'Challenge of the Lady Ninja' is so bad it's good

Challenge of the Lady Ninja (aka "Never Kiss a Ninja") (1987)
Starring: Elsa Yeung, Kam Yin Fie, Peng Kong, and Chen Kuan-Tai
Director: Tso Nam Lee
Rating: Four of Ten Stars

A young Chinese woman (Yeung), trained in the secret ways of Japanese ninja, returns home to China to fight against the Japanese occupiers during World War 2. When she realizes that her one-time betrothed (Kuan-Tai) has turned traitor and is working for the Japanese, she creates a fighting force of other female ninjas to put an end to his evil and to battle her old rival from the Ninja Academy (Kong).

"Challenge of the Lady Ninja" is one of those movies that is observably wretched, yet so very fun to watch. For example, while the film makes a big deal out of being set during World War 2, there is very little attempt to dress characters in period costumes or otherwise make the film look like it takes place in the 1940s. All the fashions, gear, and cars all date from the 1980s.

Then there's the ninja spell that lets a woman transform her bright red ninja suit into a bikini and lets her perform a version of the Dance of the Seven Veils that fills onlookers with distracting lust. Add to this the rampant hatred of Japanese that was so common in Chinese action films through at least the 1980s, and you have a movie that's one that should be reserved for an audience with very specific tastes... or just bad taste.

For all its quirks and faults, the film is a lot of fun. The ninja hi-jinx are as silly as anything you'll find in a Joseph Lai/Godfrey Ho production, but they are fully integrated into the film's story and generally make more sense. It's also action packed, with a fight or a chase breaking out every five or so minutes, and each one as energetic as the one that came before.

The main selling point with this film is cute ninja babes kicking butt, and that it delivers in spades. The extended final showdown between our red-clad ninja heroine and the film's main baddie is well worth waiting for.

If you like goofy martial arts pictures, and especially if you enjoyed a film like "Sister Street Fighter", "Challenge of the Lady Ninja" will brighten your day. It would be a great addition to any Girl Power- or martial arts-themed Bad Movie Night. Just turn your brain off before you turn the DVD player on.

The deadliest of blogathons....

Nine Days of the Ninja: The Mystery of 'Ninja Death'

"Ninja Death" is a film and/or movie trilogy as mysterious as the ninja themselves.

Although I've done the same level of research that CNN does when vetting submitted questions for a Republican YouTube debate, I've been unable to discover much information about "Ninja Death". I've been able to identify a very small number of the actors in the film, I have no idea who directed it, originally produced it, or if it was even ever finished and released in its original homeland of China (or maybe Taiwan).


What I do know is that the "Ninja Death" trilogy was originally a REALLY long movie that was broken into three parts. Although a credit sequence was filmed--with ninja and each principal actor doing a couple of martial arts tricks and poses, no credits are listed on screen. The English dubbing seems to have run into financial difficulties, as the voice actors change a couple of different times throughout the movies--most noticably in "Ninja Death I" when the American/Australian voice actors are suddenly replaced by a bunch of British actors who all sound like they just got back from the Gay Pride Parade--so the lack of credits might be a result of the film being abandoned in the middle of the localization/export process.

Another theory I have is that the film wasn't even finished and released in its country of origin. It could be that the bloated running time of a little over four hours is where the film stood after its first cut by the now-anonymous director and editor... and that further editing would have taken place, but they never got to it. (There's an entire subplot with a farmer and his daugther that probably would have been cut if another editing pass has been done on the film when it was to be a single work.)

Whatever the case, "Ninja Death" was a production in trouble and it ran out of money at least once, perhaps even twice, and no one bothered to spend any money to completely finish it. Abandoned, and chopped into a "trilogy" it's now available in budget collections like the "Martial Arts 50 Movie Pack" (which is where I came by it/them). If anyone out there knows more about the history of the "Ninja Death" film/films, I'd love to hear from you. In the meantime, here's my take on the three movies.

But first... important facts learned in "Ninja Death": Ninjas vote Republican, and nothing says romance like somnambu-rape.

(By the way, the films has a very catchy main theme. As I'm typing these words, I'm finding myself whistling it. Of course, the movie also strangely uses random James Bond themes and possibly music from other sources I'm not familiar with, so it could be that the "Ninja Death Theme" I'm humming is also originally from somewhere else.)



