Capsule Reviews - 2 Ninja Movies

Ninja Busters (USA, 1984: Paul Kyriazi)
Aka: Shadow Fight

Starring: Sid Campbell, Eric Lee, Gerald Okamura, Dalia Guiterrez, Nancy Lee, Harry Mok, Juan Morales, Carlos Navarro, Frank Navarro, Bob Ramos, Fumiko Takahashi
Director: Paul Kyriazi
Action Director: n/a

Interesting attempt at a martial arts comedy at a time that I think most examples of the genre were SERIOUS BUZINESS--or at least were treated as such, despite the final product (Enter the Ninja, I'm looking at you). This was directed by Paul Kyriazi, who worked on the sorta cult film Death Machines, starring Ron Marchini (who had a dojo in my hometown of Stockton, CA). He also directed Eric "the King of Kata" Lee in, who is one of this film's main stars, in Weapons of Death. He then went on to direct Marchini once again in Omega Cop, which was filmed in Stockton--STOCK-STATE, baby!

The film opens with a criminal named Santos (Juan Morales) going to Japan (I think?) to see the Dragon Lady--she's named after the stereotype--played by Fumiko Takahasi (later of The Kôsuke Kindaichi Series 13: The Village of the Eight Tombs). He's complaining about the cost of her protection, which we learn are ninjas. She assures them that they are masters of stealth and will never been seen by their targets. Yeah...right.

We then meet our protagonists, Chic (Sid Campbell, of Death Machines) and Bernie (Eric Lee). They are laborers at one of Santos's warehouses and their shtick is to get into trouble and then try to impress or intimidate people by declaring that Bernie was "Bruce Lee's first student" and that Chic "taught Bruce Lee to do his Tiger yell." All this gets them is a nice ass-whooping on several occasions. They eventually decide to...well...y'know...actually learn martial arts. They go to a karate studio run by Gerald Okumura, in probably his biggest role in terms of fighting and screen time. They spend much of their time ogling the pretty Asian girls at the dojo and Bernie eventually gets a girlfriend in the form of Tina (Nancy Lee, Weapons of Death and Hammerhead). At some point, they decide to tone down their shtick and start taking their training seriously; at one point, Okumura inexplicably brings in a bunch of masters of other styles to tutor our heroes, which is why Bernie walks out of a karate dojo performing kung fu.

It isn't until well into the second half of the movie that we actually have a plot. You see, one of Santos's rackets is arms dealing and his latest clients are a group of black militants--dressed in leopard-print jumpsuits and berets--who want to start the Revolution. Amusingly enough, during the deal, Santos points out to them that starting the Revolution is silly and they'd be better off just trying to work and make money. In any case, the militants try to stiff Santos and his men during the deal, but Santos has the entire junkyard (where the deal is going down) occupied by ninjas. A huge fight breaks out and Bernie and Chic end up being witnesses to the violence. Santos sends his ninjas after the two and fights break out at the Dojo, at the Salsa Club that belongs to one of the other sensei (Carlos Navarro, of Weapons of Death), at an aerobics class, and finally at the warehouse from earlier.

The first half is a lazy comedy about two ne'er-do-wells trying to pick up women. It isn't funny and it gets old very quickly. And their attempts to turn Bruce Lee's legacy into a running gag just fall flat. The film is very much starting to wear out its welcome--and to some, may already have--by the time the action kicks up in the second half. First, we get a fight between Eric Lee and another student, a former-biker named Sonny (Frank Navarro), who uses a combination of karate and break dancing moves. It isn't bad (well, I guess it kinda is), but some of the wider circular movements of kung fu don't look good onscreen when inserted into American fight choreography. The big brawl between the ninja and the black militants display how utterly inept these ninja are. To quote John Goodman from Speed Racer: "More like a NON-ja. Terrible what passes for ninja these days." The last several fights are a little better, mainly on the novelty of seeing Gerald Okumura kick so much butt. But really, you're better off sticking with The Octagon, Revenge of the Ninja, or even the first two (or three) American Ninja movies instead of this.

