Robot Ninja

Greetings readers. It is the day before Halloween and seeing costumes will be cropping up shortly, imagine it is time for a superhero flick! Not just any flick either, no. It combines 80s love of ninjas and robots and...well doesn't really deliver on either, left me a little sad, bitter and a tad crazy. So clearly I need to subject you all to it as well.

From the pages of J.R. Bookwalter (The Dead Next Door, Zombie Cop, Kingdom of the Vampire, Horrorvision, Witchhouse 3: Demon Fire and Mega Scorpions) comes the tale of a meek and mild comic book artist turned vigilante. This is Robot Ninja.

Winter Mullet...

Yup if that title wasn't as goofy as Robovampire, I think you all have a greater threshold than I.

Now having sat through The Dead Next Door I can almost sense there will be characters, lesser soldiers named after other famous directors, Well we got cops this time so we have a Cameron so that is either for Aliens, The Terminator James Cameron or Bookwalter is a huge Kirk Cameron fan after he saved Christmas from the heathens.   There's a DePalma after Scarface's Brian DePalma, a O' Bannon after Return of the Living Dead Dan O' Bannon or he just feels the Irish can only be cops, crooks and firefighters. Let these people be, Hollywood! A Spinell after Maniac writer/actor Joe Spinell, a Hickox after Waxwork and Sundown: The Vampire in Retreat Anthony Hickox and hell we have scream queen Linnea Quigley, writer/director Scott Speigel and writer/director David DeCoteau starring in this.

Alright now to the nuts and bolts of it.   HAHA! Robot! Things! Stuff!   Moving right along, the aforementioned comic book artist Leonard Miller (Michael Todd of The Dead Next Door, Puppet Master II, Puppet Master III: Toulon's Revenge, and Lurking Fear) is afraid of losing his Robot Ninja creation, the single greatest superhero since Batman...yup. Uh-huh. One night he witnesses a rape and double homicide when he's had enough of crime in his town. Naturally delivers his eyewitness account to the cops but feels they have too many rules. So it's time to give back to the community and whip some ass...this guy with bad hair, not really that well built and has never attempted martial arts in his life.

Hockey hair, protect me!

To give him an edge he goes to his buddy, Dr. Goodknight (Bogdan Pecic of The Dead Next Door, Zombie Cop, Maximum Impact and Chickboxer), probably related to Dr. Goodhead of Moonraker as Leonard makes demands of a super suit, one that would enhance him and make him as mighty as his very comic book creation. Goodknight points out it would be very costly and well as they say, Money is no issue. Um his suit is spandex giving him tank like armor durability. Cripes at least Prey of the Jaguar made an effort to armor up Maxwell Caulfield not to mention gave him a military and special forces background. This dude draws and inks.

By the by, readers this isn't Intergang or the Hand. It is petty criminals. Send in Frank Castle chop chop.

So Spandex Boy is on the case, tootling around the town in full costume and his late 80s battered Camaro with YES his license plates on it. Maybe some mud or duct tape or hey here's a nutty idea, a car that isn't yours personally!!!

The gang kinda is alot for him to handle as there is...five of them. Again elaborate fancy pants, it's called a shotgun. Relatively inexpensive and tend to make heads pop off rather nicely.

I will give credit where credit is due. The gore effects are fair, camera work isn't bad and for untrained stunts they are decent enough. Loads of Sci-Fi, comic book and horror movie references. Hell at one point I swear I saw The Monster Squad movie poster on a wall. Looks like they raided every video store they could for these.    Oh sorry Millennials, see before the convenience of Red Box, we had primitive stores allowing customers to select titles of films that may not even be current! Gasp! There was customer service, snacks and even a random film suggested by a real live human being.

Yeah, miss video stores. So yes if you need this...film for your entertaining pleasure, good luck. I was fortunate enough to find it on streaming. Apparently executive producer on this was a Puppet Master and 1313 master himself, David DeCoteau. Well he did diversify his money that year.

Fruit Gusher Gangbanger.