Enter the Ninja (1981)

PLOT: An ex-pat in Manila is being harassed into selling his land by a hostile businessman. Will he respond by: a) taking the appropriate legal recourse; b) inviting his ninja war buddy over to bust some heads; or c) drinking his face off and encouraging his employees to hold cockfights during work hours?

Director: Menahem Golan
Writers: Dick Desmond, Mike Stone
Cast: Franco Nero, Susan George, Alex Courtney, Sho Kosugi, Christopher George, Constantine Gregory, Zachi Noy, Jim Gaines, Mike Stone


PLOT THICKENER
Long before the real ultimate power of painfully referential homages, pizza-loving turtles, and really hard obstacle courses, there was an entire world of shadowy assassins just beyond a closed door. Some would argue that the 1980 Chuck Norris vehicle The Octagon opened that door -- and those people would be wrong -- but it wasn’t until the following year that Cannon Films gave Western viewers safe passage to enter the world of smoke plumes and shurikens with Enter the Ninja. (Author’s note: For you history buffs, Teleporty City’s review of this film provides us with a sublime history of how ninjas evolved from mountain clans in feudal Japan to cinematic archetypes in 1980s action film productions of every stripe).

Following a final test in which he mock-kills several red ninja attackers, recites the “nine levels of power,” and even wins an impromptu wet-t-shirt-and-ninja-garb contest after jumping off a waterfall, a Westerner named Cole (Nero) graduates to ninjutsu master after years of training. This pisses off ninja traditionalist Hasegawa (Kosugi) but Cole departs for the Philippines before the two settle their differences. He arrives at the sprawling Manila estate of an old war buddy, Frank Landers (Courtney), and is greeted at the door by the business end of a shotgun barrel, courtesy of Frank’s wife, Mary Ann (Susan George).

The precaution is warranted. Unsavory elements in the city want the Landers’ land and Cole soon observes first-hand the corrupt dealings of “The Hook” (Noy), a porky German dude with a hook-hand who travels with hired muscle to shake down business owners. Following The Hook’s waft of sweat and bratwurst eventually leads up the chain to Mr. Venarius (Christopher George) an elite businessman with a penchant for hostile business dealings and choreographing synchronized swimming demos. Under the pressure from Venarius and a parade of contracted goons, Frank has sought refuge at the bottom of the bottle and spends his days stone drunk while cheering on vicious cockfights organized by his local workers. This is a far cry from the Frank who once saved Cole’s life during combat in Angola, or the Frank who used to maintain an erection long enough to make love to Mary Ann, or even the Frank who was once able to armpit-fart "Jingle Bells." This version of Frank is a drunk, broken shell of a man who relies entirely on Cole to fight his battles.

This might surprise some, but this isn’t really a ninja movie. At its core, this is about a man who aspired to a life of prosperity and leisure following his heroic war service. According to his “life plan,” he married and purchased some land. Then, he fell in love with booze and it all went to shit. His addiction dulled his senses and left him indifferent to the criminal elements surrounding him. It made him powerless against a cruel enemy. It even left him holding a limp noodle in a broken marriage. Enter the Ninja is really about impotence. Cole -- capable, sharp, and virile -- chose to pursue a new “war” via his years of ninjutsu training instead of slacking off like Frank, and it has made him everything that Frank is not. All that said, Cole also had sex with Frank’s wife, which makes him a total prick.

Despite limited screen time, Sho Kosugi displays the full bag of talents -- solid martial arts skills and great facial expressions among them -- that prompted Cannon Films to invest in him as a leading actor. His Hasegawa character is more interesting than your run-of-the-mill mercenary given the rivalrous backstory between he and Cole, and Kosugi’s language-barrier limitations are mitigated by his character only having a few lines of stilted, angry dialog. He also strikes a blow for vegans everywhere when he burns down the village of local workers on the Landers' property. Boom -- no more cockfighting.

The overall action in the film is decent by early 80s Western standards, which is to say it’s not very good by modern standards nor comparable to Far East films from the same time period. Mike Stone, one of the story’s writers and a capable martial artist who went on to roles in American Ninja 2 and American Ninja 3, stunt-doubled for Nero in most of the scenes where Cole is dressed in ninja apparel. Unfortunately, these scenes really only get play in the opening of the film and its climax. The meat of the action consists of quick shots from behind Stone (dressed as Cole) as he fights competently, intercut with shots of Nero throwing haymakers and clumsy side kicks. Does this work? In the same way a smashed passenger-side car window can be patched up with duct tape and a piece of cardboard, sure, I guess. To its credit, the film goes to great lengths to feature a variety of ninja weapons -- from smoke bombs and shurikens to katana and nunchaku -- and the strictly ninja scenes are lively enough.