The Ninja Mission (Sweden, 1984: Mats Helge)

Starring: Krzysztof Kolberger, Hanna Bieniuszewicz, Bo F. Munthe, Curt Broberg, Hans Rosteen, John Quantz, Sirka Sander, Mark Davies, Wolff Lindner, Mats Helge Olsson
Director: Mats Helge
Action Director: The European Ninja Center

Swedish-made Cold War action film made during the Ninja Craze of the 1980s. It is sorta a ninja-martial arts movie, but most of the action revolves around automatic weapons, so don't go in expecting anything resembling the ninja films of Cannon (or Alexander Lo Rei, or Chang Cheh, or Robert Tai, or the TMNT). What it is, however, is a film that depicts the Soviet army as being such incompetent boobs that it is little wonder those punk-a** b*tches lost the Cold War.

So, a nightclub singer named Nadia (Polish actress Hanna Bieniuszewicz) is being chased all over Stockholm by a bunch of shady men, whom we learn are the KGB. She is rescued by a mysterious, handsome young man named Mason (Krzyszstof Kolberger, also Polish). Mason turns out to be part of the C.I.A. and is part of a mission to help Nadia's nuclear physicist father, Dr. Markov (Curt Broberg), defect out of Leningrad (St. Petersburg). Markov is about to make some sort of discovery regarding nuclear fission and if it falls into the hands of those dirty, Godless Ruskies, the tide in the Cold War will be turned. Anyway, the KGB agents attack the nightclub where Nadia works and kidnap her, notwithstanding all the efforts of Mason and his ninja mercenary team.

Meanwhile, another group of C.I.A. agents are helping to get Markov out of the USSR, but are betrayed by Markov's assistant, Natassia (Sirka Sander), who is better at killing "our boys from Langley" than she is at killing "Moose and Squirrel." Natassia smuggles Markov into a helicopter which takes him to an isolated mansion which he thinks is in Sweden, but is actually located in Russia near the Finnish border. There he will be reunited Nadia and finish his work "in peace" under the supervision of double agent Ableman (Hans Rosteen). So, Mason gets his ninja team together and sneak into Russia and kill dozens and dozens of Soviet soldiers as they try to find Markov and get him out Mother Russia.

If this film has a so-bad-it's-good reputation, it earns it, I guess. The plot is pretty simple and the story breaks into a prolonged shoot-out at regular intervals. And the final half-hour is almost non-stop action, so there's that. It suffers from bad lighting--although that may be the fault of the VHS transfer--that often reaches the levels of, "Before Alien vs. Predator: Requiem, there was The Ninja Mission." The martial arts action is limited and almost always framed, shot, and edited in ways that you cannot see what the actors are doing, thus obscuring the choreography brought to you by the good folks at the "European Ninja Center."

The action gets impressively graphic in the last reel or so, with a bloody ninja decapitation, LOTS AND LOTS of squibs, and a fun sequence where the ninjas start firing explosive darts at their enemies, which cause heads and limbs to start exploding. And yes, this film suffers from an egregious case of "guns with bottomless magazines." Good gosh, they get a lot of mileage out of those machine guns. Maybe they should've sold the secret of those to the Soviets.

Capsule Reviews - 2 Mainland films

Real Kung Fu of Shaolin, Pt 1 (1980/1984)
Aka: Shaolin Dragon Snake 
Chinese Title: 忍無可忍
Translation: Enough is Enough

Starring: Siu Yuk-Lung, Yin Long, Jiang Lili, Weng Yu-Lin, Leung Siu-Wah, San Sin, Lee Fat-Yuen
Director: Kao Yang
Action Director: Zaung Sea-Yang

This was one of the earliest Mainland kung fu movies, predating Jet Li's Shaolin Temple by two years. It got a release on VHS by Ocean Shores and later by Tai Seng and let me just say that I really dislike some of these 1980s Ocean Shores dubs. The problem isn't so much the voices, but the mixing. The volume of the dubbed voices is much higher than the original background music and sound effects, so it feels completely unnatural and distracting.

The film revolves and Siu Ching (Siu Yuk-Lung, who mainly had bit roles in Shaw Brothers films before this), a young man who was brought to Shaolin as a child by his mother. His father was murdered by the evil Mr. Wu, who is evil because...I don't know. I think it has something to do with Warlord period of the Republic Era of China, but other than talking about buying copper and asbestos for military use, we never see him do warlord stuff. Siu Ching grows up in Shaolin and learns numerous styles: the Iron Head technique, Finger Boxing, Qigong, Kitchen Fu, and Broom Fu. He eventually finds out that his mom is living in a village not too far away and Siu Ching fights the Four Guardians of Shaolin in order to get released from the temple.

