Quick! Who do you think of when you think Ninja films of the
80’s?
If you said Sho Kosugi, you get a gold ninja star! I would
also accept Cannon Films, Golan-Globus Productions, or Sam Firstenberg.
Lost? Read on, Grass-hopper…
OK, if you didn’t follow that reference, that’s why I’m here,
I’m going to educate you- because I am a giver. My doctor says I’m a carrier,
but I digress. In the 1980’s there was a
tremendous surge of ninja films in the United States. Bruce Lee was gone, Chuck
Norris was growing in popularity, and martial arts were not quite
mainstream. Yeah, there were karate
schools in most major cities. Still, something about the martial arts was still
exotic and mysterious. Then, the Decade
of Decadence suddenly exploded with far-fetched action films featuring the
seemingly superhuman warrior; the ninja.
Most ninja films that were popular in America featured the
Japanese actor Sho Kosugi. He began his
remarkable career in Asia, doubling for actors in many low-budget quickies and
perfecting fight choreography before making his mark in the U.S. in several
Cannon films. He embraced the stereotype
to the fullest, un-apologetically playing the same type of character each time:
the mysterious ninja master, sometimes the good guy, sometimes the villain, but
always intimidating and purely awesome.
His fight choreography is typically marked with high-energy acrobatics,
flashy kicks, and exotic weaponry. We didn’t know what a ninja was, but he must
have been one. Every kid I knew in the mid-80’s owned throwing stars or
nunchuks because of Kosugi.
He is most notably remembered for the Ninja trilogy, produced by the Israeli cousins who ruled low-budget
Hollywood flicks throughout the eighties, Menahem Golan and Yorem Globus. Their Cannon Films group had a fool-proof
business model built around a simple philosophy: any picture could be made for
under $1 million with little-known actors and turn a profit. The Ninja
trilogy was Enter the Ninja, Revenge of
the Ninja, and today’s entry Ninja
III: The Domination. The three films
all featured Kosugi in a starring role, though they were all unrelated stories. Each time he played a different character.
In Ninja III,
Cannon tried something that hadn’t really been done. They combined the “possession” horror-movie
genre with the ninja genre, with a little bit of dance-movie genre thrown in
for good measure. It was an odd mix to
be sure, but fans of each genre were sure to have something for them. I’ll discuss the film’s specific plot points
next, so if you are thinking of checking out the movie on Netflix or YouTube
and don’t like spoilers, I suggest you skip the next section, and skip down to
the final paragraph…
Ok, here’s your spoiler alert. Consider yourself warned.
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| How are they not shooting each other? |
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| Tiger regretted hiring his new caddie. |
She takes the sword home, and we later learn it has magic
powers, possibly even possessed by the ninja.
Our leading lady, Christie, is played by Lucinda Dickey, who gained fame in dancing
movies like Breakin’ as well as Breakin’ 2: Electric Bogaloo. In those films, she caught the attention of
director Sam Firstenberg (as well as millions of love-struck teenage boys), who
also directed this film as well as many other ninja films. Her dancing style fused ballet with hip-hop,
which in the early eighties hadn't been seen before. Not a trained martial artist, her natural
athleticism made it possible for her to do most of her own stunts in Ninja III. Back to the story.
One of the cops who question her after the cop massacre, Billy Secord, follows her around everywhere. Were he
not a good-looking guy, she’d probably say more like he stalks her everywhere. He shows
up at her other job, teaching aerobics in what can only be described as the
sleaziest gym ever. Some creepy guys
form the gym follow our heroin outside after class and try to rape her. The group
of people just stands idly by doing nothing, which includes officer Secord.
Gee, if there were only a law enforcement guy around who could stop these
bullies from trying to rape Lucinda Dickey. Oh, well. As the guys advance on her, she suddenly
explodes on them with some amazing karate moves. She makes quick work of the
four guys, easily dispatching them, no thanks to creepy-stalker-cop-guy, who
watches the whole thing unfold.
Soon, Secord keeps hitting on her while she constantly
deflects his creepy advances. About this
time, I’m thinking, “finally-a movie with a strong female lead…something which shows
girls you can be strong and sexy, but not need a man”. Then, as Secord finally gives up, and angrily
tells her to get out…she gives in to him. And thus, the women’s movement comes
to a grinding halt, leading us to a scene that I guess is supposed to be
romantic, but is kind of yucky. She pours V8 juice on herself, which he is
supposed to lick off. I don’t know if they were going for a 9 and ½ Weeks vibe or what, but…it was a
fail. Thankfully, the scene cuts away
before it devolves any further into soft-core porn.
Christie also begins to succumb to the spirit in the ninja
sword, which takes over her body from time to time, sending her out on a quest
to find the cops who killed the ninja in the opening. Every time Christie sees one of the cops out-and-about,
she has a flashback of the assassin being shot hundreds of times by the cops,
and she quickly runs away, changes into the ninja outfit and hunts the cop
down. This pattern occurs several times, and the scenes are laughable. Lucinda Dickey handles the choreography
pretty well, but it’s still difficult to accept that she has super-strength and
is able to easily overpower larger men, trained to use guns, but hey-this is
only a movie…I’ll suspend some disbelief.