VERDICT
Enter the Ninja is more historically important than it is good -- it gave us this death scene, after all -- and this isn't a bad thing. This could have been a very different (and better) movie had Cannon Films cast a legit martial artist in the lead role (a young Richard Norton maybe?) but it’s safe to assume this film wouldn’t have been made without the cinematic cachet of Nero. His steely glares and awesome mustache create the lifeboat that keeps us afloat in a sea of tired cliches, and his goofy kicks are a small price to pay in exchange for a more qualified fighter (Stone) going under the hood as his double. Not exactly a recommend, but if you want to get a sense of how we got from The Octagon to Adkins, this is the place to start. 

3.5 / 7

Black Samurai (1977)

PLOT: A secret agent is forced to pursue a dangerous cult after its members kidnap his woman. It’s nice to see a display of such loyalty when he clearly could have done better.

Director: Al Adamson
Writers: B. Readick (screenplay), Marc Olden (novel)
Cast: Jim Kelly, Roberto Contreras, Marilyn Joi, Essie Lin Chia, Biff Yeager, Bill Roy, Charles Grant, Jace Khan




PLOT THICKENER:
While a regular fixture in the horror genre, portrayals of cults have appeared only sporadically in more mainstream and critically-acclaimed films. The backwoods clan of 2011’s Martha Marcy May Marlene haunted arthouse audiences with equal parts trauma and folk music. More recently, Paul Thomas Anderson’s latest film, The Master, examines a cultish group of brainwashers which has nothing whatsoever to do with Scientology. It’s timely, then, that we take a look at another cult-centered film ripe for accolades and deep contemplation. For our contribution to the Mysterious Order of the Skeleton Suit’s October roundtable-- “Satan’s Schools for Ghouls” -- we take a tumble into the zany black magic of 1977’s Black Samurai. This marks the first time we dip into the filmography of Jim Kelly, and the last time I watch Black Samurai.

The character was originally hatched as the central hero in a series of novels by crime writer Marc Olden. For better or worse, this is the one and only film adaptation. I knew none of this until I read Keith’s review over at Teleport City. If you want a comprehensive review of the film, its relationship to the novel on which it was based, and a well-formed critique of Al Adamson’s cinematic legacy, be sure to read it. Especially since we’re probably going to concentrate on punch sound effects and Jim Kelly’s impeccable afro in the review here.

Robert Sand (Kelly) is a martial artist and more important, an elite agent in the international crime-fighting agency, D.R.A.G.O.N. He’s enjoying a sunny vacation when his colleagues show up during a casual game of tennis with a lady friend. “We need you on this case, Sand,” they say. “WTF, I’m on vacation,” Sand responds. He only relents after finding out that his main girl, Toki (Lin Chia), has been kidnapped by the target, a cult leader named Augustus Janicott. Known to his followers as the Warlock, his file indicates that he has a history of heroin possession, mind control, extortion, pornography, and ruffled dress shirts.

As evidenced by transitional footage of an airplane landing, Sand travels to some remote location far enough away that it necessitates air travel. He begins a shadowy descent into the world of the Warlock, where mysterious cars attempt to run him off the road, angry little people break into his hotel room and hold him at gunpoint, and evil, buxom sidekicks are very sensitive to having their sexual propositions declined. Unfortunately, the Warlock and his minions are pure villain filler, and I have no clue what beliefs or objectives to which his supposedly Satanic cult ascribes. They have soirees with mariachi music one night, and blood rituals with African drums, masks, and shoddy pyrotechnics the next. Sand’s superiors allege that he uses his followers for drug trafficking and prostitution, but there’s no evidence of that in the film. In fact, the most harmful and offensive thing about the Warlock is the acting of Bill Roy.

While fairly incompetent when shooting action scenes, Adamson is exceptional at creating three-minute montages of an attractive couple dressed in floral prints kissing softly and strolling through the forest. We’re supposed to care about the relationship between Sand and Toki based on this scene alone, but wordless displays of affection are a lame surrogate for a half-baked romance between underwritten characters with limited on-screen interaction. Would terrorizing the damsel a bit more make the audience more sympathetic to her plight and desirous of her rescue? Possibly, but the worst thing she encounters is a weekend in a locked cell and a probable diet of stale bread and tepid water. In Hollywood, that’s called detox.

For fans of “so bad it’s good” cinema, I might cautiously recommend this film, but would otherwise wave a giant red flag devoured by flames toward anyone looking for an example of solid 1970s action or blaxploitation fare. Sand drives a cool souped-up purple sports car and even zooms around in a jet pack for a good five minutes, but otherwise there's not much here for action fans to chew on. There’s no real gore and outside of a couple impressive jumps from high places, the stunts are lacking.