Ninja Death I (1979? 1983? 1999?)
Starring: Lo Yiu, Luk Yee Fung, and Alexander Lou (based on web research; no names on film)
Director: None credited
Steve's Rating: Six of Ten Stars

The happy-go-lucky bouncer at a small-town Chinese brothel, Tiger (Lou), finds his life turned upside-down when secrets known only to his Kung Fu master (Fong) bring the Master and his hoard of fanatical, bloodthirsty ninja to town. As the ninjas are butchering beggars and prostitutes left and right, Tiger struggles to unlock his own mighty Ninja Power that lurks within his breast. But will he manage to do so in time, or will Ninja Death II" feature an all-new cast?

"Ninja Death I" is an example of what happens when a film project runs out of money and is abandoned. Not only do the voice actors change completely halfway through (suddenly, everyone in the film developes British accents, and the voice actor portraying Tiger goes from American and moderately talented to British and totally talent free), but no one even bothered placing English language credits over the extensive opening sequence or even to add a "To Be Continued" over the spinning Bad Guy at the abrupt end of the film. (And there's no doubt the film was made to have credits, becauze each major character gets to do goofy ninja stuff against a red background and then pose at the point the actor's name and the character he or she portrays should appear).

Speaking of Goofy Ninja Stuff... this film has it in spades! This is the kind of movie I was hoping to come across when I decared November Ninja Month. The film features an Evil Ninja Cult Leader (the "Grand Master") who has come to town with his band of black-clad ninjas, a red-clad, masked madman who is unleashed by the playing of a flute, and a band of prostitutes who are going to help him in his quest... which is to find a man with a plum flower tattooed on his chest. (And what better way to get a look at beefcake than to have an abundance of Japanese prostitutes on hand?)

And the ninjas are exactly the kind of ninjas you'd expect. They are creeping around in the forest and attacking people. They are running with tiny steps and in single file while holding their swords at awkward angles. They are killing Japanese lords while they are having sex. They are wiping out entire households. They are scamperring up ropes while barely hanging onto them. They are leaping into treetops from a standing start. They are performing acrobat tumbles for absolutely no reason. They are hiding deep, dark secrets. They are infiltrating the citizenry and each other's ranks, just because they can. They are killing beggars and whores just because they can. AND they are appearing and dissapearing under the cover of smoke boms! Ah, joy... Goofy Ninja Stuff in abundance!

In addition to the Goofy Ninja Stuff, this film has lots of silly and extreme martial arts training techniques and nonsensical "wisdom" from the martial arts master, not to mention lots of really badly translated dialogue that is made even funnier by the questionable talent of the voice actors.

On the downside, "Ninja Death I" is unnecessarily crude at times. I'm by no means a prude, but the unmotivated sex scenes and sexually charged behavior and language from some characters was more irritating than entertaining. (The extended sex scene during the explanation of "what is a ninja" was particularly obnoxious and dull. If you're going to put crap in your movie in search of an R or X rating, at least make it entertaining.)

"Ninja Death I" is not a masterpiece by any stretch of the imagination. It's not even that good a movie, but there are some nifty martial arts fight scenes and much silly Ninja Stuff! (Plus, this is the film that proves the statement "Ninjas Vote Republican". Why else would they kill all the beggars and Chinese prostitutes in the town?)



Ninja Death II (1979? 1983? 1999?)
Starring: Alexander Lou and Fei Meng (I think; no credits on film)
Director: Someone whose name was left off the credits
Steve's Rating: Three of Ten Stars

A young martial artist-in-training named Tiger (Lou) is being stalked by Evil Ninja. After his master and adopted father is defeated by Ninjas, almost killed, and then commits suicide by punching himself in the head for God-only-knows-what-reason as he hadn't finished telling telling everything he needed to know about his past, the deadly Masked Ninja, and why the Grand Master's Evil Ninja Cult that's out to kill him, Tiger continues to study the Art of the Ninja under new masters, including a pair of double-agents among the Grand Master's own ranks. But will he survive when he chooses to confront the Grand Master before his training is complete?

"Ninja Death II" is the middle part of a looong Chinese martial arts film that was divided into three seperate movies for export, and it feels like the middle of a long movie. Very little actually happens in the "film" and about 20 minutes are actually repeated footage from "Ninja Death I". (Oddly, these flashbacks don't do a whole lot to explain who the various players in the movie's plot are, so they're included more for padding than to catch up those who haven't seen the first installment in this trilogy.)

