Ninja Death II

I return! Much like the film of today it is random and without common sense. Okay actually it was a fairly long film broken up into three films. I told you I would return to it. You were warned. Okay, feel free to run for the hills if the continuation of said movie is not your fancy. For those masochistic few, welcome. This is Ninja Death II.

Cold waters turn Tiger into cub. Shrinkage!

We recap with Tiger (Alexander Rei Lo of Kung Fu Commandos, Shaolin vs Ninja, Shaolin vs Lama, Mafia vs Ninja, Shadow Killers Tiger Force and Ninja: The Final Duel). We last we knew, Master and the old Blind warrior were in fact uncles to Tiger and they were each instructing him in different forms of martial arts. Also the princess was still alive. Tiger must still do battle with the Grand Master, who also happens to be Tiger's uncle. Christ, Kurosawa couldn't follow this plot.

We open our flick with an assortment of back flips in ninja gear because...it looked cool? Um it was the 80s and there were metric tons of cocaine?

We have tons of wire work, so Anime levels of leaping, also they under-cranked the film so it could be sped up in play. Now it looks like speedsters with blades. What should be the opening credits ends up looking like a martial arts expo. I mean I really cannot think of anything else an orange backdrop would be used for beyond that. Yet again, no credits. Could be potential audition tapes for Hand recruiters.

Grand Master is so proud of being such because it only took him 80 years. Wait whaaaaat? So your brother had Tiger when he was 50? Tiger and Master continue training because...furthering the plot. Tiger is told by Master, the impending invaders from Japan are coming for them both and they must be ready. Mind and body must be as one. Heart, courage and skill.

No! It is I who has fabulous pjs!

Did I mention Master is constantly high? Yeah he is a fan of cannabis. Toking and training goes hand-in-hand...apparently. I mean I have heard of Drunken Masters but Higher than a Georgia Pine Master, well that's a new one. Master goes on to explain to explain the cadre of ninja that is after them was trained for only one mission. Yup, we got another per-ordained or destiny story line.

He could have also been high and paranoid. Methinks opioids got rubbed into his spliffs.

We are back to piss poor English dubbing. Ranging from American slang to the Queen's English. So yes it gets a tad confusing. Also the brother and sister from the brothel are back.

Sister (again I still don't know her name) still has the hots for Tiger and they knock boots. Apparently having her in servitude creeps him out. Guess not everyone is capable of having a sex slave/woman warrior at their beck and call. In their off hours, Master and Tiger seem to like cosplay. Master is almost always decked out as Hobo Gandalf and Tiger looks like a newsie complete with flat cap. What frickin' time period is this? I lost track. I see 80s era dressed folk accidentally put in the film (NO PERMITS) so is this a period piece? Modern day conflict throughout the ages? What in the sam scratch is going on??!!!

Meditation or long drawn out poop?

With the wacky montage of Grand Master either whipping the monkey shit out of his ninjas I mean training them or his master playing a flute; to the standing around Tiger and Master seem to do in quite a few scenes, this film's pace is all over the place.

Blind Master is...zany. I mean his scenes are and it's clever that he gets to whack folk in the head with his cane while performing snap kicks and windmill kicks. I still don't know what in the nine hells is going on and I am watching the damn thing!!!

Will Tiger and Grand Master have their showdown? Does it bother Tiger he is fighting an 80 year old guy? What the hell is going on?

Congratulations Ninja Death II, you made Master Ninja TV mini-series turned TV movie make more sense. I'd love to tell you that all the questions I had from the previous flick were answered BUT THEY WEREN'T!!!! Better luck with Part III or should I just give this a rest? Yes there's still titty in this stink burger of a flick. 

Dom DeLuise is the Last Samurai.

Ninja Death

Okay, back from the hiatus. I have been working on freelance writing as well as, a radio script known as Fiends and Flatfoots. Basically Noir meets Horror. That however is not what we are enduring today. So combing through the more obscure 80s films, I noticed the 50 to 100 disc collections of martial arts, three titles and their alternative titles keep coming up so I thought I would take a gander at this. This is Ninja Death a.k.a. Ninja Kid.

Pajama Party!

No time for credits, introduction or story build-up! Yeah I am serious. This opens up with Samurai spilling Ninja blood. A gathering of warriors, their grand master watching over a princess with a baby and attempt to escape their capture and deaths. Guess we just dive into the action. This ridiculous fast pace is the first five minutes. With that in mind, the princess hurls herself off the cliff (clearly a dummy) and one of the brothers makes off with the baby.

