LEGEND OF THE SHADOWY NINJA : THE NINJA DRAGON (1990)

  Go Nagai is one of the most important figures in manga and anime, pretty much inventing the giant robot genre. This here shot-on-video production is currently his only foray into live-action as writer and director. It's not up to the level of some of the better animes he was involved with(MAZINGA Z, DEVILMAN, GRENDIZER etc.) but it's an ok watch with some absurd elements(the movie comes to a halt while we watch 2 lady wrestlers battle it out and it all ends with a spaceship popping up) and gore(a guy gets his face ripped right off!) thrown in between all the expected ninja/kung fu action.

RUCKUS 2 (1987)

 Better known, if known at all, as ULTIMAX FORCE, since that's what it was released as in America. This has best been described as a Filipino version of Chuck Norris' MISSING IN ACTION mixed with AMERICAN NINJA. Instead of one Michael Dudikoff though we get 4 ninja masters heading back to 'Nam to rescue our POWs there. Plenty of explosions, gun-fu and other martial arts action ensue. Treacherous Viet Kong leader does treacherous things. It's about as predictable as can be and only really entertaining if you have the lowest of action movie expectations/standards. 

 Director Willy Milan was pretty prolific for over 20 years but most of his stuff didn't get released outside of The Philippines. 

 The first RUCKUS film was a sort-of a proto-FIRST BLOOD deal with Dirk Benedict as a Vietnam vet who gets hassled in a small California town and Linda Blair helps him. There's obviously no real connection between these 2 films.

NINJA WARS (1982)

  Sonny Chiba gets to play a badass as usual in this Japanese samurai flick disguised as a ninja movie. He's technically only a supporting character though despite what my Chiba DVD box set promises me. Hiroyuki Sanada stars as a heroic ninja who never actually dresses like one. There are a lot of crazy elements in this one. You get an evil sorcerer, a bunch of magical warriors, a guy whop spits out some kinda killer quick-drying Krazy glue/goop, a decapitation that shoots out blood like a lawn sprinkler, a naked horny fat chick, rape and a love potion among other things. Even with all that stuff it never really reaches the insanity level of a Shaw Brothers film but still a good watch for something outside the normal ninja hijinks that these types of films deliver. AKA BLACK MAGIC NINJA and IGA MAGIC STORY. Released on DVD as DEATH OF A NINJA.

 I've only seen the subtitled version but this dubbed cut looks extra stupid!:

THE CHALLENGE OF THE LADY NINJA (1983)

  This is one of those crazy over-the-top-style kung fu flicks with people flying through the air, burrowing through the ground like worms and throwing colorful smoke bombs at each other among other absurd delights. To make things even better they throw crazy sex antics into the mix. A ridiculous training scene where gals(including one whore) are trained to be ninjas by having their legs spread as far apart as possible while the camera lingers pervingly on their crotches. Also some rather large Asian breasts are exposed for your viewing pleasure. Beware though because apparently there are versions of this where the naughty bits are sadly cut out altogether and some other minor plot points are altered. AKA NEVER KISS A NINJA and CHINESE SUPER NINJAS 2(making it a sequel to this Hong Kong flick that it really has nothing to do with) 

NINJA BUSTERS (1984)

 This one took me a few tries to make it all the way through. I guess the idea of a karate/ninja flick mixed with an exceptionally stupid comedy doesn't really hold all that much appeal to me. I was expecting something more in line with MIAMI CONNECTION but this is not quite as engaging or entertaining as that one. Both films do have a similar backstory about being lost and then rediscovered recently to movie assorted geeks raving in delight. I assume with this one the raving was a bit less vehement and perhaps if it had stayed lost it wouldn't have been that great of a loss to very many folks.  All the elements are present  for something that could have been fun, ninjas, drug dealing bad guys, revolutionary political extremists, bikers, dreadful acting and general stupidity. Maybe if there was at least a bit more bloody violence and everything didn't seem like a movie made for little kids I coulda go into it more.

THE OCTAGON (1980)

 My favorite Chuck Norris movie is that one where he fights the Michael Meyers-esque killer. Compared to that, this here(where he just fights a bunch of ninjas) is a bit on the generic side. You do get Lee Van Cleef, who plays a good guy but shoots a lot of people anyway, but he's not really in it enough. Also Ernie Hudson(aka the black guy from GHOSTBUSTERS) shows up briefly if you don't blink. I've been working my way through a few Norris titles lately but his films never really thrill me as much as the Bronson stuff from the same era. The fight scenes just seem flatter even though Norris is obviously an actual martial artist and the runtime here gets to feeling a bit long by the time it's all over. This one is clearly for hardcore Chuck completists only.



