Ninja Powerforce (1988) Poster

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6/10
Ninja Master Gordon to the rescue! (Again!)
HaemovoreRex9 October 2006
Poor old Richard Harrison has the ignominy to find himself yet again dressed head to foot in a luminous yellow ninja outfit (and in an even more eye bleedingly garish coloured Hawian shirt when not attired in his ninja togs!!!) whilst battling the evil ninja empire in this typically formulaic cut and splice ninja flick to emerge from Joseph Lai's IFD stable.

If you've ever had the joyous honour *ahem* of viewing one of these flicks before then you'll know exactly what to expect here. Yep, it's about the grand total of ten minutes of Harrison/ninja footage clumsily edited into an entirely non related and quite frankly usually none too engaging, long forgotten and/or unheard of (with good reason!) Asian movie (a gangster movie in this instance).

Although this may sound like a bad deal (a veritable cinematic scam in fact!) the finished products themselves are more often than not bizarrely, hugely entertaining affairs, usually on account of the sheer ineptitude, laziness and indeed, blatant shamelessness of the finished film and of course the perpetrators -erm, I mean film makers involved. Yes - these flicks represent in fact the absolute epitome of the so called 'So bad that it's good' movie.

So what highlights are on offer in this glorious entry? Well, we have a curiously obese head ninja villain who's backed up by a decidedly odd looking, mousy moustached second in command, some typically daft dialogue/bad voice over work and of course the obligatory, highly enjoyable but always far too brief ninja combat sequences that as always in these films end with the defeated ninja pulling a woefully overacted, pained expression before instantly slumping dead! In addition and a point that certainly provided me with some great chuckles throughout this is the hilarious (and hopelessly amateur) manner in which the protagonists (in the newer edited in segments) are seen exiting scenes in the movie. The camera merely shows them wandering off screen from a fixed sideways shot! (In fact even the exact same takes appear to be reused throughout the film!) Priceless! Truly craptastic even!

It has to be said that overall, despite some of the highlights listed above, this film is admittedly perhaps not one of the best of it's illustrious ilk *cough!!!*, but for fans of this all too little appreciated (with possible good reason!) genre, this is certainly still well worth checking out.

Lucky viewers here in the UK were 'treated' to this film under the title: Ninja Operation 4: Thunderbolt Angels; an interesting title I'm sure that you'll agree especially given the distinct absence of any thunderbolts or angels for that matter in the movie....hmmm intriguing indeed....
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5/10
POWERFORCE
BandSAboutMovies3 June 2023
Warning: Spoilers
You may know this movie as Thunderbolt Angels but I saw it as Ninja Powerforce, which sounds like the kind of dumb genre classification some neckbeard that slavishly masturbates over Decibel would give to a band that nine people have listened to.

This is yet another Joseph Lai and Godfrey Ho - which may be the same person depending on who you read - ninja movie made from two movies, this time that the same footage of Richard Harrison dressed as a yellow ninja with a red headband that says "ninja" that was for one movie and ended up in so many films and a Cheung Chi-Chiu movie The Return. That movie is about gangsters who grow up and one trying to go straight. The ninjas work their way into that movie and unlike the stealth experts they are meant to be, they just barge right through the narrative.

Within the movie stolen for this, Frankie is a gangster who kills a friend named Albert and does the time. When he gets out, his old friend Matthew has gone legit and also married his woman Mandy. He also finds a world where Albert's wife has to become a sex worker to pay for their child after his death. The actual movie is pretty good, but it's really odd when everyone suddenly develops ninja connections that exist only in thee dubbed dialogue for Ninja Powerforce because otherwise this movie goes ninja free for long stretches.

There's a lot of dialogue about chivalry to the point that every mention of the word would start to make me laugh. This is something you'd never have in your life if it wasn't for these ninja films.

The music in this one also goes a bit off script, with Windham Hill artist Mark Isham's "Many Chinas" and "On the Threshold of Liberty;" Romanelli's "Connecting Flight;" "Six Pianos" by American minimalist composer Steve Reich; Jean-Michael Jarre's "Second Rendez-Vouz;" The Alan Parsons Project's "Psychobabble," "Silence and I," "Children of the Moon," Mammagamma" and "Sirius;" OMD's "Electricity;" Clan of Xymox's "Masquerade" and Mark Knopler's "Going Home (Theme of the Local Hero)."
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