Instead of liberating Kelly and his fight skills as Robert Clouse did in the terrific Black Belt Jones, Adamson dogs the choreography with poor shooting angles and awful editing. The sound effects are fun and properly exaggerated, but the fights are so short and stilted that none of it matters much. (Most amusing: Kelly shouts “Hello turkeys!” while punching enemies in the cock during a party). Adamson swaps technically proficient for zany, a stylistic choice perhaps best encapsulated by the climactic scuffle between Kelly and a live goddamn vulture. The best (i.e. longest) scene is between Kelly and Charles Grant, known here as Bone, but probably best known as Kim Delaney’s first husband. Bone is positioned as the best physical match for Sand, but our hero relentlessly toys with the henchman during their confrontation by showing off his boxing footwork and taunting him with homophobic slurs before breaking his back.

In a movie loaded with curious technical choices, this was, for me, the most egregious. This particular version of the film was scrubbed entirely of even entry-level curse words, but the production team saw fit to leave all instances of the aforementioned "f-word" slur fully intact for the DVD’s 2001 release. While I understand that the 1970s were a different time for relations between people of differing sexual orientations, I’m not quite sure what the rationale was behind the inclusion. Offensive, sure, but only slightly more puzzling than BCI’s use of the “Vampire Hunters” theme from the original score for Bram Stoker’s Dracula for the DVD’s title menu.

VERDICT:
A few months ago, I predicted that The Dynamite Brothers wouldn’t be my last Adamson film and that prophecy was fulfilled. That wasn’t a particularly good film, nor was this, and I have no reason to believe that the final Kelly-Adamson collaboration, Death Dimension, will somehow reverse the pattern (despite a really cool poster). A handful of zany moments prevent this from being a complete snoozer, but it’s not indicative of Kelly’s talents as a martial artist or screen presence. Unless you’ve exhausted all other options in the “jetpacks in cinema” or “human versus animal fight scene” subgenres, I would keep moving along.

AVAILABILITY:
Amazon, Netflix, EBay.

2 / 7

FURTHER READING:
For more context and critique of this film, head over to our brother-from-another-mother at Teleport City to read Keith’s review of Black Samurai.

Click the demonic but seasonable image above for additional M.O.S.S. contributions to October’s “Satan’s School for Ghouls!”

Enforcer from Death Row (1978)

PLOT: A terrorist syndicate based in Manila has been using to ninjas to murder intelligence operatives from the World Organization for Peace. Even worse, they threaten to wipe out the population of the Philippines using a biochemical agent. Even worse than that, the biochemical agent consists of powdered Tang and Tab Cola.

Directors: Marshall M. Borden, Efren C. Piñon
Writer: Leo Fong
Cast: Leo Fong, Darnell Garcia, John Hammond, Cameron Mitchell, Ann Farber, Booker T. Anderson


PLOT THICKENER:
While this is our second film from the Philippines in the last three weeks, and third overall, Enforcer from Death Row is our first film from the 1970s as well as the first starring Leo Fong. Yes, it all adds up to a lot of random digits. Some people find numbers to be fun (dorks, geniuses), but for the rest of us, we have this 1978 Filipino action trash romp to rely on for our chuckles.

The 1970s were a trying time for peace. While the Vietnam War drew to a close, the Cold War was at what Julia Child might call a rolling boil. The Arab-Israeli conflict kicked off in 1973 with the Yom Kippur War, and the Lebanese War started in 1975. Coups, terrorist operations, and dictators dominated the headlines and strife was at levels unseen since that time they outlawed a nifty little cough suppressant called Heroin.

Just as war produces heroes, so does peace. T.L. Young (Fong) is an innocent man on death row in a San Francisco prison. Fortunately, for the World Organization for Peace, he’s a rare candidate with experience and physical tools they desperately need. All of their intelligence operatives based in Manila have been killed off by a terrorist group called NOMAD, which now threatens to wipe out the population of the Philippines using a biological weapon unless they receive $45 million in cash. Since the organization would rather take their chances on a disposable convict than pay the money, Young is tapped as an “outside man” for his unique set of skills: martial-arts mastery, firearms expertise, and a choice moustache. Like every good action hero, he comes correct with his own titular theme song: “Outside Man,” the funkiest orchestral-soul track this side of Shaft.

After Young’s execution is staged for the prison warden and members of the press, his body is taken to a nearby hospital and revived. After regaining consciousness, he’s greeted by a member of the peacenik organization and told in the vaguest terms possible that a special assignment awaits him at headquarters in Arizona. His response? “How much money, and who do I kill?” Points for being direct and concise.

