashion sense out of a modern Williamsburg farmers market. While this film seemed to signal Dudikoff's waning interest in the franchise, the rest of the crew picks up the slack. Solid.

AVAILABILITY
Wide and salty, like the Caribbean Sea. Amazon, Netflix, EBay.

4.5 / 7

American Ninja (1985)

PLOT: Long before haughty military leaders were up in arms about gays serving openly in the military, they were up in arms about amnesic American ninjas serving openly in the military.

Director: Sam Firstenberg
Writers: Paul De Mielche, Avi Kleinberger, Gideon Amir, James R. Silke
Cast: Michael Dudikoff, Steve James, Tadashi Yamashita, Judie Aronson, Guich Koock, Don Stewart, Nick Nicholson


PLOT THICKENER:
This space is a little over a year old and I’ve yet to make any Internet enemies, so I’ve resorted to inventing detractors in my head. These medieval dickweeds often pose the question: how can you dedicate your content to Western martial arts b-films and not cover American Ninja? I’ll admit that ignoring it up to this point was a conscious choice. We try to cover movies wallowing in straight-to-video obscurity, not a Cannon Films picture that scored $3.2 million in its opening weekend. Our preference is for real martial artists giving the acting thing a go, not a model-turned-actor who had no real martial arts credits prior to filming. Last, I may have ignored it on a subconscious level out of pure shame. Before watching it for this review, I’d never even seen American Ninja. What’s that high-pitched wheeze? Oh, right: the sound of my tattered Internet credibility disappearing into the ether.

After a string of small parts in films like Bloody Birthday and Bachelor Party, Michael Dudikoff was handed the ball for American Ninja and told to run with it. (Secretly and under the cover of smokebombs, of course; this was a ninja movie). Ninjas had done some Entering and Revenging at the box office, but never American-style, and Dudikoff was the handsome (white) devil of Cannon Films producers’ dreams. He plays Army Private Joe Armstrong, a soft-spoken amnesic military truck driver stationed in the Philippines who has a penchant for effortlessly beating the shit out of people. That’s right. Without American Ninja, there would be no Jason Bourne films. Ignore the fact that The Bourne Identity novel was written in 1980, and that quip is a lot funnier.

During an ambush on his unit that leaves several fellow soldiers dead, Armstrong survives using a mix of unique fighting skills (punching) and improvisation (a screwdriver and tire iron) to fight off a group of ninja attackers. Instead of getting the hero’s treatment for saving the daughter of Col. Hickock (Koock), Armstrong is reprimanded and shunned by the entire base. They all seem to think his aggression caused a lot of unnecessary deaths. Armstrong seems to think that being a giant pussy is no way to act around ninjas.

Tough-as-nails corporal and fighting expert Curtis Jackson (James) wants to make an example out of Armstrong because no one likes a “glory boy” when it comes at the cost of teamwork. Instead, Jackson gets his ass handed to him in front of his peers and underlings. He’s not so much embarrassed or angry as he is curious about where Armstrong picked up such advanced skills, and they become pals. Theirs is the latest in a long line of action movie friendships forged during the act of trying to beat the piss out of each other.

Armstrong is going to need all the help he can get, because he stumbles upon a devious arrangement between the local American military leadership and a black market arms dealer named Ortega (Stewart) that could blow the roof off the establishment. In order to get the guilty parties, he’ll have to go through an army of ninjas led by Ortega’s main hatchet man, Black Star Ninja (Yamashita). No one actually calls him this by name, but he has a cute little black star tattoo on his face. Could have been a birthmark or a mole, I don’t fucking know.

American Ninja is definitely a movie I would have loved as a nine year-old burgeoning martial arts student. Which is not to say you can’t dig this as an adult, because the action moves at a great clip and the ninja-heavy climax cuts loose and properly zany. Brandishing more than two screenwriters is usually a clue that the resulting film will be a fucking mess, but unlike a lot of other projects with a Frankenstein crew of scribes, it manages to keep its head above water for the most part.