Once he is reunited with his mom, he discovers that Mr. Wu and his flunkies, led by the wicked Mr. Jyiu, are trying to steal the commoners' land by beating them to death if they don't just up and vacate. Siu Ching and his mother go to stay with his uncle, who now runs a restaurant. Siu Ching gets a job as a waiter and falls in love with his cousin (Jiang Lili), who is also the subject of the lecherous designs of Mr. Wu's son (Leung Siu-Wah, of The Black Belt and Land of the Brave). Siu Ching beats him, beats the corrupt Red Monk, and brawny Korean fighter named Pak. Mr. Jyiu forces Siu Ching's uncle to sign over his restaurant while Mr. Wu kills Siu Ching's mother and Wu's son tries to rape his cousin. Time for our hero to dispense some kung fu justice.

Real Kung Fu of Shaolin, Pt. 1 is interesting because it doesn't feel like a Mainland film. It is filmed in China, but it lacks those sweeping Chinese vistas that fans of Mainland films enjoy so much. The story and its execution feels a lot closer to a Hong Kong film, bereft of the pro-CCP propaganda that shows up in a lot of 80s wushu films. Overall, it just lacks the scale of a lot of the Mainland films made in the 1980s, feeling closer to a low-budget Taiwanese movie in terms of overall feeling. That said, the story lacks a real sense of urgency or even much development on the part of the villains: we never learn what they are really about and what their endgame is.

There is a fair amount of action, choreographed by Zaung Sea-Yang, whomever that is. It is obvious that most of the actors are wushu stylists. On the other hand, the lead actor is a Hong Kong veteran and it's clear he is using more Southern styles in his fighting than the usual Northern Wushu we see in these movies. He gets to fight with a sword and his fists and is certainly less flowery in his presentation than most Mainlanders in these movies. There is a villain who gets to use a rope dart, if only briefly. The hero's mother uses the double daggers, wushu style. The female love interest does some nice cartwheels and acrobatics, even if her actual fighting lacks real power. The fighting on the whole is pretty good, although the climax could have benefitted from more choreography and less running. Old school fans should check it out, if for nothing else than for its historical value.

Ninjas & Dragons (1984)
Chinese Title: 忍者潛龍
Translation: Ninja Hidden Dragon

Starring: Junya Takagi, Dong Li, Xia Qing, Sun Genfa, Xu Li, Song Wenhua, Chu Ah-Lin, Lu Yun-Ling, Rong Ro-Pei
Director: Ding Cheuk-Lun
Action Director: Kazuyuki Saito

At first this looks like what may be a Mainland Chinese rip-off of Ninja in the Dragon's Den. But it's not that. I'm not quite sure what it is (or when it's supposed to be set...perhaps the Yuan Dynasty?). The tone is often a lot lighter than most other Mainland kung fu films of the era, save Kids from Shaolin. But it ultimately suffers from a distinct lack of action.

So, there is a Japanese ninja named Hayate (Junya Takagi, who had previous sung on the soundtrack of Kabamaru the Ninja) who has come to China looking for the Oni-masked ninja, Kensuke, who murdered his father and most of his clan. Hayate has also been hired by a general--a Mongol general? a Khitan general?--to serve as a bodyguard against possible inside jobs against his life. And lo! and behold, one of the other generals, Hurasi (I think is Sun Genfa, of South Shaolin Master), does assassinate his brother and then has Kensuke murder him so that Hurasi can get his official jade seal. Why? Well, I guess he wants to send his armies into China, something that the previous general was hesitant about. And Hurasi is supported by his scheming, ambitious "mother" (Xu Li, another South Shaolin Master alumni); her ugly daughter Ying Yong; and her creepy baby midget helper.

Hayate is captured during the coup and he'll be out of commission until later. There is also the righteous Liang family, which includes the patriarch, the filial son, and the daughter Ching (Xia Qing, of Eastern First Assassin and Bi Xue Bao Dao). Ching has a suitor in the form of the righteous martial artist, Lin Feng (Dong Li, of Revenge of Swordsmanship). Anyway, Liang opposes Hurasi's military aims and has enough sway in the region that he can get the martial talent together to block the transport of supplies to the front lines of the area. Hurasi and his "mother" have Ching kidnapped and try to force her to marry him. And when Ching and some of the villagers save her (and Hayate, too), they just go and kill the Patriarch Liang. It all culminates in a fight near the Great Wall.