Then for some reason we still skip title cards and have years later tag and fade.

Finding our protagonist Tiger (Alexander Rei Lo of Kung Fu Commandos, Shaolin vs Ninja, Shaolin vs Lama, Mafia vs Ninja, Shadow Killers Tiger Force and Ninja: The Final Duel) in a brothel and a cadre of pointless sex scenes (Yeah boys, there's titty!). The dialogue among the prostitutes sounds like it was written for a porno. Stay classy, movie.

Chinese Gandalf is most vexed.

Gobsmack amount of nudity, this bit of pointlessness is all leading up to intro of a brother and sister that work for Tiger. Tiger makes the brother engage in tons of montage training footage. Seriously, this all look like B footage set aside for filler. Also the grand master has to make a fabulous entrance worthy of Rip Taylor. He send the brother out to converse with a blind soothsayer because...why the hell not. The dubbing goes from American English to the Queen's English throughout this whole scene.

For some reason we have a gaggle of ninja trying to still find Tiger and the siblings. The Grand master has a bunch of ninja along with one wearing a devil mask, who goes completely mental every time the Grand master plays the flute. Who knew that could be a trigger?

With more fighting we see the devil masked ninja is actually Tiger's brother. Okay we have tons to get through.

Ninja Casual

 Firstly, the movie just abruptly starts as well as ends. I mean there weren't any title cards on either the beginning or the end of the film. I am baffled to what the hell I was watching.

After a bit of research, I found out this film and its sequels is actually all one movie that was diced up to make for sequels. This was a friggin' acid trip. Nothing of coherent for story, acting or even a decent explanation. This is either a brilliant bypass to story telling or a garbled hot mess.

Enough interest for me to see if the sequels would actually make ANY sense of this. What the hell, I'll give the second film a whirl.

Hmm decent Slipknot mask.

New Rotten Reelz Reviews Audio Review #25: Zombie Doom

So this is what I busted my ass on yesterday.  It is very adult orientated and a bit on the graphic side.

Enjoy and you have been warned. Zombie Doom Audio Review

Godfrey Ho: Zombie vs Ninja

Hey folks. Back again. You know I have read and seen plenty of the versus titles. From crossover rival comic books to Freddy Vs Jason, I have viewed and leaved through my far share of versus combo platters that baffle the heart and mind. And then I came across today's title that just made me a bit slack jawed. So join me for Zombie vs Ninja.

You feel as goofy as I do?

Classic definition of Zombie is: (The body of a dead person given the semblance of life, but is mute and will-less, by a supernatural force, usually for some evil purpose.) Now let's look up Ninja: (a member of a feudal Japanese society of mercenary agents, highly trained in martial arts and stealth hired for covert purposes ranging from espionage to sabotage and even assassination.) So how terrifying must it be for a skilled assassin to dispatch the roaming undead? Our story begins with a buck toothed undertaker/Kung Fu master whooping three guys fresh from coffins. Our zombies perhaps? They fight for a few minutes and then go back to their coffins due to dawn. No zombie activity thus far as I write this I am in for 30 minutes. The main story is about a Chinese man in ancient times named Ethan. Sure it is.  Ethan was beaten down by a group of thieves who then kill his father. Swearing blood oaths and vengeance he seeks them out. Hmm. To punch this up we could make him a Ghost Rider. Nah, that would be silly. We will call this movie part 1.

Not since Mickey Rooney's yellow face have I been so offended.

Due to piss poor splicing and bad editing, movie part 2 has our other hero name of Dragon (Pierre Kirby and yes Cinema Snob fans, that Pierre Kirby) or Duncan as he is credited in the film as he must go after the thieves and their hired assassins, the ninjas. You know they're ninja not by their fighting style but the fact they are all wearing headbands with the word ninja written on it. Yup that's not stupid at all. Shameless self-promotion. Maybe they went through a warp in the space time continuum and attended a Tony Robbins seminar.

Even Rocky had a montage!!!