In what amounts to his first real leading role, Dudikoff is reasonably OK. He doesn’t bring much charisma, has little emotional conviction in his line delivery, and is a neutral element in some otherwise entertaining fight scenes. I don’t doubt that he honed his craft and improved over the course of the franchise and his career, but he doesn’t do enough on either the action or dramatic fronts to carry the film, nor is he bad enough to be laughably entertaining. The real star of this affair is Steve James -- the man is an absolute bad-ass and unlike the fresh-faced Dudikoff, he looks the part. Fortunately, he supplies enough personality and screen presence for the both of them. And of course, by personality and screen presence, I mean an awesome “helicopter explosion by way of rocket launcher” scene.

One other note: Judie Aronson plays Patricia, Armstrong’s love interest and the Colonel’s daughter. As I did, a lot of people will remember her from Weird Science as Hilly, the eventual love interest of Wyatt Donnelly. That film featured prominently in my youth, and I thought it was important to mention that even as an kid, I thought she was the hottest chick in that entire film, which is a little odd because the whole point of the movie is to give you a giant hard-on for Kelly LeBrock and her cosmic abilities and sexy outfits. Also, Steve James had an uncredited role in Weird Science. How’s that for some full circle shit?

VERDICT:
American Ninja ranks very favorably in the canon of 1980s American action films. No one in their right mind is going to confuse Michael Dudikoff for Sho Kosugi or even Leo Fong in terms of actual martial arts skills, but the filmmakers manage to hide his lack of training through a delicate balance of pace, editing, and absurdity. Might this have been a better action effort with a young Jean Claude Van Damme in the lead role? Perhaps, but the world wasn’t quite ready for American Ninja with a Belgian Accent.

AVAILABILITY:
Wide and large.

6 / 7

Cyborg Cop (1993)

PLOT: A former DEA agent receives an urgent message from his former DEA agent brother and travels to an island in the Caribbean to find him. Once there, he must battle Gimli from Lord of the Rings and his army of cyborgs, doodads, zoozanks, and thingamajigs.

Director: Sam Firstenberg
Writer: Greg Latter
Cast: David Bradley, John Rhys-Davies, Alonna Shaw, Todd Jensen, Ron Smerczak, Rufus Swart


PLOT THICKENER:
Genre hybrids in cinema are as old as the medium itself, but one in particular gained traction during the 1990s despite no real box-office success to justify it: the sci-fi-martial-arts movie. Following the smash success of Robocop and Terminator 2 and the mild profitability of Universal Soldier, filmmakers were falling over themselves to figure out ways to integrate cyborgs and lasers with their tired martial-arts cops-and-robbers plots. The trend was so pervasive that few if any prominent martial arts actors working in the 1990s went without a science-fiction chopsocky film on their resume. Today we take a look at Sam Firstenberg’s 1993 film, Cyborg Cop, or its working title: I’m a Cyborg in a Direct to Video David Bradley Movie, But That’s OK.

Jack and Phillip Ryan, played by David Bradley and Todd Jensen, respectively, are hotshot DEA agents. They also happen to be brothers, and not the cold, distant, borrowing-money-but-never-paying-it-back type of brothers, but the warm and friendly type with a sweet nickname: the “Double Trouble Psycho Cops.” Yeah...really creative, guys. During a hostage negotiation, Jack takes out the captor -- the son of a newspaper publisher -- with lethal force. For obvious reasons, the news media has a field day with the botched operation. Following a wrongful death trial, they both resign.

Unemployment often leads to odd career choices, and the universe of Cyborg Cop is no different. Phillip tells his brother that he’s going to the third-world island of St. Keith to bust up a heroin distribution outfit. (An especially odd choice since St. Keith isn’t a real place.) The target? A gadget-obsessed British drug kingpin named Kessel, played by John Rhys-Davies in a ridiculously over the top check-cashing performance. He stands around yelling about science, he flies remote-controlled airplanes rigged with explosives into trespassers, and he even has dozens of randomly topless women working in his heroin facility. In a master stroke of entrepreneurship, Kessel is using his dope money to fund a cyborg manufacturing project and has plans to sell the product line as elite assassins. In his infinite shit luck and general clumsiness, Phillip gets captured and transformed into the latest model.

