NINJA TERMINATOR is one of the best known of the Godfrey Ho ninja cut 'n' paste films that proliferated during the 1980s, and for good reason: it's one of the most entertaining of his "efforts", coming only behind SCORPION THUNDERBOLT in terms of on-screen insanity and outrageous cheesiness. Once again, Richard Harrison is embroiled in this mess that takes the usual template of using an old Chinese film, redubbing it and adding in lots of unrelated sequences involving ninjas. The thing that lifts this movie above similar fare is that the original film it rips off is actually decent – at least, the scenes they take from it are pretty good. It's an action-packed offering with Jack Lam playing 'Jaguar Wong' who has a vendetta against crime boss Hwang Jang Lee, wearing a silly blond wig for some reason. Basically, Lam kicks and thumps his way through dozens of bad guys, who sometimes attack him for no better reason than they don't want to tell him where the local restaurant is!
The fights are fluid if low budget, and packed with butt-kicking and people being tossed through car windows and the like. Lam's swaggering demeanour seems based on the type of character Bruce Lee used to play, although taken to the extreme. Hwang Jang Lee does some good work in the climatic fight, and in all it's a pretty entertaining little flick. Then we have the newly-filmed ninja stuff, and it's a hoot. Richard Harrison plays Harry, a renegade ninja who lives in his apartment and enjoys his girlfriend cooking him steamed crabs in a well-remembered sequence that's one of the funniest in the movie. Harrison finds himself up against sinister toy robots as well as myriad ninja enemies, who often phone him on his Garfield telephone and write messages on his car windscreen reminding him he has just days left to return the golden ninja warrior he stole (the statuette itself is the subject of another of these collaborations).
Eventually he finds himself up against dastardly ninja Phillip Ko in a cheesy fight to the death. All the ninja staples are here, from throwing stars and knives to disappearing tricks and clouds of gas and explosives. The fights are incredibly cheesy but I found them, like the film itself, surprisingly entertaining. Ho might be one of the world's worst directors but he often makes the unintentionally funniest movies and this is another classic for those with the right B-movie sensibilities. Drunken crabs, anyone?
The fights are fluid if low budget, and packed with butt-kicking and people being tossed through car windows and the like. Lam's swaggering demeanour seems based on the type of character Bruce Lee used to play, although taken to the extreme. Hwang Jang Lee does some good work in the climatic fight, and in all it's a pretty entertaining little flick. Then we have the newly-filmed ninja stuff, and it's a hoot. Richard Harrison plays Harry, a renegade ninja who lives in his apartment and enjoys his girlfriend cooking him steamed crabs in a well-remembered sequence that's one of the funniest in the movie. Harrison finds himself up against sinister toy robots as well as myriad ninja enemies, who often phone him on his Garfield telephone and write messages on his car windscreen reminding him he has just days left to return the golden ninja warrior he stole (the statuette itself is the subject of another of these collaborations).
Eventually he finds himself up against dastardly ninja Phillip Ko in a cheesy fight to the death. All the ninja staples are here, from throwing stars and knives to disappearing tricks and clouds of gas and explosives. The fights are incredibly cheesy but I found them, like the film itself, surprisingly entertaining. Ho might be one of the world's worst directors but he often makes the unintentionally funniest movies and this is another classic for those with the right B-movie sensibilities. Drunken crabs, anyone?