Ethan's father is murdered, he is left unconscious and an undertaker abducts him and begins his training as an undertaker. Ethan is so buff, he can carry a coffin on his back. Thing is well over a hundred pounds and he is wandering into the woods and to nearby villages with it strapped to his back. Ethan runs into the people that killed his father. With some advice from Dragon Duncan, Ethan begs the undertaker to train him in Kung Fu in order so he may avenge his father. Dude's training session consists of digging holes deep enough to lay the dead down and carrying a coffin full of rocks. Again, the undertaker calls Ethan soft when the facts are out that he isn't. His 80s training montage music sounds like Jan Hammer's Crockett Theme from Miami Vice, just a bit sped up is all. Oh spoilers...NO MORE FRICKIN' ZOMBIES if in fact there were any that those three dudes in the coffins.

The brightly colored, big shoulder padded ninjas must do battle with Dragon and to be fair, the action scenes aren't bad and there is some decent choreography buuuuUUuuut...I just cannot get over the fact that they all look like extras on a Power Rangers episode. I will stick with real classic struggles of ninjas against the undead like the 2008 epic story Ninjas vs Zombies and bid you good day, Godfrey Ho.

Wow two yaks humping...is what I am staring at.

Godfrey Ho: Golden Ninja Warrior

Back again folks. Pinched nerve makes it difficult to write so yesterday was off. We're back with some more Godfrey Ho flicks because vengeance for the Friday the 13^th remake! Beats demanding blood I suppose. Two ninjas operating two seperate missions end up teaming up to find the same ninja that keeps attacking them. This is Golden Ninja Warrior.

Worse bed and breakfast...ever.

Director Godfrey Ho (Inferno Thunderbolt, Ninja Destroyer, Ninja Hunt, Ninja Dragon, Bionic Ninja, Super Platoon, Project G-7, Ninja Kill and Ninja in Action)Tells the tale about a blood feud has broken out between two sects, the Red Ninja Warriors and the Golden Ninja Warriors. The intro gives a reprise to Ninja Terminator. I mean the original footage and intro showing us the titles were barely changed and this isn't even the goofiest thing attached. Our Golden Ninja isn't about a statue but in fact a girl name of Sherri Lee (Queenie Yang of Golden Ninja Warrior) chasing after a mob boss known as Four Eyes. Um I can't give you the actor's name because it does not show up on IMDB and the credits ran by at the end at F*CKING LIGHT SPEED so I am clueless to who he is.

Hi. I'm Richard Harrison.  Enjoy the review.

The typical Ho film is his own footage spliced with a failed movie, TV movie or TV pilot that went nowhere, piss poor dubbing and spliced shots to establish characters in the movie know one another and that the exposition will explain everything we know to be true in the film. So somewhere in there she is actually wearing a red ninja outfit so not very golden and she teams up with a guy Michael (Donald Owen of Golden Ninja Warrior) as they are both after Four Eyes for entirely different reasons and let's be honest, who would fear that crappy kingpin name? He is also doing this menacing laugh in almost every scene. My theory? The voice actor went over the top to either relieve boredom or camp so they would fire him and he could voice for Voltron or Robotech.

Fear the 80s hair.

One of the weirdest things is costume transition. They don their ninja costumes from a jump cut Wonder Woman like approach or a cheesy yellow smoke bomb going off by their feet followed by the jump cut into costume again. I saw this, paused and laughed. There was nothing else you could do but chuckle. One scene Sherri is fighting another girl with a fairly laughable choreography then instant costume change, more fighting and then Sherri bails all the while wearing her street clothes again. Piss poor editing and continuity you might say? Nah Godfrey Ho magic of... not really giving a crap. There is so much nudity, sex and shower scenes I am wondering what in the nine hells am I watching. Seemed like a soft core porno with ninjas. Ninja Golden Showers probably didn't help sales so not sure what else to take away from this lazy story telling, bad fight scenes and sex scenes that have all the eroticism of a cat turd. The other ninja female who AGAIN no real name attached to her seems to use the force or telekinetic powers spinning this throwing star the size of a hubcap. I was baffled at what the hell I was seeing.

The best scene with Ninja Chippie is her dagger throw that follows Sherri around the parking lot. Full on Deadite POV style. Again was it the force? Did Ninja Chippie read from the Necronomicon? Was it a Kandarian Dagger? Who the hell knows? From choppy beginning to end I was so confused by this flick, I started to think what a drinking game this would make. Transmogrifying ninja, take a drink. Random appearance of characters, take a drink. Sex scene, take a drink. You would be pie eyed before the damn thing was finished.

