Sunday, March 7, 2010

Ninja Terminator

"The police say he was found with pieces of metal in his back. That definitely means someone wanted him dead."

Ninja Terminator is an absolutely terrible kung-fu movie. But if that's exactly what you're in the market for, then this is a real gem.

Basically, there's a "golden ninja warrior" statue that is divided into three parts: the chest/head and two arms. Whoever possesses the full statue gains the power to be impervious to blades (also, the power to laugh maniacally).

The Ninja Empire master owns the statue, but three of his students steal it, taking one piece each.

Up until now, Ninja Terminator has gone along pretty much like any standard martial arts movie. There's a little more eyeliner and wigs than usual... but nothing too crazy. As it turns out though, after we get that bit of backstory out of the way, things quickly descend into madness.

This is what it looks like during the movie's "normal" phase.

The rest of the movie consists of the Ninja Empire trying to get it back, while the students try to get the rest of the pieces from each other. This leads to there being enough conflicts to have a fight about ever two minutes. Even so, the movie awkwardly forces a fight to happen at this frequency even when the story doesn't provide one.

"I'm looking for a restaurant."
"You're looking in the wrong place. Around here... THERE ARE NO RESTARAUNTS!"
(Fight)

I should probably mention that the above scene is set to Pink Floyd's Echoes.

Pictured: Music for ninjas.

Things deteriorate pretty quickly into a bombardment of utter chaos and nonsense. We suddenly have ninjas teleporting from place to place, but apparently they can't go very far, so they just teleport about 6' over and over.

They also have some inexplicable ability to disappear while wearing street-clothes and then suddenly reappear wearing their ninja outfit.

Here's a basic timeline for the important plot points in the rest of the film.

12:04 - Random violence against a melon.


13:40 - Random violence against a crab.


36:50 - Asian guy's dialogue dubbed to a hilarious redneck accent.


39:15 - Ninja Empire's most threatening "death message" delivery.
50% toy robot and 50% Garfield phone


In the end, there's a final showdown. They all teleport the sheaths off of their swords and then teleport back and forth poking at one another.

Eventually the mustachioed, camouflage-suited ninja gets all the statue pieces and we find out the movie's secret.

It's been channelling Troll 2 the whole time.






1 comment:

  1. Nice review! I remember renting this on the old Transworld tape. This was one of dozens of 'cut-and-paste' jobs from Godfrey Ho and Joseph Lai where they took a couple unfinished, or unreleased movies and made a "new" film out of it. Then filming crappy additional scenes with American or other English speaking actors wearing wildly colorful ninja suits. I've always wondered how in the hell Korean superkicker, Hwang Jang Lee was talked into wearing that stupid blonde wig.

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