“Only a ninja can stop a ninja.”

Flinthart’s rating: 2 out of 5 matronly ninja mothers.

Flinthart’s review: When you’re a Mutant, you’re interested in the fringe stuff – the weird, edgy, off-centre kinda crazy films that either went wrong, or were just plain wrong from the outset. But if that’s your focus, sometimes it’s easy to forget exactly why your interest lies outside the mainstream. Sometimes it takes a trip back to mainstreamland to remember just what it was that drove you to the fringes in the first place.

Consider this film exactly such a trip.

Released in 1983, Revenge of the Ninja entered a space where big-budget summer blockbuster films weren’t yet the norm. Most films in release were still staid, stodgy, by-the-numbers bits of fluff that were, by and large, interchangeable as IKEA footstools and even less memorable. Cinema had been going almost a century by then, and Hollywood had been calling the shots for nearly seventy years. (Interesting historical note: film-making got started in New Jersey, but Tom Edison was a complete bar-steward about legal control of his technology. But apparently patent law of the day did not permit him to sue people in California.) The US film industry had become used to a passive, captive audience – people who would watch any old junk if it was on a screen and it had a Hollywood logo somewhere.

That’s how you get films like this. I mean, you’d think it would be a no-brainer to make a fast-paced, edgy action thriller about a feud between rival ninjas spilling over into… er… somewhere in America. (I think it’s meant to be California.) They even managed to put Sho Kusugi, a legit Japanese martial artist, front and centre. (The lead role in 1981’s Enter the Ninja went to that notable shinobi master Franco Nero.) Instead, what we get is a cringeworthy exercise in cheap genre-wallowing that doesn’t even deserve to be ranked with the ‘exploitation’ movements. (Ninja were big in the ’80s. Is Ninjasploitation even a thing? Who knows?)

I’ll sum it up fast: The film opens with a gang of ‘ninja’ brutally slaughtering Cho Osaki’s family. Cho (Sho Kusugi) gets there a little late, so he only slaughters most of the ninja AFTER they’ve gone through his wife and young son (but inexplicably missed his mum)  – but fear not, because Wife has successfully tucked the baby under a shrub shortly before taking a ninja arrow to the chest, so there’s still one kid left.

Cho is distraught, and his Good Buddy Braden (Arthur Roberts) tells him to up stakes and flee to the USA where he’ll be safe from sudden random ninja attacks. Over protests from Mum (Grace Oshita) who owns the family ninja necklace, Cho goes for it. He heads to California (maybe?) and sets up a gallery importing expensive and beautiful Japanese dolls for sale.

The fool! Little does he know the entire attack was orchestrated by Braden, himself secretly a ninja. Braden just wanted Cho to establish the gallery so that it could be a front for Braden’s ninja heroin-smuggling business, because importing heroin from Japan in fragile dolls just makes all kinds of sense, doesn’t it?

Pretty soon, the local Mafia types led by Caifano (Mario Gallo) are welching on their debts to Braden, leading him to go all murder-ninja on them. Cho’s gallery, including Ninja Mum and his remaining son Kane (yeah Kane Kusugi) all get caught in the middle, as well as Cho’s maybe-love-interest Cathy (Ashley Ferrare), a classic ’80s blonde who seems to hate the idea of wearing pants. (She first appears in the top half of a maroon silk karate-gi, apparently for a lesson in martial arts.)

Once Braden starts in on the Mafia types, it’s not long before Cho is taking on thugs, losing his precious dolls, his mum, and at least temporarily losing track of his last remaining kid. When he realizes that Good Buddy Braden is actually Evil Ninja Braden, we’re straight into a head-to-head ninja battle in the high-rise building where Caifano and his buddies hang out.

There’s your plot. Now, let’s talk about the film.

First, it’s lazy as all get-out. From the opening scene with the title-card declaring the location to be “Tokyo, Japan” (yeah, as opposed to all those other Tokyos out there) you realize the film-makers have just boiled a bunch of sushi and served it up as mash on a platter. Moments after the title-card moment, the opening credits start to pop up. And are they done in that schlocky, faux-calligraphic font that’s meant to suggest Japanese or maybe Chinese writing? Of course they are. Because it was the eighties and bored, indoctrinated Hollywood audiences sagging in their soda-sticky theatre seats needed every possible clue hammered into their foreheads.

