New York Ninja

It's 'Death Wish' without the seriousness. It's 'The Exterminator' sans the heavy sleaze. It's 'New York Ninja'. From Vinegar Syndrome and Kurtis M. Spieler comes this put together "lost film" from its original director and star John Liu in his only American production. Notables names such as Don 'The Dragon' Wilson, Cynthia Rothrock and Michael Berryman do voice dubbing since the original audio material was lost.

John (Liu) learns his girlfriend Nita is pregnant and he's going to be a father. However she's killed after witnessing a young woman getting abducted on the streets of New York. Gangs control the city and an evil mastermind villain aptly named 'The Plutonium Killer' is behind most of the madness. Can John get revenge and turn the tide when he becomes the masked savior?

It's a 2021 production from a 1984 source well restored so it looks good picture-wise while it's very much feeling the 80's. Lots of poorly done fighting, bumbling cops, wacky clothed street hoods, one set of huge boobs and a villain who purposely gives himself radiation poisoning. As you know whenever a flick needed a crime ridden, seamy undertone NY was the go-to city.

Filmed without much of a budget you have to decide if the 80's charms and barrel of tropes - vigilantism, ninjas and poor acting - are enough to make this a good time. I appreciate the effort restoring and releasing 'NY Ninja' and there's some fun campy bits, but as a whole it's missing something.

New York Ninja is the best worst movie I have ever watched. It even outclasses amusingly dreadful classics such as Samurai Cop, The Room and Titanic II that were among my favourites before experiencing this film. This movie was originally filmed all the way back in 1984 but remained unfinished and unreleased. The material was discovered three and a half decades later and completed with voice actors, electronic soundtrack and new script.

The final result is a hilarious dumpster fire you won't easily forget. The story revolves around an Asian-American sound technician whose pregnant wife gets murdered by a group of street criminals that is kidnapping women for a plutonium-addicted mastermind. The protagonist decides to become a vigilante dressed up as ninja who is accompanied by two overtly enthusiastic work colleagues, weird police officers walking off the beaten path and a poor homeless kid that has become a thief in order to survive.

Everything that could be wrong with a movie is wrong here. It starts right from the start with hilariously bad dialogues that will make your jaws drop right from the opening scene. Some dialogues that are supposed to have depth are delivered quickly, randomly and superficially. Less important dialogues however are emphasized, overacted and repeated.

Up next, the acting performances are absolutely dreadful. The protagonist has no charisma whatsoever and looks like a silly clown wearing cringeworthy costumes instead of a vigilante on a mission. The side characters are portrayed in an annoying way from overtly self-confident gangsters by the numbers over aggressively noisy street kids to theatrically screaming women who talk way too much without saying anything at all. The worst acting performance is however offered by the antagonist with his shameful facial expressions, weird overacting and incredibly stupid vocal deliveries.

The settings are as ugly as the rest of the movie. The film portrays subway stations covered in nasty graffiti, back alleys filled with piles of trash and industrial wastelands. These settings are randomly interwoven with repetitive shots of famous sights such as the World Trade Centre that don't add anything to the story.

The costumes and make-up are absolutely dreadful. The ladies in this film are overstyled in a way that makes them look like members of a circus ensemble. The gangsters in this film wear exaggeratedly colourful costumes that are worse than anything you could see in a rap music video of the eighties. The worst offender is however the ninja costume of the protagonist that looks like a walking mummy clad in toilet paper.

This film attempts to be a martial arts flick but the fight scenes are as wooden as they get. Especially the numerous street gangsters have the swagger of malfunctioning non-player characters in a simplistic video game of the eighties. The misuse of weaponry is also beyond ridiculous and especially the sword fight during what is supposed to be the film's climax makes you think of kindergarten children running around with plastic weapons on Halloween.

It's needless to point out that the story is beyond ridiculous. The villain is addicted to plutonium for reasons that are never explained. He seems to be very influential, powerful and wealthy even though it' impossible to figure out why. The antagonist orders to kidnap specific women for goals that remain mysterious as this character is just having awkward seizures when spending time with the ladies. Those are only the elements that are wrong with the villain's back story but let me tell you that everything else is just as horrible.

