Ninja Terminator
(1985)
Aka: Silver
Fox and Ninja Terminator
Original Footage: The Uninvited Guest of the Star Ferry (1984)
Starring: Jack Lam, Richard
Harrison, Hwang Jang Lee, Phillip Ko Fei, Maria Francesca Harrison, Chiang Tao,
Jonathon Watts, Seo Jeong-a, Yoon Yang-ha
Director: Godfrey Ho (new footage); Kim Si-Hyun (Korean footage)
Action Director: Alan Wong, Dennis
Shin, Hyman Lee (I sure hope nobody broke him during filming...har!)...the Korean fights are courtesy of Baek Hwang-ki
With the success of movies like The Octagon and Enter the
Ninja at the beginning of the 80s, the Ninja Craze became an official
phenomenon all over the world, whose effects are felt even today. Ninjas have
become a regular part of pop culture thanks to the success (or notoriety) of
the movies that flooded theaters and video stores during that decade. While
some of them were honestly good movies (by genre standards), many of them were
notoriously bad. In fact, most mainstream viewers mightly hardly consider them
to be real movies.
The purveyors of such crap included the triumverate of evil: Godfrey Ho, Joseph Lai and Tomas Tang. Those three men, threw their studios IFD and Filmark, had the ingenious idea of taking unreleased or incomplete films from Hong Kong, Taiwan, Thailand, Korea or god-knows-where in Asia, filming new sequences with Caucasian actors (and usually a slumming Chiang Tao and/or Philip Ko), splicing them together and dubbing them so as to form a semi-coherent story. So unsuspecting viewers might pick up a film promising awesome green ninjas (I've personally loved green-clad ninjas back since I played Shinobi as a kid) fighting on motorcycles, only to get some Taiwanese film about a love triangle, while poorly-inserted scenes of ninjas break up the action.
Ninja Terminator has been held as the gold standard for these sorts of films, so I decided to check it out. In addition to the scenes featuring Richard Harrison (Medusa against the Son of Hercules) fighting for control of a mystical statue, we also get non-stop tae kwon do from a Korean action film featuring Jack Lam and legendary superkicker Hwang Jang Lee. How could this be bad?
On the 20th anniversary of the "ninja empire," three pieces of a mystical statue have been procured by ninjas Harry (Harrison) and another dumpy white guy. The ninja "emperor" (Chiang Tao) uses the statue to grant him invulnerability to any kind of attack. Later, the two Caucasian ninja, plus a Japanese one named Tamashi, steal the pieces of the statue and go their separate ways. They are obviously marked for death by ninja emperor, who sends his men, plus the Ninja Terminator (Philip Ko Fei) to get the statue back.
Tamashi is killed in short order and his statue piece is retrieved. Enter footage from a South Korean film called The Uninvited Guest of Star Ferry. A girl named Michiko and her brother are visiting the grave of their brother, which the dubbing suggests is Tamashi from the newer footage. Meanwhile, we discover that dumpy white guy ninja is the head of a criminal empire, whose main enforcer is Tiger Chan (Hwang Jang Lee in a blond wig). Tiger sends his men to harrass MIchiko and her brother in order to find out where Tamashi's piece of the statue is, not knowing that the empire reclaimed it.
Coming to the rescue is Jaguar Wong (Jack Lam, of Poisonous Rose and Leopard Fist Ninja), a likably arrogant,
high-kicking tae kwon do expert who beats up everybody who crosses his path
(granted, everybody who crosses his path just happens to work for Tiger Chan),
while he's not going down on his ex-girlfriend, Lily, who herself happens to be
sleeping with Tiger's second-in-command, Vic Lee. Jaguar Wong's scenes mainly
consist of him beating people up and stealing Tiger's heroin shipments.
Eventually, Michiko is kidnapped and Jaguar must rescue her before a time bomb
blows her up.
Meanwhile, back at IFD studios, Harry and dumpy white guy have set aside their
differences (although they didn't bother to tell Jaguar and Tiger about that)
in order to prepare for a duel with the Ninja Terminator. In the end, the good
guys win, the bad guys lose, Philip Ko uses his ninja magic to blow himself up,
and Harry presumably becomes the invincible ninja master. The end.
The rewards of this piece cut n' splice-sploitation epic are many. Marvel at
bad-a** Richard Harrison taking calls at his apartment via a cute Garfield
telephone! Be stunned when we learn that the preferred method of ninja
communication are toy robots! Be blown away by the technological marvels of
top-loading VCRs! Feel the mature ethnic themes of a Korean actor in a Chinese
film talking like a jive black guy before getting his a** handed to him by Jack
Lam himself!
Speaking of which, there's a lot of quality action in this film, at least with
regards to the original Korean footage. Jack Lam is a solid kicker, and
occasionally gets in some nice flying double kicks. His footwork lacks a bit of
the altitude of his contemporaries Casanova Wong and Dorian Tan, although he
delivers the bootwork quick and crisply. Hwang Jang Lee ultimately outshines
him during their extended fight at the end. Hwang unleashes the full arsenal of
his kicks, including the triple no-shadow kick, the bicycle kick, the
"clap your feet against the temples" kick, the "wrap your leg
around the neck and kick you in the face" kick, etc. I take isue with the
photography of the fight, which often fails to underscore the awesomeness of
Hwang's signature moves, but okay. At least it's visible.
On the other hand, the newer ninja footage is merely adequate, I guess. It's
mainly generic katana swinging and jump cuts of ninja disappearing and
reappearing, but lacks much of the WTF-ness that dominated the collected works
of Robert Tai. Those hoping for an ultimate showdown between the
now-unstoppable Harry and the invincible Ninja Emperor (that is, Chiang Tao),
will be disappointed. I guess Chiang Tao was appearing in so many of these that
he simply didn't have time to film a fight scene. Our loss.
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