"Ninja Death II" also repeats the credit-less opening and closing sequences that were featured on the first film, but the voice actors (which suddenly became British halfway through "Ninja Death I") are back to being American. As a result, our hero, Tiger, is back to sounding like a doofus instead of a Gay Pride icon.

In this installment of the series, we are treated to boring, overlong sequences with Tiger trying to master the fighting style of Ninjas (which, in this film's conception is the "royal style" of Japan's nobility), we learn a few secrets about Tiger's history, and we have Tiger rape yet another girl while sleeping. (His first somnambu-rape was of a ninja call-girl in "Ninja Death I". Here, he forces himself upon an innocent peasant girl while dreaming about his first victim. And, just like the ninja call-girl, the peasant woman seems to fall in love with Tiger after being raped. Those wacky Chinese....) The only interesting plot developments occur when the Grand Master--who's the only Oriental villain with worse fashion sense than Fu Manchu--discovers the traitors in his ranks and sends his Ninja after them, and the Masked Ninja escapes and ends up on a fatal collision course with Tiger, who, unbeknownst to him, is the son of the Masked Ninja.

As for the fight scenes and Ninja Death Action that made "Ninja Death I" entertaining, we don't even get much of that here. With the exception of a fight where the Grand Master shows that he has big balls (in both senses of that), everything else in "Ninja Death II" is subplot material, filler material, and tasteless somnambu-rape scenes.

Speaking of rape.... For some reason, the filmmakers used James Bond theme music in both scenes involved forced sexual encounters. The first scene was in a Japanese household where the theme from "You Only Live Twice" is heard as a drunkard rapes the adopted mother of three boys as they watch. Then, we hear the theme from "Man With the Golden Gun" as Tiger rapes the peasant girl. And it's not downbeat or suspense-oriented versions of the tunes either... it's quiet, romantic renditions. Nothing says romance like somnambu-rape!)



Ninja Death III (1979? 1983? 1999?)
Starring: Alexander Lou, Fei Meng, and a buch of other actors whose names aren't on the credits
Director: Someone whose name was left off the credits
Steve's Rating: Four of Ten Stars

In the third installment of this epic tale of revenge, Tiger (Lou) discovers he's the son of the Japanese emporer's sister, completes his training in the martial arts style of the Imperial Japanese (and some other obscure fighting style that comes from who-knows-where), and joins his allies-- a blind Kung Fu master, three monks who live in barrels, a samurai, and a brother/sister pair of ninja--in a final battle to the death against the evil Grand Master and his cult of murderous Evil Ninja.

"Ninja Death III" is all about Kung Fu fighter and ninja killing. There's some plot here--including the soap operatic elements of Tiger and his mother being reunited--but it's so nonsensical and badly motivated that you're better off pretending it doesn't exist. The confusing isn't help any by the fact the characters are speaking lines so badly translated into English that in some places it's hard to grasp their meaning. (If you watch this film and can figure out why the Blind Master and Sakura, Tiger's Ninja Squeeze, decide to play a game of cross and double-cross with the Grand Master, drop me a line. It makes absolutely no sense to me.)

Although a step up from "Ninja Death II"--and it starts promisingly with a brief and useful recap of the previous films--this closing chapter dissapoints more than it entertains, despte the good fight scenes (where many of the bizarre excersizes Tiger's ninja trainer back in the first film subjected him to come in handy). The biggest dissapointment is the Masked Ninja. He is unleashed yet again, but we get very little payoff action- or storywise for all the buildup.

"Ninja Death III" is as full of goofiness as the first two chapters in the series, but I am hard-pressed to describe it as "good", or even recommend it for a Bad Movie Night; it's a little too stupid and some parts feel padded. (The best thing I can say about the film is that Tiger gets through it without raping a single girl in his sleep.)

I wonder, though, if this film couldn't be salvaged with better dubbing/translation and extensive editing. The creditless credit sequences seem to show that this film was abandoned while in process (at least as far as the exporting of it went), and I wonder if there is a single 95-minute good movie lurking within the 260-minute running time of the current the three installments.

Something's missing in this movie....

