Featured in an episode of Redlettermedias "Best of the Worst"
Filmed in 1994, and released to a foreign test market. Not officially released until 1997.
Originally scripted by Mark Williams as "Skate Dragons" for director Donald G. Jackson. Jackson was the original director on the film, but he was fired during filming by executive producer David Huey. Afterwards, Huey took over the role of director as he saw the film as never being completed, in a marketable manner, if he allowed Jackson to continue forward with his haphazard style of filmmaking. Dave Eddy was then hired to direct additional scenes to incorporate both Jackson and Huey's footage, and supervise post-production. This resulted in a disjointed, oftentimes incoherent, final film.
"Pocket Ninjas" was intended as an homage to the cinematic imagery of Donald G. Jackson and Scott Shaw's previous film, The Roller Blade Seven (1991). That film was the impetus for a style of filmmaking Scott Shaw devised called "Zen filmmaking", based on Shaw's lifelong involvement with Eastern mysticism. During the making of that film, a lot was going wrong on set. With this, Jackson and Shaw came to a realization to just go out and film the movie, not expect anything from their cast and crew, and make up the story as they went along. The basis of "Zen" filmmaking is there is no script written for the movie. This is to allow spontaneous inspiration and creative freedom. "Pocket Ninjas" is not a "Zen" film, even though it is mistakenly categorized as one.
Though Scott Shaw and Tadashi Yamashita can be seen in this film. Their performance was not filmed for this movie. The footage that was used was taken from a unused scene filmed for the 1991 film Capital Punishment that was directed by the executive producer of this film, David Huey.