The movie jumps back and forth between light comedy and serious historical action drama. Much of the comedy stems from the villain's cousin, Hutuhan, who provides some of the film's basic slapstick. He's one of those characters that is always bragging about his kung fu, but mainly just gets involved in hijinks instead. He ends up taking a liking to Ching and helps her escape a forced marriage by pretending to have r*ped her, thus making her used goods and of no interest to Hurasi. Uh....okay. And it is supposed to be played for laughs. And then Hurasi allows one of his cronies to have his way with Ching, which leads to both men killing each other and all I can think is..."Man, that escalated quickly."

The action was stated by Kazuyuki Saito, whose filmography suggests he was a member of Sonny Chiba's Japan Action Club--his credits include Karate Warriors; Dragon Princess; The Executioner; and some of the Sister Street Fighter films. And to be perfectly honest, he does a very decent job with the action. Despite Japan having a slightly different style than Hong Kong or the PRC, Saito acquits himself to "shapes" surprisingly well, like in a playful scuffle between Lin Feng and Ching early on. The main problem is that there is not enough of it. The first fight that really sticks out is a flashback sequence in which see the evil ninja Kensuke killing a bunch of ninjas from Hayate's clan. There is some good choreography all around there.

And then there's the finale, which is your typical Mainland free-for-all of different wushu stylists fighting each other. Ching and a male character with an eyepatch take on Hurasi, who is wielding a pudao, or assault blade (i.e. a less ornate variation of the kwan do). Ching wields a pair of iron-ribbed fans during this fight. At the same time, Lin Feng and Hayate team up against "Mother", Yin Yong, and the creepy midget, who have a nifty three-fighting-as-one technique: the Mother stands in one place with Yin Yong behind her and the midget between her legs and when you attack her, you have extra pairs of hands coming out of nowhere to attack you. And the way in which the midget is dispatched is pretty darn goofy. Hayate fights with a blade and a claw, which you see in the poster. Like I said, pretty decent choreography overall, but I wonder why there wasn't more of it.

The Shinobi Ninja (1981)

The Shinobi Ninja (1981) 

Starring: Tadashi Yamashita, Yasuhiro Shikamura (Luk Chuen), Karen Shepherd, Eric Lee
Director: Yasuhiro Shikamura (Luk Chuen)
Action Director: Yasuhiro Shikamura (Luk Chuen)

I was going to do a full-length write-up of this for my 'zine, but I realized that I had so little information about it that I decided just to cover it here. The IMDB lists this as a Canadian production, but given that the open credits are all in Japanese (save the gaijin actors, including a young Karen Shepherd) and the film is dubbed in English, I'm going to assume that it was just a low-budget Japanese film made to capitalize on the nascent "Ninja Craze" of the early-mid 1980s. Somehow, it found its way onto home video in the West and did not vanish into complete obscurity.

The film opens with a history of ninjitsu, set to a series of well-drawn manga images. To boot, there were two big ninja clans during the Tokugawa Shogunate: the Iga and the Koga clans. The former allied themselves with the Shogun while the latter were hunted into obscurity. Switch to modern-day Tokyo, where an American CIA agent is being chased in the streets by a bunch of men in blue jumpsuits, sneakers, and ski masks. Those will be our ninja of the movie: the "descendents" of the Iga Ninja. They kill the CIA agent and we cut to a meeting between a bunch of white guys and Japanese law enforcement establishing that several foreign agents have been murdered in Japan by masked assailants. One of the Japanese officials believes that ninja are behind the killings, but his theory is laughed away by the white guys.

He goes to see an old martial artist, who directs him to Ken Suzuki (Tadashi Yamashita, of Za Karate and The Octagon), the last remaining member of the Koga Clan. Suzuki is teaching martial arts in Los Angeles and finds himself being attacked by a bunch of random white guys. It turns out to be a test of his skills and he is hired to be part of a team of killers meant to defeat the ninja in Japan. He is initially reluctant, but decides to join when he learns that he will be able to avenge the wrongs perpetuated against his clan by the Iga. There are seven other martial artists/professional assassins joining him, including a Chinese kung fu master (Eric "The King of Kata" Lee) and a woman (Karen Shepherd, of Righting Wrongs).