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| Finally. The movie's half over, and I "Sho" up. |
About the same time in the story, Secord takes Christie to
see a Japanese exorcist, played by the great James Hong, from Big Trouble in Little China, as well as
about 900 billion other movies requiring an old Asian guy who doesn't mind
stereotypes. He discovers Christie is
possessed by an ancient ninja spirit, and that he can’t help her, because,
well, “only a ninja can stop a ninja”. Speaking of ninjas, finally Sho Kosugi (you
know, the star of the movie) shows up.
He meets some monks, and promptly begins his secret mission
to steal back the body of the assassin. After bringing the body to the temple, he gets
after Christie who is in full ninja-mode.
They have a battle that goes from a cemetery to an old warehouse. The cops arrive and capture Kosugi, and I guess
they assume he is the assassin they
are looking for. Christie escapes, and Kosugi instructs Secord to bring
Christie to the old temple, where he will meet them later. Kosugi then easily
escapes the cops and meets them at the temple.
There, they begin the rites to free Christie of the spirit, send the
spirit to its old body, and finally we get the showdown we've been waiting
for. The two ninja duking it out, taking
the battle through the temple, around some cliffs, and down a steep hill.
The action is typical Kosugi, fantastic and high-energy. His acrobatics are not quite on the level of
Jackie Chan, but fans of Chan will still appreciate the choreography and
stunts. The evil ninja is played by
David Chung, himself an accomplished martial artist. The fight never reaches the awesomeness that
we get in Kosugi’s second entry Revenge
of the Ninja, which I will be reviewing at a later time. Still the battle is exciting, if a little
shorter than I felt it should be. There
is plenty of supernatural mayhem, including smoke-bombs, mass hypnotism, and in
the movies greatest what-the-crap moment, a ninja drilling into the ground to
create an earthquake. You read that correctly.
That alone was worth the price of admission.
The
Verdict:
Fans of ninja films will not be disappointed by this
one. There is plenty of action, chases,
and stunts to keep even the shortest attention-span movie watchers
engaged. I did not care much for the love
story, but will admit that at least this movie was progressive enough that the
hero is the girl, and she doesn't need saving by the guy. Compared to Twilight, this message is much better. I get the very real sense during this movie
that Christie doesn't really need Secord
to fulfill her sense of self-worth. She
keeps him around simply because she wants to.
I like that.
None of the characters are really well fleshed-out. Kosugi’s
character is your typical ninja good-guy, who is motivated to capture and
destroy the evil ninja because he raided his village and cut his eye in a brief
cliché-flashback, explaining the eye-patch. That is the extent of his
development.
We know absolutely nothing about the evil ninja,
other than some gibberish about how he is an ancient warrior, possibly
possessed by an old evil spirit. It is
not explained if the ninja himself is just another guy with a spirit that goes
from person to person, or he is the
spirit. And we never know why he killed
rich white yuppie-guy in the beginning. We
only know he is evil; that is enough.
Secord is likable enough, I guess. When he is not leering at Christie, he does manage to come off as a pretty cool guy who does care about her, though the relationship developed pretty quickly, even in “movie-time”. He is not your typical action hero-type who saves the girl. She is pretty tough in this, and at one point in the story almost kills him while he cowers on the floor in a scene where she is being possessed and is trying to fight off the demon’s power.
This movie is a good, solid action movie that will take you back to B-movie exploitation films of the 70's and 80's. While it is not exactly a cinematic achievement in storytelling or special effects, it does what it does well. I am a tremendous fan of the ninja genre, and love campy films. While the movie did mix martial arts, horror, and action, it didn't really go very far in any of those directions. Unfortunately, it left the film feeling a bit muddled, as though it were suffering an identity crisis. The formula of mixing horror and martial arts wouldn't be tried again until a few years later with Chuck Norris's Silent Rage (another movie I'll have to review on this site, though I'm having trouble associating Norris with B-movies). I found the viewing experience of this awesome chop-socky 80's flick akin to eating Chinese food; it was satisfying, but an hour later I wanted more.
~Dax
Final Score: 2 out of 4
The Van Damme / Sho Kosugi Connection:
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| Nope, totally not looking gay |
Lucinda Dickey also worked for Sam Firstenberg on Breakin', which featured an extra you might recognize: a young pre-cocaine Jean-Claude Van Damme dancing like a freak in the background. JCVD made his mark originally in France in the dancing film Rue Barber and showcased his dancing talent before being known as a karate guy. After his rise to fame with Bloodsport he was criminally under-used when he made his only movie with Sho Kosugi called Black Eagle.
More Useless Trivia
Christie has an arcade game in her apartment called Bouncer (More info on Bouncer here). The game was quite rare, and difficult to locate. It is sort of obscure and difficult to find any information on. In fact, the game was so rare it wasn't officially released. It was expensive to mass-produce, and had the unfortunate timing of coming out when laser-disc games were all the rage. The game's hardware used a new tech called Real-Image Processing, ironically known as R.I.P.
