9 Ninjas 1/2

This phenomenal movie was robbed of every Oscar nomination possible in '91. Superior in everyway to THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS!!!! A brilliant, unmitigated work of art!!!

My review was written in January 1991 after watching the film on Republic Pictures video cassette.

The wackiness of "Airplane" eludes "9-1/2 Ninjas", a fitfully amusing spof of ninja films and Adrian Lyne's "Nine 1/2 Weeks".

Released direct to the home video maret, pic is an acceptable timekiller for fans not counting up the number of misses among scattershot, almost nonstop gags.

Film was evidently aimed more at the foreign market, where the Mickey Rourke-Kim Bassinger epic was a hti. Most of the gags here are obscure unless one has memories the bondage-oriented romance.

Michael Phenicie toplines as a guy who seems to have stepped out of a shirt ad, who becomes involved with ditzy but beautiful blonde Andee Gray. Running gag has her getting tied up and being treated as a submissive by Phenicie, but it's not very funny.

The ninjas appear as henchmen hired by mean real estate developer Robert Fieldsteel, who's trying to evict Phenicie from his apartment. Also present is a ninja hand puppet, voiced by Paul Jabara, which reduces the film to utter silliness.

Among the odder elements here are Fieldstel's Russian henchman Dimitri, played in drag with moustache by actress Barbara Leary and a weird subplot of Phenicie's earlier romance with lovely overeater Sharon Lee Jones, who put on hundreds of pounds thanks to special makeup effects.

Though this role doesn't give her much to do beyond Little Annie Fanny emoting, Gray is pleasant Phenicie is hamstrung by his Dudley Doright wooden assignment.

I was at a recording studio with my band for a weekend when we saw this one together (There were only Dawn of the Dead, Hills have eyes 2 and this, so..). At first we didn't know what to expect, just looking for something to kill spare time. Nobody read the cover before it started rolling, so we didn't know if it was a serious martial arts movie, drama or comedy etc.

After the first five minutes all of our mouths had just dropped wide open and we all kept asking: "What the hell??" The movie started out with jokes so unfunny, childish and Buster Keaton-like and kept them coming. Since none of us were prepared for this, we started laughing quietly at first and then harder and harder as the quality of comedy kept dropping down.

Some of the stuff in this film, especially some of the one-liners became memorable as hell during that weekend as we had this running in the background repeatedly about a dozen times or so. We were all pretty tired and of course enjoying something this bad as a group with our kind of sense of humor we had really had a blast. I know it's were poor movie in it's genre but we loved it and it will live in our memories for a long time.

I saw this movie for the first time about eight years ago, and I thought that it was the funniest thing I had ever seen. It didn't offer too much that I hadn't already seen, and even those jokes were delivered pretty badly. But I still love it!! I think that my major attraction to this movie is in that you can never quite tell what the people involved in this production were thinking. There are some gags in this movie that could have been really funny had they been pulled off by somewhat professional people, but the poor craftmanship in someway makes the movie much much better. It's a hard movie to obtain, but I recommend it to anyone who can find it. Even if it's not your kind of film, it should be experienced.

I first bought this when I was about 14 or 15 because it had ninjas in it, and I was all for buying anything with the word ninja it around that time.

Obviously, having the scantly clad and very beautiful Andee Gray splashed over the cover, my friends and parents were very convinced I had bought it for other reasons...

I think my husband would disagree!

At this stage I was sourcing as much Hong Kong cinema as I could possibly find. I had seen some of the finest at this point, and my video collection was growing fast. I knew from the look of this that I wasn't to be expecting anything that would get my adrenaline going, but oh boy - I was not expecting this.

Completely played for laughs, in the style of the hilarious Naked Gun & Airplane movies, this 1990 flick that clearly spoofs 9 ½ Weeks, is just bonkers and unfortunately falls flat on most of its gags!

Director Aaron Barsky (or Worth as he is in this) has quite the credits behind him in the film industry, and 9 ½ Ninjas was his directorial debut - but I have to say, had this been in the hands of Mel Brooks or David Zucker, I reckon it would have been a hit.

Instead, due to weak direction the comedy seems overly forced and so badly timed. The film itself is bland and boring on a technical aspect, but a lot of US films were in this time period. Hollywood go-to Asian of the 80's and 90's Gerald Okamura plays the Master of course ironically having just come off the equally unfunny Ninja Academy from the year before!

Is there any positive viewing experience in this? Well - very little. It will raise a smile here and there, but ultimately, 9 ½ Ninjas is a big flop. The moment has gone...

Overall: Not a vital part of your life, but will make you laugh more unintentionally than you think!