Die 9 Leben der Ninja

You know, I can sort of see where the director and producer were trying to go with this one.

There are some elements here that are obviously supposed to be funny, or at least camp: the "Cherman" pervert/Nazi in the wheelchair, the attack midgets, the alarming hairdoes on the two female leads, the Amazon squad, etc.And there are some other elements that were obviously supposed to be sexy and glamorous - the opening credit sequence apes James Bond, Sho Kosugi spends a lot of time with his shirt off, various and bad guys are always on the verge of molesting their female hostages. And some action sequences were obviously meant to pull in the ninja/covert ops fans.

So it looks as if these guys were trying to promote Sho Kosugi from the ninja film ghetto to a more mainstream audience by imitating a Jackie Chan film from the "Armor Of God"/"Protector" era. But they didn't have the chops or the cast or the writing to pull it off. The results are, well, pretty crappy.

9DOTN is stupid where it tries to be witty or camp, and the action sequences are strictly going-through-the-motions. By trading the old rough-cut, cheesy Golan-Globus approach for something slicker and duller, and with even worse acting, the movie manages to throw away whatever reason there was to watch Sho in the first place.

I found my copy of "9 Deaths" in a Crown Pictures compilation with 12 flicks for 5 bucks, so I'm not complaining - much. Watch only if you are the hardest-of-hard-core fan of stupid movies.

Come on, it is B classid movie, yeah the movie is very bad, but this is history and funny just watch it and remeber the 80's

9 Deaths of the Ninja (1985)is one of those guilty pleasure films. It's so bad that it's enjoyable. A fourth entry into the Ninja series (following Enter the Ninja, Revenge of the Ninja and Ninja III: The Domination). 9DOAN stars Sho Kosugi as a government agent who travels to the Philippines in order to stop a gang of terrorists.

Sho Kosugi's acting is about as good as his English and the rest of the cast makes him look like Sir Lawrence Olivier. This movie is so bad, bad in the tradition of the cheese classic Final Mission. But I enjoyed very, very much. If you like Sho Kosugi or those wacky Cannon films, then this one's for you!

Highly recommended (for all the wrong reasons).

My review was written in April 1985 after a screening at UA Twin cinema in Manhattan.

"9 Deaths of the Ninja", originally titled "Deadly Warriors", is a relentlessly silly martial arts picture that lampoons the genre rather than providing straight ahead action. Most customers will not be amused.

Villains Alby the Cruel (Blackie Dammett) and Honey Hump (Regina Richardson) kidnap a busload of tourists in Manila, demanding the release of a terrorist from the Middle East named Rahi (Sonny Erang). At the U. S. embassy there, Rankin (Vijay Amritraj) calls for U. S. aid, with a three-person rescue squad sent in, made up of Japanese specialist Spike Shinobi (Sho Kosugi), macho Steve Gordon (Brent Huff) and a lovely blonde (Emilia Lesniak).

Martial arts activity and frequent shootouts are tediously interrupted by failed comedy as villains Dammett and Richardson camp it up outrageously, styled respectively as a Dr. Strangelove-type German megalomaniac and a lesbian sadist. Among the good guys, Kosugi, who previously starred in "Revenge of the Ninja" and on tv's short-lived "The Master" series, tries lamely for laughs, sucking on a lollipop between fights. Brent Huff is once again (as in the French-made "The Perils of Gwendoline") a handsome but bland sidekick, while Emilia Lesniak never deigns to mess up her hair or makeup in a supposedly action role. Kosugi's two kids Kane and Shane are also featured, with Kane strutting his chopsocky skills well.

Writer-director Emmett Alston who previously served as second unit director on earlier Kosugi pics, wastes good production values with his meandering script. Tennis star Vijay Amritraj, who served as exec producer, pop up occasionally to make in-jokes, such as using a telephone shaped like tennis balls.

For starters, the title is misleading. Nine Deaths of a Ninja? Fat chance. I hope the ninja would have used up his nine lives early on and get this movie done with. Nine deaths? Pfffft.

Okay, the plot, if there is one. A German (of course a German, and a Nazi, swastika flag and all) terrorist and his amazing bunch of henchmen and -women kidnap a bus load of tourists. They take them to a remote place in jungle and demand the release of Rahji Mohammed, some kind of fellow terrorist. The best special team, consisting of Shô Kosugi, Brent Huff who looks like he's escaped from a toothpaste ad and a gorgeous but oh-so-clever blonde Emilia Crow, is sent to take care of the problem.

The actor who plays Rahji Mohammed, Sonny Erang, sure has a challenging role to play. No one, not even the severely retarded mental patients I have seen in hospitals, laugh menacingly all the time. Rahji had two or three lines in the whole movie, the rest of the time he just laughs. Oh and he must be a really nasty guy: he takes some balloons away from children and squeezes the balloons until they pop. Terrifying. The rest of the terrorists show their bad to the core nature by stealing medication from a girl with severe heart condition.

The rest of the actors are just as wooden as Sonny Erang. Brent Huff is expressive as a brick (and I always thought Ben Affleck is wooden!) and Shô Kosugi is downright awful. The same you can say about every single soul in this pathetic excuse of a martial arts movie. Oh wait! There is someone who was relaxed and expressive: the little monkey. He was well cast.

The fight scenes are so stupid they are laughable. The bad guys stand in line and neatly wait their turn as they are being slaughtered. I wonder why this movie has been cut and given high PG, there is nothing to see here, not so gory violence and no sex, excluding a pair of titties in one scene.

Saving the hostages is forgotten for a long time while the brave men of the rescue team visit a floating whorehouse (Madame Whoopee's Floating House of Fun or something like that) where the assassin-trained whores try to kill our hero's, but one of the assassins loses her bikini top and they have to abort the mission...

The "hejsan så ska vi dansa" amazon women, lead by the queen bitch Honey Hump (!!) are maybe the most laughable element of this movie. And the Rahji's explosives in the mouth scene... how the hell can it leave the head untouched but come out of his butt???! Beats the hell out of me. But what can you expect of a movie where the best actor is a monkey in diapers.