You might wonder why such a dreadful movie deserves such a high rating. The explanation is quite obvious. This is easily the most entertaining, hilarious and memorable movie released last year. Right from the opening scene, most viewers will have to laugh so much that they might end up crying. Every new scene, each new setting and every twist in the tale will make a movie that is already dreadful from the start even worse. I have watched this movie at a local cinema and the entire audience was reacting so strongly to this film that it might become a cult classic in the key of The Room that had been shown at the same cinema for more than one hundred weeks in a row before the pandemic ended that memorable run.

My suggestion for you is to watch this film at the cinema with as many friends as possible. Grab as many drinks and snacks as you can to have as much fun as possibe. In difficult times like these, it's great to have this kind of unintentionally hilarious entertainment.

If you're into films such as The Room or works by Neil Breen this will be right up your alley. It has some seriously bad action by the main character and his voice certainly doesn't fit his body how bad the leads voice dub is if that makes any sense. It would be like a big fat black woman was voiced by a little old korean woman with a very thick accent. This film has a similar fate to Miami Connection which was shot in the mid 80s and then finally came out 30+ years later.

The action in this movie is stiffer than Ron Jeremy who was probably shooting his own films a few blocks away. We take for granted good fight choreography and.flexible actors who can kick higher than someones chest when they do martial arts as for the most part it just comes off like drunk fathers wrestling after a few cold ones.

The musical score fits the era, especially of the movies budget where it's probably on the cheapest musical keyboard, where it almost sounds like 8 bit Nintendo music of that era. Then of course you get the odd bit of rock music but for the most part it's Nintendo music.

Some films this reminded me of besides the ones mentioned are the Death Wish series with Charles Bronson, then we've got bits and pieces of stuff like Spiderman or any of the other trillion super hero movies as well as stuff you'd expect from a Tromaville film. Perhaps Toxic Avenger which Toxie kind of sounds like main character John as well as the questionable costumes from Nuke'em High.

I love the over the top bad guys. It's so over the top you just laugh at them. It can't be intentional. The chauffer who they called "Rat tail" is almost memorable. Did anyone on set have any bleach? Our ninja looks like he's using his urine soaked sheets for the costume. Everything is whiter than his outfit. I don't care what anyone says, you see even a bit of someones face though you'll know who they are. Some other stupid scenes was when he nursed him and this random boy back to health. The 10-ish year old boy asks if he'll be his friend than 7 movie weeks later they are fishing and the only thing more stuffed than John's speedo is egg rolls at a local Asian restaurant.

I can't wait to show this gem to my friends. I enjoyed this more than a lot of garbage from Tom Cruise, Matt Daemon and so forth lately.

New York Ninja has that 80's action B-movie charm, and has a fair amount of unintentionally mildly funny scenes, but it's not nearly enough to carry it into cult status by 80's grindhouse fanatic's or "Bad Movie" fans.

I'm a big fan of unintentionally funny movies, especially if they are from the 80's, and even more so if they have Ninjas kicking ass. A Ninja in the gritty big apple... how could you go wrong? Well, as with any obscure low budget action movie, it doesn't matter how "bad" or "good" it is, what really matters is if it's entertaining. Movies like:

Miami Connection, Hard Ticket To Hawaii, Deadly Prey, Ninja III: The Domination, Nine Deaths Of The Ninja,

all made BOLD choices by their writers/directors that demanded your attention and sometimes confusion, but unfortunately NYN lacks ambition and far too much of the movie clunks around in unnecessarily boring dialogue, and repetitive scenes. There just isn't enough happening in this movie.

While I have a great appreciation for the amazing work that Vinegar Syndrome has done to dub, master, edit, and completely resurrect this movie, I do also think it's worth noting that cult movie enthusiasts are in store for a dull experience. I really wanted to like this movie, but it just doesn't have enough meat on it's bones to deliver the silly fun you expect.

This is a whole bunch of random nonsense. It's hard to known what was intended so how do you rate it? What we see is hilarious and worth it, but was it what was meant by the footage? Meh, who knows, it's still worth seeing for sure!