Ninja Terminator

Goofy, fast-paced and frequently senseless action, probably partly padded out from pieces of the director's umpteen other films, as was his custom. The plot is so random I never really understood what the significance was of the golden thingie everybody was chasing after-this is just one of those movies where you accept that "the guys in red will fight the guys in blue who'll fight the guys in yellow," quickly forgetting to even wonder WHY anyone is fighting anybody. It's silly in a good way, energetic and slick on a B-grade level. At times it achieves a kind of inspired giddy absurdity that is close to trash heaven.

An unbelievably daft effort from Godfrey Ho, the king of crap ninja movies, Ninja Terminator sees Ho's regular star Richard Harrison once again donning his natty camouflage suit to fight a variety of similarly garbed bad guys, all the while performing totally unnecessary cartwheels and back-flips.

This time, Harrison plays Harry, one of a trio of good ninjas who steal a precious, magical golden statue from their evil boss. When one of the trio is killed and part of the statue is taken back, Harry enlists the help of his friend Jaguar Wong (who is a cool-as-ice, high-kicking bad-ass) to protect his dead friend's sister and try and retrieve the missing piece.

Despite the story making little or no sense for most of the running time (which is what you get when you splice together footage from two different films, as is apparently the case here), Ninja Terminator is still well worth watching thanks to countless completely insane moments guaranteed to make you howl with laughter: watch in awe as Harry proves that no melon is a match for his ninja sword skills; be puzzled as a breakfast of live crabs suddenly turns nasty; wonder why the hell Hwang Jang Lee is wearing a bad blonde wig for most of the film; giggle uncontrollably as a toy robot menacingly delivers video tapes; and then check ebay to see if you too can get a cool Garfield phone like the one Harry uses.

Amongst all this unexplainable, but very entertaining silliness, there are also plenty of pretty good martial arts fights (Jack Lam, as Jaguar Wong, is excellent and displays loads of decent moves before his inevitable battle against super-kicker Lee). Throw in a couple of gratuitous sex scenes, and some awful dialogue, and what you have is one hell of a fun film.

I really can't be bothered to write too much on this movie, as I have an essay to do and must get to it. Anyway suffice to say it's one of the third rate Ninja films with horrifically unoriginal plots and unintentionally hilarious characters. There is some sort of battle for the Golden Ninja warrior, something which makes you impervious to being struck with a Ninja's blade, until the end of the film, that is, where it suddenly and inexplicably wears off. There is a subplot where bubble-gum chewing, "YOU BROKE MY JACKET" copper Jaguar Wong kicks seven bills out of one of the head honcho's minions, all the while trying to get back together with an old flame of his. In one memorable bond like scenes, wong shows how suave he is by forcing himself upon her and unleashing the spearmint gum flavour into her mouth, whereupon she falls in love with him again and they coppulate ferociously. You know how it goes. Read the back of the DVD if you own it, prefferably before watching the movie, that way you can fall on the floor laughing over the disturbing amount of spelling mistakes that can be found, my personal favourite being "Three" spelt with a third E on the end. Priceless. Other humuorous points about this film include an asian big cheese with a puffy blonde wig, a Ninja dressed in a Vietnam Uniform, and a Ninja that looks uncanily like a younger version of Rock-God Ozzie Osbourne...although by far the two best moments are when Nam-Ninja hears a ring and picks up his Garfield phone to talk to Wong...and when Mister Wong hurls one of the wimps he fights into his own Car window despite the fact that the enemies car is parked directly along side it. If your depressed, you need to watch this, it's prozac on screen.

A cheap looking idol that splits into three parts grants the bearer immunity to rubber swords of all kinds. But only if he holds all three parts! Actually, it works with just the one bit as demonstrated by one of the mustachioed ninjas midway through the movie which, at a stroke as lethal as any ninjas blade, completely kills the meager plot logic the film has managed to piece together by this point. At first it looks as though the entire film is just going to be people beating each other up in a mall garden but the plot does start to develop towards something like a story later on.

Meanwhile, Jaguar Wong wanders around getting involved with kidnappings and his scheming former lover. Everywhere he goes groups of three or four men attack him feebly providing intermittent filler for the already vague plot.

All this sounds quite reasonable and par for the course but there are some decidedly strange additions. The ninja master uses a cheerful garfield phone for example, the mid-level henchman wears a woman's wig without explanation and the bad guy delivers his messages via cheap kids robot toys that someone must have had to walk right up to the door and place, rendering them less in the ninja style of stealth than say slipping the note under the door.

I got a few laughs out of this movie, it's bad but in a good way. My favourite bit was the way the ninja master was able to completely hide his ninja double wife from his wife whose biggest worry in life is the crabs she's steaming for dinner escaping. Even stopping one escaping by hurling a shuriken across the room doesn't seem to arouse her suspicions!

This is one of the funniest films I have ever seen. The whole idea that the actors are intending to release a drama/thriller to the kung-fu loving West. I think if it had been released as a comedy it would never have been as funny.

For people that keep saying 'I wish I hadn't seen the dub' there is no movie that isn't the dub. Ho bought bits and pieces of unreleased and uncompleted Asian films, from Chinese, Japanese to Korean and mixed them together, with new shots of Western actors. There is no film other than the dub, besides the poor dubbing adds most of the humour, its one of the funniest aspects... why ruin it.