Assassin Number 1 (a white guy), tries to assassinate the rogue politician who hired the Iga ninjas at his home (he has a document that has some plan to restore Japan to its former militaristic state), but is overwhelmed and killed. Assassin Number 2 (also a white guy) is seduced by a female kunoichi (giving the film some brief T&A) and stabbed to death by her in his hotel room. Four of the other assassins carry out a hit on one of the politician's contacts in a long set piece set in the snow. Two of them are killed while Eric Lee and Karen Shepherd are captured. For much of the movie, Ken Suzuki has been hanging around in the background. He finally steps up to the plate, kills most of the ninja and challenges their leader (played by the film's director) to a duel.

Although there is more than a fair amount of ninja action in this one, there is the issue of the outfits, which are very un-ninja like. Worse than that is the script, which jumps from one set piece to another with no introduction, establishing scene, etc. Just how did the first assassin know where the target was staying, let alone who exactly he was? How did the second assassin meet the kunoichi, let alone charm her (or let her charm him) into bed? Just who exactly are the other four assassins trying to kill in the snow? How did they know he would be there? There is just a lot of random things that happen with no explanation, which was honestly the same problem that Sister Street Fighter had--i.e., how did she always show up in the right place for a fight to break out? How did she know to be at that exact place at that exact time? 

The film's director is Yasuhiro Shikamura, aka Yasuyoshi Shikamura, aka Luk Chuen. Luk Chuen was a Hong Kong-born Japanese (or half-Japanese?) martial artist who was a common fixture in 1970s kung fu cinema. He found work as an action director at the same time he was acting, offering his talents to films like Bamboo House of Dolls; The Gold Connection; and even Jackie Chan's The Magnificent Bodyguards, among many others. He first tried his hand at directing in 1978 with Deadly Chase for Justice starring Michael Chan. This would have been his second directorial effort. He later went on to direct Cypress Tigers, the Hong Kong version of Tango and Cash starring Simon Yam and Conan Lee. He also choreographed the Killer's Romance, an adaptation of "Crying Freeman" starring Simon Yam and boasting a supposedly spectacular sword fight.

I'm guessing that Shikamura also staged the fight scenes for the movie. The fight choreography is quite solid, especially by 1970s/80s Japanese standards. Sometimes it looks like a proto-type for the 1980s kickboxing that Jackie and Sammo would be doing a year or two later. It also helps that the filmmakers cast real martial artists in all the roles (except for maybe the one-armed marksman). Shepherd gets two opportunities to show off her kung fu and kicking skills--she apparently studied under one of the Dacascos family members. Eric Lee gets to show off the snake style in his fights, especially during the snow sequence. He looks a lot better than he did in Weapons of Death. Tadashi Yamashita is in "Bronson Lee" mode, that is, he does a lot of Bruce Lee mannerisms in his fights. His moves look good, though his bar fight with the ninja has a jerky, start-stop quality to the execution. He does a lot better in the climax.

People looking for ninja antics should get their fill, the silly modern-day clothing notwithstanding. I want traditional robes and masks on my ninja, not ski masks, con sarn it! But you get to see ninja fighting with kunai, shuriken, katana, bows and arrows, yari (straight spear), kusari-fundo (weighted chain), and kusari-kama (sickle-and-chain). The snow sequence features ninjas on skis and ninjas on sleds. The climax has this really long and silly sequence of Tadashi Yamashita being "chased" by a ninja on a hang glider, which just lazily flies around in circles. Eric Lee and Karen Shepherd are wasted in the finale: they storm a house looking for a document, but the house is empty. No guard ninja hanging around there, so no fighting from them. Boo. The final one-on-one is a sword vs spear duel that is well choreographed (by Japanese movie standards), if too short.

On the other hand, the entire movie runs a good 10 minutes too long--there is no reason for a film with this little plot to run 104 minutes. A few edits here and there (including removing the hang glider and the "storm the empty house" sequences) could have improved the pace dramatically. That is a problem I find in a lot of Japanese movies, including the Japanese cuts of Godzilla films. They tend to meander and need a few seconds cut here and a minute snipped there to have better pacing.  All things said, The Shinobi Ninja is little more than a curio from the days of the Ninja Craze, but it at least boasts some pretty good fighting (especially if you compare it to a lot of American and Filipino films from the same time).