Golden Ninja Invasion (1987)
Starring: Leonard West, Stephanie Burd, Alan Davies, Jerry Brown, Susan Evans, Marshal Lucas, and Eric Lee
Director: Bruce Lambert
Rating: Three of Ten Stars

The nefarious Red Sun gang are looking to expand their empire of fear, vice, and drugs, but they face opposition from a brave cadre of Thai police officers, and the righteous Blue Ninja. But can even the bravest, most pure-hearted of champions of good withstand the onslaught of Mr. Warren and his ninja?!

As you watch "Golden Ninja Invasion", it becomes obvious that there are a couple of things missing in this movie: There's no Golden Ninja, and there's no invasion that takes place by said Golden Ninja, or any other ninja in this film. That list grows when you take into account the poster art featured above, as the film also doesn't feature helicopters buzzing the United States Capitol Building, nor any fiery car crashes. (There are a couple of car chases, but no real crashes.)

What the film features is an incoherent story about a criminal gang are aided by a group of Ninja in their fight against sort of Thai anti-gang unit--one member of which has had his hand replaced by a metal hand that shoots electrical bolts when the plot calls for it--and a handful of uniformed cops. There's also some sort of scientist in possession of top secret documents the gang wants for reasons never explained. As if the movie wasn't confusing enough, a mysterious Mr. Warren is behind the gang and the Ninja, and he is opposed by some ancient martial artist and the powerful Blue Ninja.

The plots upon plots and story lines barely connecting are the result of this being yet another one of those patchwork Ninja films from the 1980s. Like so many others, this movie was created by Chinese filmmakers for sale in the Western market by merging an existing (possibly never distributed) film with a few new scenes featuring Caucasian actors and some guys in ninja outfits doing very silly stuff. What makes this film almost unique in the dozens of these that were foisted upon the world by producers Tomas Tang and Joseph Lai, and directors like Godfrey Ho and whoever was working behind the name "Bruce Lambert" at any given time, is that not only are their ninja in the new footage, but the original film featured ninja as well.

Yes, for reasons that we may never know, since Tomas Tang died in 1996 and "Bruce Lambert" is a anonymous and shadowy figure--people like to claim he's Godfrey Ho, but Ho has stated categorically that he was never credited under that named... dozens of others, but not that one--the good people at Filmark Productions tacked additional ninja scenes onto a film that already featured ninja!

While it's a mystery why this ninja movie needed more ninja, there's no question that the Blue Ninja sequences are integrated a little better into this picture than is often the case in patchwork films like this. For example, Mr. Warren (a character in the new footage) has phone conversations with characters in the old footage, showing that a bit more care was taken in trying to make the pieces fit together here than is often the case. The Blue Ninja material is also hilarious, both unintentionally and intentionally. Absolutely intentional humor revolves around "ninja beans"--magical devices that apparently are only safe when used by ninja--and the general level of stupidity of the average ninja, while there is tons of unintentional humor every time anyone in the Blue Ninja sections opens their mouths and dialogue comes out.

As for the bulk of the film--the original Thai gangster/ninja movie, what it lacks in coherence it makes up for in random violence and mayhem. Fights are constantly breaking out and the audience only knows why about 25% of the time. If these were interesting fights, this might be a good thing, but they are for the most part badly staged, amateurishly filmed, and often marred by bad effects. But one can't help but have a small degree of respect for the attempt to make up for the lack of quality by providing a huge quantity of violence.

If you're looking for one of the better examples of the uniquely 1980s art of Ninja Movie Quilting, "Golden Ninja Invasion" might fit the bill. It might also work nicely for a Bad Movie Night, although the ratio of "just bad" to "so bad its good" is a little on the low side for optimum effectiveness.

The deadliest of blogathons....

Machine gun weilding girl vs bullies and ninjas!

The Machine Girl (2007)
Starring: Minase Yashiro, Asami, Honoka, Kentaro Shimazu, and Nobuhiro Nishihara
Director: Noboru Iguchi
Rating: Seven of Ten Stars

When her brother and his best friend are murdered by the spoiled sons of corrupt cops and the local Ninja and Yakuza clans, a high school girl (Yashiro) goes on a gory, revenge-driven murder-spree. After the Yakuza hacks off her left arm, a creative mechanic/gunsmith replace it with a custom-made machinegun, and the mother the brother's friend (Asami) joins her for a final, bloody showdown against Ninja, blood-crazed agents of the Yakuza, and ultimately the queen of the ninja clan and her bully son (Honoka and Nishihara).