This also possesses the overtly used footage of Richard Harrison's ninja scenes for the intro and these scenes have been edited into dozens of the Ho Ninja titles. Yes, the same Richard Harrison of South Pacific, Giants of Rome, $100,000 for Ringo, Vengeance and Day After Tomorrow. FYI, to the ladies, there is a rape scene buuuuuut...poorly shot, jumpy editing and nothing graphic on the screen so they could have skipped it. I don't think we need, "I Spit on Your Ninja's Ancestors" but I could be wrong there.

Mom made me bundle up!

Enter the Ninja

Hiyas boys and girls. Welcome back to the week and pulling out a rarity for me. A Golan-Globus movie. Yes most folk attribute most Golan-Globus films as lesser action, horror and sci-fi movies and yet they brought us all Hospital Massacre, Death Wish II, 10 to Midnight, Revenge of the Ninja, Invasion U.S.A., King Solomon's Mines and Masters of the Universe. True they did also give us Death Wish 3 and 4: The Crackdown, Cyborg and Superman IV: The Quest for Peace but that is just splitting hairs. Clearly you need the faithful helping hand that is ninja.

This is Enter the Ninja.

I'm not sure if I can find that master of shadows.

Training hard in ninja school and yes that is apparently a thing, for war vet (some scrumming in Africa Congo and not Nam for a change) Cole (Franco Nero of Django, Force 10 from Navarone, The Shark Hunter, The Last Days of Pompeii, Django Strikes Again, Die Hard 2: Die Harder, The Dragon Ring and Django Unchained) achives the rank of ninja as his nifty scroll is his diploma...apparently that is also a thing that happened. After a slight wrinkle of words exchanged between Cole and Hasegawa (Sho Kosugi of Revenge of the Ninja, The Master, Ninja III: The Domination, Pray for Death, Rage of Honor, Blind Fury, Black Eagle and Ninja Assassin) at whether or not Cole is a legit ninja or not and he stomps off like a spoiled brat leaving Cole to reflect.

Cole leaves Japan (No real actual location) to the Phillipines to visit his friend Frank who looks like a hybrid of Andy Gibb and James Caan. Picture that for a moment. Upon arriving, he doesn't shout out, ring a bell or wait for someone to pass by this massive gate. Nope, best to use those vaulted ninja skills and scale over the wall but all the while he didn't even dirty his tight white pant suit. Did I mention this is 1981? Disco wear still available. Susan George meets Cole with a twelve gauge and hell I don't blame her given she had a difficult time with the Straw Dogs and Mandingo. Our gentleman hero tricks her, tosses her shotgun and puts her in a groping hold??

Frank greets his manhandling buddy and introduces his wife to Cole.

Dark Ninja attack!!

Frank has changed quite a bit since the war. His three loves is his wife, booze and apparently cockfights. Yeah can't get enough of roosters beating the crap out of each other. He is being squeezed by a land developer in Manila, hounded by packs of thugs constantly making his life miserable. Cole proceeds to beat the crap out of most of these men and we even get to see a man impaled with a bench. Ninja trick no doubt. Our inspiring land developer Mr. Venarius (Christopher George of El Dorado, The Rat Patrol, Chisum, The Train Robbers, Grizzly, City of the Living Dead, Graduation Day and Pieces) sends his best yes man to Japan to acquire a ninja of his own to do battle with Cole and shock of shocks or plenty of foreshadow it is Hasegawa that takes the contract. After defending Frank's plantation, watching him drink himself in a stupor, he does what any good friend does...plow Frank's wife. Well, that marriage was rocky at best.

Will Venarius get the land? Will Frank find out Cole porked his wife? Will battle with Hasegawa bring their feud to an end?

This is the right amount of action and over the top Ninja nonsense of the 80s and 90s. The craze that caused most of our parents to buy up a lot of plastic throwing stars and katana swords. Franco Nero was an unusual casting as the lead given the fact he had no martial arts background at all.

Writer/stuntman Mike Stone a martial arts expert was initially supposed to be Cole but his acting was painful that he was replaced by Franco Nero and yet, Franco didn't have a Texan accent or American at all thus needed to be dubbed. Just how crappy was Mike Stone's acting? The fight scenes are pretty good, the writing is fair and Will Hare of The Electric Horseman, Fire on the Mountain and of course Grandpa in Silent Night, Deadly Night. I just thought of his lines creeping out little Billy and started laughing.

Ninja and amateur mammogram specialist.