            This is kind of a weird poster since it doesn't have Norris' mug anywhere on it!:

Known in France as THE RAGE OF THE RIGHTEOUS!:

                                                          Chuck Norris Fest!!:

TO CATCH A NINJA (1984)

 Unlike many of these Taiwanese movies with the word 'ninja' in the title this one actually has a ninja in it(or at least a guy with a very ninja-like outfit on), so that's something. It's also a pretty decent blend of action/kung-fu and for about the first half of the runtime it's a crime drama before morphing into your more standard kung-fu flick. There's quite a bit of variety on display besides your standard fist and foot-fighting you get gun-fu, motorcycle-fu, Frankenstein-fu, skiing-fu and even some unexpected rollerskating-ninja-fu. Muzak versions of Procol Harum's 'Whiter Shade of Pale' and 10CC's "Not in Love" play on the soundtrack which are not songs I would ever pick to be in an action-packed film, but what do I know?  AKA NINJA AND THE THIEF and TO CATCH A THIEF. The director on this is credited as Tommy Lee but I'm pretty sure it's not the drummer of Motley Crue.
 This was recut by the specialist of re-cutting and splicing cheap crappy things together, Mr. Godfrey Ho, and released the same year as NINJA THUNDERBOLT. This version is pretty similar except that you get some additional scenes of Richard Harrison to give it more appeal to those American round-eyes.

KILL 'EM ALL (2013)

 Not to be confused with the 80's Metallica album of the same name, this American kung-fu flick, that seems a lot more like a Thai kung-fu flick because that's where it was shot, kinda reminded me of the movie RAZE which came out this same year and was a film with a bunch of women kept in prison and forced to fight to the death tournament style. In this one you get a bunch of highly-skilled assassins in the same situation. This works a bit better in the action and martial-arts departments and is a little less SAW-like than RAZE was. Also a gang of ninjas show up  and it was cool seeing Gordon "MASTER KILLER" Liu featured as the main bad-guy, still kicking ass in 2012! Overall while it's a pretty slim plot the title is fairly accurate in that almost everyone gets offed and I've seen way stupider kung fu flicks.



Metallica before they became lame old greedy people!!:

DIAMOND NINJA FORCE (1988)

 Another one of the many ninja movies directed by Godfrey Ho for IFD films. Like most of the ones I've seen this stars Richard Harrison and inserts newly shot footage with him and some ninjas into older footage from another film. The original film is a Taiwanese movie about a witchy/ghost lady that haunts a family that has a little boy named Bobo. I have no idea what it was originally called but this footage gives some boobs, sex scenes, a part where maggots pour out of a faucet and lots of silly haunted house antics. The new footage has crappy ninja fight scenes and Richard harrison showing how bad-ass he is by talking on a Garfield phone. They try to fuse these two things together but as usual it's kind of obvious that we're watching two different films. Viewable by the insane or cinematic masochists only.
 The DVD I have of this has the title of GHOST NINJA for some reason but the movie has the DIAMOND NINJA FORCE credit.  

NINJA III: THE DOMINATION (1984)

 The 80's were really dumb times and this movie here is a perfect example of just how dumb they were. It starts out with a ninja on a rampage on a golf course taking out golfers and about a bazillion cops. Then when he's finally almost dead after taking 3 zillion rounds of ammo at point blank range he decides to possess a chick who just happens to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. So, of course, she now has magical ninja skills and beats up would-be rapists and all those cops that dared to shoot at our ninja ghost guy. That is until, 80's martial arts video favorite, Sho Kosugi shows up to kick ass. As dumb as kung fu movies from Hong Kong can be I think it's only the ones intentionally made for children that could top this in terms of sheer dumbness. Still it's an entertaining watch as long as you don't take anything serious.      
 Apparently the first two chapters of this are 1981's ENTER THE NINJA and 1983's REVENGE OF THE NINJA which also had Sho Kosugi in them but, from what I recall, I don't think there was any EXORCIST-rip-off shenanigans going on in those.

FIVE ELEMENT NINJAS (1982)

 This is has always been one of my favorite kung fu flicks. I used to have a huge poster for it hanging on my wall and I used to watch it pretty frequently on UHF stations back in the 80's under the title of SUPER NINJAS. I was always really into it for the variety of weapons used and also the variety of different ninjas. You get metal ninjas with crazy hats that shoot knives, fire ninjas who shoot fire and red smog at you, water ninjas who use hooked spears, underground dirt ninjas who spear you in the crotch and ninjas hiding in trees that use claws. There's also some regular ninjas that use a whole slew of different things including Wolverine-claws, throwing stars and grappling hooks. Now on the TV-version I used to watch they cut out some of the more graphic scenes but in a recent theatrical viewing I finally got to see the full gore-filled spectacle which includes a guy getting ripped in half, an even more unlucky guy getting pulled completely apart, a decapitation, a guys intestines hanging out and other not so happy bloody endings. They even throw in a hot ninja gal in a fishnet body suit for some nice eye candy. Definitely one of the best Shaw Brothers flicks there ever was. AKA CHINESE SUPER NINJAS

TRINITY GOES EAST (1998)