"The Machine Girl" has all the prevelant elements of Japanse action films and cartoons crammed into this movie: cute high school girls kicking butt in their school uniforms, Yakuza, Ninja, a quest for righteous revenge, lots of dramatic posing and speechifying before fights can begin... but then it adds almost unimaginable moral bankruptcy, depravity, dismemberment, murder and enough geysers of blood and gore that it will sate the need of even the most hungry gore hound. And it combines all these elements into the funniest send-up of Jap-sploitation films you'll ever see.

This is an insanely gory film. Think "Dead Alive" except with Ninjas and a Japanese high school girl with a machine gun instead of zombies and a nerd with a lawnmower. That's the level of gore this film displays, as well as the level of cartoony-ness. (In fact, this film goes even further than "Dead Alive", as I don't think anything there really compares to the drill-bra mastectomy near the end of this film.)

Yes, this is an incredibly violent movie, but only the most ill socialized adults will mistake anything that happens in this film for reality. There's one scene where our heroines hammer several nails into the head of a Yakuza agent in order to get him to talk, yet he is up and walking around in the next scene. Ami's arm is deep-fried in tempura batter, yet she suffers no burns. Ami gets her arm chopped off, yet she doesn't bleed to death, despite a complete lack of medical attention. (In this movie, loss of blood and limbs only leads to shock and/or death when it's dramatically appropriate.)

This is definitely not a movie to let the younger kids see. It is also not a movie that you should watch if you're at all squeamish when it comes to movie blood or violence on-screen. You might also stay away from nihilism upsets you. I almost stopped the film before it kicked into high gear--just after Ami is almost killed by a crooked cop and his wife for seeking help with bringing her brother's killer to justice--because I found myself thinking, "Wow. What a twisted world this movie exists in... I'm not in the mood for a film with an outlook THIS horrible."

But then Ami went on her first killing spree and once the severed head bobbed to the top in the stew-pot, I was onboard for the rest of the ride.

There's a line between depressing nihilism and stirring (if gory) black comedy. Once "The Machine Girl" crossed that line, it had me laughing and going "eeew!" at the same time. (The only other moment where director/screenwriter Noboru Iguchi almost lost me again was with the final fate of Ami's best friend from school. It's a shocking scene--so I won't go into details and ruin it in case you decide to see the movie--but he went just a little too far for my sensibilities. I think most viewers will feel that way, too.)

If you're looking for a revenge flick with a serious message about an expanding cycle of violence, social responsibility and man's alienation from what makes him human, you need to look elsewhere. While "The Machine Girl" has that, it sort of turns the message inside out and pokes hilarious fun at those sorts of movies. The "expanding cycle of violence" in this movie leads to the creation of the Yakuza-funded, Power Rangers-like Super Mourner Revenge Squad made up of the parents of the Ninja and bullies that Ami and Miki kill. and Ami's alienation from her kinder self gets her an ally in Miki AND a machine gun that shoots enough rounds in a second to cause a human body to evaporate into a fine red mist.

For what is perhaps the goriest movie of the decade just past, as well as a hilarious send-up of Japanese action flicks, check out "The Machine Girl"! Just don't expect to eat dinner while watching it.

The deadliest of blogathons....

Tough guy vs. bratty kids and deadly Ninja!

The Pacifier (2005)
Starring Vin Diesel and Lauren Graham
Director: Adam Shankman
Rating: Six of Ten Stars

Vin Diesel stars as Shane Wolfe, the toughest SEAL team commander on active duty. After a botched mission to rescue a scientist who has developed some important new military technoiogy, Lt. Wolfe is assigned to protect the now-dead scientist's five young children from enemy agents still seeking to acquire the missing prototype. What follows is an amusing fish-out-of-water story, as the career SpecOps officer learns about family life, and in turn helps the children through their grief and teaches them alot about discipline and personal responsibility.


This type of story has been told in movies and in Afterschool Specials a hundred times, and "The Pacifier" is an average example of it. It avoids a couple of the most typical cliches of this type of comedy, but it dishes up the rest while even working in typical action movie tropes. (Diesel's fight with the ninjas [yes... the film not only has Navy SEALs, it has ninjas!] and the mini-van car-chase sequences are particularly amusing.)

If you're the overly cynical type, or if you suffer from diabetes, you might want to avoid this film--it will send you into insulin shock. I enjoyed its sweetness, even if there are a couple of plot-holes that bothered me.