Fortunately, Jack packs his bags and heads to the island to investigate after receiving a mysterious package from his brother containing a toy truck and some heroin. Perhaps appropriate during the holiday season but a bit suspicious for a random Thursday. Since he only has a random vial of air-mailed heroin as evidence but no dealer’s name to stick to it, Jack has to do some sleuthing to determine the drug’s origins.

In order to blend in with the locals and take advantage of the tropical weather, Jack wears jeans and a leather jacket for the majority of his Caribbean getaway. As Matt of Direct to Video Connoisseur dutifully pointed out in his review, Jack also has an unusual dependence on the fannypack. As compared to Zubaz pants or aviator glasses, this is a fashion accessory that doesn’t get nearly enough attention within the 80s and 90s action movie set. The only reason you don’t see them more often is pure quantum physics. If a fannypack, Zubaz pants, a denim jacket, and aviators occupy the same space, the fucking universe explodes.

Early in the trip he also encounters Kate, an irritable journalist played by Alonna Shaw, perhaps most famous for playing the meek British girlfriend who gets groped by Cory Everson in the 1991 Jean Claude Van-Damme flick Double Impact. She and Jack almost instantly hate each other and this inevitably leads to romance. Their love scene is abnormally thrusty for this type of movie and it represents something of an odd fall from grace for Shaw. In about two years’ time, she went from a love interest opposite JCVD in a major studio release shown in over 1700 theaters to the love interest of David Bradley in a straight-to-video action movie. (We should assume his character was wearing a fannypack for protection during the proceedings).

While the film lacks the requisite power ballad, composer Paul Fishman constructs a mix of tunes that are … interesting. The song played during the opening title sequence would have Bruce Dickinson bobbing his head along to the voluminous amounts of cowbell. Virtually any scene that shows Jack driving his rented pick-up truck along the St. Keith roads is accompanied by a bizarre disco beat with electric guitar. That is, unless he’s being pursued during a chase scene, then it’s banjo and fiddle. There’s even a bar scene featuring some genuine island rhythms. Fishman clearly set the score to “randomize” before hitting the self-destruct button.

This is probably somewhat of a given since this movie was filmed in South Africa and directed by a Polish guy, but authentic representations of islanders are nowhere to be found and the lack of political correctness here is enough to make a grad student’s head spin. Virtually everyone is happy to take bribes and there’s even one guy with dreadlocks working in a morgue who smokes a massive doobie while playing steel drums before he takes a bribe. The only awful stereotype they left out was the practice of voodoo. 

Despite a dearth of actual martial-arts, the film’s action still manages to come out on the plus side. There’s an amusing shoot-out in a morgue and a few scenes with Bradley kicking cyborgs and impoverished drunkards, but Cyborg Cop succeeds here in large part due to Firstenberg’s emphasis on camp. During an early cyborg demonstration, there’s a decent bit of gore as Kessel’s original model punches through the head of a volunteer victim. We also get hot cyborg-on-cyborg action in which one actually suplexes the other through a metal staircase in a smashing set-piece that might elicit chants of “ECW! ECW!” if it took place in a Philadelphia bingo hall, but since it happens in a cyborg laboratory in a drug kingpin’s lair, everyone just sort of stands around watching.

VERDICT:
There’s no such thing as essential viewing when it comes to the science-fiction-martial-arts genre and Cyborg Cop does little to change this. Access to lasers and random bleeps and bloops jacked from the Star Trek Sound Library does not a sci-fi film make. Beyond a couple of short fights between Bradley and various islanders, there’s little here to even qualify this as a martial-arts film. What are we left with? Bradley’s fannypack, some decent shoot-outs, a clunky love scene, cyborg fights, and John Rhys-Davies screaming about science in regular intervals.

AVAILABILITY:
If you have any intention of watching this, it's currently available on Netflix Instant. If you go the purchase route, cross your fingers for an out-of-region DVD or a cheap used VHS via Amazon or EBay.

3 / 7