The Ninja Squad

Having actually enjoyed a couple of Godfrey Ho's ninja movies, I had toyed with the idea of tracking down and reviewing them all, but after the travesty that is The Ninja Squad, I think I'll knock that one on the head: just the mere thought that this might not be the cruddiest of Ho's films sends a shiver right down my spine.

For The Ninja Squad, Ho once again takes an old Asian flick and splices in some totally unconnected ninja nonsense (starring Richard Harrison, naturally) to make a completely new product; as always, the result is a disjointed mess, but whereas some of his other efforts manage to entertain by either being unintentionally hilarious, downright sleazy, or both, this one is, for the most part, extremely boring.

The non-Richard Harrison material sees trained ninja Billy avenging his mother's death, not through the use of his martial arts skills, but by gunning down her killers with an assault rifle. It's non-stop action all the way, but so poorly thrown together that it quickly becomes very tiresome. These parts of the film also feature some of the worst dubbing I have ever heard—funny at first, perhaps, but it soon becomes irritating.

Meanwhile, the newer footage features Harrison as Pink Ninja (ooh ducky!), who spends his day swinging his weapon around waiting for villainous rival Ivan the Red to finish killing other assorted colour-coded ninjas (white, yellow, black and that old favourite, camouflage ninja) so the two of them can clash swords at Falcon Ridge (didn't Joan Collins used to be in that?). Moderately amusing in places (Ivan's golden boomerang and frisbee made me laugh), but not enough to make me ever want to go anywhere near this film again.

No - not by a long shot.

It is, however, a film of two halves. On the one hand, we have a Chinese drug trafficing film, where a ninja called Billy is fighting to save his family from the evil gangsters who are terrorising them. This is randomly interrupted by some Ninja fighting scenes, involving western actors with headbands saying "Ninja" - the idea here is that Ivan the Red, the evil ninja, is killing another ninja once a month.

Their ninja skills are very impressive, however, since they manage to kill their opposition without leaving even a trace of blood on the body or their sword. A more skeptical viewer might think, in fact, that the sword never even made contact with the enemy.

Finally, all I can say is "Dub good". Halfway through the film we are introduced to a random women with an awful Southern drawl, who luckily gets killed soon afterwards, but shows just how awful the casting of the voice actors was.

In conclusion, this film has got to be seen, if only to understand just how bad it is.

'Ninja Squad' is a truly bizarre film. There are two main plots - the main one being about Billy, a trainee ninja who appears to live somewhere in Indonesia and whose family is being terrorised by some gangsters. He has spent the last 10 years training as a ninja under 'The Master Ninja' who, oddly enough, is a blond-haired elderly white guy in a bright pink and silver shellsuit. In fact, all the ninjas (apart from billy) are all caucasian and all wear brightly coloured shellsuits and bands across their foreheads that say 'ninja'. An evil ninja called 'Red Ivan' is going around killing ninjas to try and prove he's better than 'The Master'. 'Red Ivan', by the way, has a bright red and gold jumpsuit.

In the 'Billy' parts of the film, there isn't all that much hand-to-hand fighting - more of it is pitched gun battles. The brightly-coloured ninja bits have lots of slow-motion sword battles in them, but they're ultimately rather unsatisfying as the effects budget obviously didn't reach to fake blood.

All in all a rather odd film (with a very bizarre ending) which was quite obviously a foreign film with some weird ninja stuff tacked on. Quite enjoyable, though.

This film is one of Richard Harrison's (blonde Ninja) "just add Ninja" films - where some money minded martial artists buy an incomplete Asian martial arts film then add some extra ninja scenes and sell it to us saps in the west.

But i gota admit THIS FILM IS FUNNY and your kind of glad when billy dies...

Check out Richard Harrison's Biography(on this site) for a very interesting tale.

Also of interest is the film " Golden Ninja Warrior" not to be confused with "Ninja Terminator", in fact watch all three of these films and you can actually see the change from all action Ninja films to disturbingly misogynistic exploitation. And that some people just don't learn from their mistakes.

This has to be one of the most hilarious films I have ever watched. It consists of two stories - Billy the Ninja has to battle some gangsters, while Gordon the Ninja has to defeat some other ninja who wants to kill every other ninja to prove he's the best. There is a lot of "ninja" in this film. Highlights included the fantastic Ninja headbands (all ninjas need a headband that announces their ninja status), the ninja shell suits, the urban cameo ninja and the screamingly funny dialogue - "Bully, what are you going to do about work? I don't think your ninja skills will help you find a job." Ah yes, a common problem for young ninjas. I think this film would be best viewed while drunk.