In exchange for a cool $100,000, Young will assume the new identity of Albert Lim and begin working undercover to take down NOMAD. Upon arriving in Manila, he has to touch base with a series of different contacts. Given no instructions other than to “have fun and stay sober,” Young, errr.... Lim, jets off to the land of chicken adobo and Manny Pacquiao.

Evil doesn’t stop and throw its legs up on the ottoman while Young is getting acclimated to his new surroundings, though. The thugs at NOMAD are sewing seeds of instability at every turn: cooking up epidemic bacteria and viruses, stealing documents, killing informers, and lubing deals for massive arms caches.

I couldn’t tell you who played Spencer, the leader of the terrorist group, and no, that’s not because I’m unable to tell the difference between Filipino people. Assholes -- why would you suggest that? It’s because neither the credits nor the IMDb entry list the cast and characters. For that reason, I’ll be referring to the Darnell Garcia character as Rego, because that’s sort of what it sounded like when other characters addressed him. As the head hatchet man, he trains the syndicate’s squad of ninja assassins when he’s not having threesomes with busty women or torturing people using snakes, rats, or power tools. Or was it torturing busty women and have threesomes with snakes, rats, and power tools? Either way, it’s pretty sleazy behavior, but not as bizarre as the group‘s other muscle, a 300-pound black man named Monster. What he lacks in fashion sense -- he wears a filthy half-shirt which exposes his beer belly -- he makes up in his propensity for doing bumps of coke after completing tasks.

You could nitpick about a lot of things in this type of movie, but for my money, the misappropriation of the ninja archetype was the most egregious. In Enforcer... the only characteristics which NOMAD’s ninjas share with their brethren are masks and throwing stars. Sure, they drop randomly from ceiling panels every so often, but they also run into traffic in the middle of the day and toss Molotov cocktails from moving trucks. Resourceful, sure, but there’s nothing particularly stealthy about that.

The fight scenes have an unrefined but energetic and rompy style to them, highlighted by a brawl between Young, Rego, and a group of ninjas in a burning chemical laboratory. During Young’s early training, we also see a free-flow stickfighting drill with eskrima Grandmaster Angel Cabales. While there’s no shortage of action, some of the bigger action set pieces are terribly slow to develop. During a dramatic chase scene which finds our hero driving perilously toward a cliff, Young escapes his convertible by latching onto a rope ladder lowered by a moving helicopter. This would have looked pretty bad-ass had the car not been traveling 8 miles per hour. There’s also some really poor night shots that failed mightily to incorporate action as well as a glaring continuity error where a moustache appears suddenly on Leo Fong’s previously clean-shaven face when he looks up to react to an explosion. These aren’t terrible gaffes, and I might even regard them as charming, but they did take away from the action scenes a bit.

For the uninitiated, Fong was born in China, moved to Arkansas at the age of five, and learned boxing as a teenager and martial arts in his 20s. He sparred with Bruce Lee and wrote or directed over 20 films. Best of all, he has a fairly pronounced Southern drawl, which some have mistaken -- at least in this film -- as a bad dubbing job. While an Asian guy with a Southern accent should equal cinematic gold, Fong’s rich mahogany dramatic style and age may have held him back. He was around 50 when this was filmed and only grew older through the American action boom of the 1980s. Still, Fong carved out a good niche for himself and worked with everyone from action stars like Richard Norton, Billy Blanks, and Reb Brown, to dramatic actors such as Stack Pierce, George Cheung, and Cameron Mitchell.

Splitting the duties at director are Marshall M. Borden, who would never again helm another film, and Efren C. Piñon, perhaps most famous for the 1983 horror-fantasy The Killing of Satan. Perhaps the more notable production credit is Frank Harris, listed as cinematographer. He’d go on to direct Fong in Killpoint (1984) and Low Blow (1986), both of which will be covered in the coming months.

VERDICT:
There are no great surprises here. You get exactly what’s coming to you: Leo Fong in a low-budget late 1970s Filipino action movie. There’s bad dubbing, random gore, random nudity, rape, the stunts are often slow to develop, the plot is convoluted, the villains are sleazy, and most of the production is sloppy as all fuck, but somehow it’s still an entertaining ride when you’ve come out the other side. In other words, Enforcer from Death Row is like 80% of 1970s Filipino action movies. If you like that type of thing, have at it. If you don’t, go watch The King’s Speech. I heard a lot of people over the age of 60 really liked it.

AVAILABILITY:
Netflix and Amazon.

4 / 7