But maybe the idiotic plot (Seriously? Murdering the guy’s family so he’ll move to the US and start a gallery and you can use his dolls for your heroin import business? That’s the BEST you can think of, Braden?) can be forgotten because all that ninja fighting is so cool?

Hmm. No.

By 1983, Hong Kong was already beginning to push the boundaries on martial arts, stunts and choreography. Even in Hollywood had already created three Rocky movies with solid, legit boxing scenes. Understandably, trying to put an authentic ninjutsu on-screen was probably impossible (even in Japan at that point!), but the fairly limp mix of warmed-over karate, acrobatics, and gadgety weapons presented here is barely even interesting.

Worse still – and I’m sorry to say this since Sho Kusugi was the fight choreographer – the on-screen fighting is tepid and deeply unconvincing. Head kicks whisk past people’s faces without any danger of contact. Block the bad guy’s arm and he’ll just stand there waiting while the good guy gets into position to deliver his devastating counter-attack some time next week. The martial arts material, even by the standards of what was in cinemas of the day, just looks sad and second-rate – unless, of course, you’d been lulled into a stupor by seventy years of cowboy-punches courtesy of Hollywood. I mean… if you’d somehow never managed to see anything with Bruce Lee in it… uhhh… maybe? (Note: may be some reviewer bias on show here. I have 40 years in martial arts, and two black belts. But honestly, I like a good chop-socky B-flick as much as anyone. More than most!)

So – is there any reason to watch this film at all?

Yes. There is. Despite its mainstream success, this is a Mutant film through-and-through. It’s cheaply made junk — made in Salt Lake City Utah instead of Los Angeles because they got special deal — and produced by suits who were aiming at an audience of martial arts movie fans which didn’t care what was on the screen as long as the cabbages got chopped and the chocolate blood product splattered the walls. As a result, there’s steady stream of stupid, funny, and classic ’80s moments to appreciate.

The best way to watch this? Grab some friends, some drinks and some snacks, and be ready to riff. Revenge of the Ninja is ripe for it, and deserves no better.

Intermission!

• Tokyo, Japan – in case you thought it might be Tokyo, Guatemala.
• Oooh. Haven’t seen that “Asian” font in a long time. Haven’t missed it, either.
• Oh! What’s that lurking in the bamboo? I thought ninjas were meant to be sneaky?
• Luckily, Japanese people are apparently conditioned not to see ninjas. There’s no other possible explanation.
• Wow. Five ninjas to stab one middle-aged gardener in the back? You guys are in SO MUCH TROUBLE when Sho Kusugi gets home…
• I’ll just stuff this crying baby under a bush. Nobody will find it here…
• Wait… he caught that arrow in his TEETH? Yeah, whatever.
• Y….M… C… A!
• Did that smoke come out of the ninja’s butt? Seriously?
• Ah, the eighties. Five inept teen bullies failing to beat up on a six-year-old Japanese ninja kid.
• Wait. Wait. Where are her pants?
• “If you wanna work out, you forgot your pants!” Oh, thank God. He noticed.
• Mario Gallo: the Joe Pesci you have when Joe Pesci hasn’t been invented yet.
• Why is that man going into the public toilets in that park? Oh, thank God: just a ninja murder scene.
• “You know on the street, word is there a ton of H on the way from Japan.” Worst. Street-bum. Informant. Evar.
• Hot tub murder! Welcome to the 80s!
• Still no pants?
• “Chief”? OMG. Oh no. They really called that character “chief?”
• Go, Ninja Mom!
• Oh! She went! Where did she go?
• Ooops. Not far enough, Ninja Mom.
• No suspects? Okay! Head down the local park and beat the garbanzos out of The Village People!
• Why would you try to attack a karate master with a board? Isn’t that just asking for trouble?
• PANTS! SHE’S GOT PANTS!
• “Only a ninja can stop another ninja!”
• Nobody look up. Ninja climbing the wall in broad daylight! Slowly. Very… slowly.
• How the hell did he hold all those in his mouth?
• My god! It was just a dummy!
• Oh! And so was that arm!
• Hot tub ninja surprise!