 If you want to see a kung-fu flick mixed together with a re-imagining of the classic Trinity spaghetti-western movies this would be the place to look. Unfortunately the only thing they kept from the westerns is the music and the Bud Spencer/Terrence Hill characters. These aren't the best interpretations of these two fellows I've seen. The Trinity character, played by someone named Steve Tartalia, is particularly repugnant. I guess since it was the 90's he resembles Zack from SAVED BY THE BELL more than he does the gun-slinging hero of the 70's films. The Spencer Bambino character, played by a fat man named Roberto Lopez, is slightly better although he never gets the head-bonking right and for some reason here he has a pet pig(that's sometimes a hand-puppet or stuffed animal of some sort) that I think is supposed to tug on our heart-strings(yuck!). There is also a Bruce Lee-rip-off character(played by an actor with the cool name of Sky Dragon), a take-off on the Lone Wolf and Cub movies with a pig in the cart instead of a baby, ninjas and dragon-balls. Bambino also copies the old "don't laugh at my mule" speech from FISTFUL OF DOLLARS. All these homages and rip-offs just make me want to go watch the originals instead of this. Only worth a watch if you wanna see a chubby fella kung-fu a bunch of ninjas.


Fighting in their pajamas:

NINJA DEATH II (1987)

"You son of a bitch! You dare to rape a girl in broad daylight? I wonder what kind of balls you got. You scamp you!"

This is part of a trilogy of NINJA DEATH flicks all made at the same time and unlike many of the other movies I've seen recently with the word "ninja" in the title, this one actually has a bunch of ninjas in it. There's a gold ninja, a ninja with a plastic Halloween face-mask and a lot of your regular standard ninjas. I'm not sure if NINJA DEATH II is even the correct title here since the cheap-ass DVD I have of this has no title on it at all and just starts right in with a load of incoherent scenes strung together. Having never seen the first film I'm not sure if they were from it or just badly edited parts of this film since most of the movie kind of follows this random action pattern that doesn't make a whole lot of sense. A lot of this movie is really drawn-out and dull but they almost make up for it with a couple of instances of unexpected gore that shows up when this guy in a mask, that looks like the one in DEMONS,  yanks this guy's head off and then rips out another fellow's intestines. Earlier on some eyes get bloodily gouged out also. I also enjoyed when a ninja gets called a meat-head by his master but it didn't really help make this worth the time waste most of it was. AKA VENOM OF THE NINJA 2

Growly demon-face fights some ninjas:

NINJA DRAGON (1986)

 These Godfrey Ho-directed kung-fu/ninja flicks are pretty hard to tell one from the other. They almost all star Richard Harrison and they all seem to be conglomerations of at least two different movies. This one also stars a guy named Bruce Stallion and if that's not the greatest name for an action-movie star I don't know what is. The plot here deals with a couple of rival gangs fighting over turf or something(it's not all that easy to follow exactly what the hell is going on). One gang sometimes dresses like they're in the 1930's and the other gang enjoys dressing up like The Blues Brothers. They then do a bunch of gun-fu and people get assassinated. In the middle of all this Mr. Ho shoehorns in a bunch of scenes of two ninjas, who wear heavy eyeliner, fighting and Mr. Harrison doing some slow-motion sword-handling which I'm guessing was shot at another time. This is definitely one of those movies that I will forget ever seeing five minutes after it's over but at least it's mildly amusing, even if just for it's extremely stupid dubbing, while viewing.
 Bruce Stallion is, in real life, a Muay Thai fighter named Paulo Tocha. Strangely he doesn't do much of any real fighting in this.

VIOLENT SHIT III: INFANTRY OF DOOM (1999)

"The world is full of puke and shit, and now a horde of tin-masked assholes are puking in our faces, full of shit."

 The first two VIOLENT SHIT movies were basic straight ahead extremely gory slasher movies made in Germany on what look like very tiny budgets. In this one, which is the highlight of the trilogy for me, we get an action movie shoe-horned in along with the uber-gore. None of these 3 entertainingly dumb movies are related plot-wise except that they all feature a killer named Karl, played by director Andreas Schnaas, who wears a cheap-shit homemade metal mask and loves tearing people apart. In this one he's Karl Jr., which makes me think of that fast-food burger place, and he brings his dad along for some bloody good times. Somehow here Karl and son have started a militia full of maniacs and murderers on an island where they spend their time ripping out people's guts and tearing faces off traitors. It's all fun and games until some shipwrecked knuckleheads show up and then some kung fu fighters join up with them and then the shit is on! As you can probably tell if you've seen any of these movies the story is a jumbled mess that's all over the place but that's part of the chaotic fun of this film. On the action side you get ninjas, zombies, a half-robot man, a killer action-figure, and use of just about every weapon known to man including the incredible flying-guillotine. On the violence side you get a zombie-building mad scientist with a Hitler moustache, tons of decapitations, fingers, legs and just about every body part you can think of hacked off, boob biting, a guy gets his spinal column ripped out of his asshole with a hook and on and on. As an added bonus this film may have the most absurd dubbing and/or subtitling(depending on which version you watch) of anything ever with insults like "donkey fucking whores" and "fucktard" thrown about liberally.
 Seeing this movie in a theater full of drunken loudmouths last night was probably the best way to view such a masterpiece of Eurotrash splatter cinema. AKA ZOMBIE DOOM