Ninja Terminator

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!

If anybody has sat down to watch a decent Jackie Chan or Bruce Lee film and thought to themselves 'Hold on, you know what would make this better? Really bad ninja fighting that has little to do with the actual story, a story that makes absolutely no sense, and some of the most random quirkiness ever witnessed on screen, that'd make a GREAT film!' Then Ninja Terminator may be the film for them.

However, if they added to that 'Also, I'd like to see a love scene set to Pink Floyd's Echoes, twice, and perhaps a guy in a blonde wig for no reason at all'. Then 1) Ninja Terminator IS for them and 2) They have uncanny and ultra-specific pre-cognitive powers.

Ninja Terminator takes the whole 'so bad it's good' movie ethos to stratospheric levels, even beyond movies like Troll 2. What works here is the movie that Godfrey Ho is tacking his usual ninja battles onto is just about as crazy as the ninja battles themselves. I swear, there must be a kung fu fight every five minutes or so, each of them getting increasingly stranger until the penultimate fight on the beach (followed only, of course, by the bizarre ninja showdown).

Without going into specifics and spoiling things, I'll make a vague-ish list of what's nuts about this film: 1) Pink Floyd and Tangerine Dream on the soundtrack. 2)Split second ninja costume changes 3) Weird use of children's toys 4) Crabs 5) Pawning jackets 6) Random jacket changes 7) Feet that dig sand 8) Dramatic wig removal 9) etc etc...

I've watched a few of these ninja films so far, and it's by far the greatest one I've seen.

By the way, if you like actual good films, just reverse everything I've said and take it as a warning.

Can't really tell you a lot about this one as I watched it whilst pretty drunk. I CAN say that Gordon (Richard Harrison) was beset by mysterious clouds of gas at one point - created by what looked to be a small clockwork robot - (confusing for him in the extreme I should imagine). Oh, and his girlfriend is attacked in her kitchen by vicious marauding crabs - even Gordon himself looks a little unsettled by that one. I could be wrong but I think it might be VERY good...must watch it again and find out.

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.