Sorry I’ve been away for a while – just started a new job and the cluing-up of the old and the beginning of the new has been more than a little Chaotic. But I threw caution to the winds last night and got together with the illustrious members of the Bad Movie Bunch, one of whom had just taken delivery of a brand-new Big-ass Flat Screen TV.
(Bwah hah hah hah hah)
To really put this this piece of technological whizz-bang through its paces required something special; something so Truly Awful that its very pixels would shiver in disbelief and horror as they cringingly reorganised themselves into uncomfortable positions. It couldn’t be just an ordinary bad movie; it had to be a putrescent specimen of a ineffable genre.
What to choose? Even with those criteria, the field is very large. Then it hit me. It couldn’t be anything else.
Walk back with me for a time, if you please, slightly more than two decades ago. Michael Jackson is at the top of his stride. Madonna is little more than a Material Girl. No one’s even heard of Britney Spears (whew). That’s right. It’s the 1980s.
In a decade that had leg warmers and Valley Girls, Miami Vice and Bruce Willis as a pop star, one burst of cinematic endeavour stands out as a brief glorious blaze, a screaming paean to all that is kitschy, cheesy, shallow and formulaic in film.
Ladies and gentlemen, I give you. . . . . the ninja movie.
Bursting into the mainstream Hollywood scene with Enter the Ninja (1981), the ninja craze lasted only a few years, but in that short span, managed to create a body of work that is admired, parodied, panned and guiltily celebrated the world over.
It’s perfect material for us. We can even celebrate it without feeling guilty.
Right in the middle of the ninja movie era came Nine Deaths of the Ninja (1985), our selection for this outing. Basically, a trio of crack(ed) commandos must foil the Evil Guy, who’s hijacked a busload of important Americans.
What’s awful about all this? Where to begin? Let’s start with Our Heroes.
Leading the intrepid threesome is none other than Sho Kosugi, the star of just about every ninja film made. While he’s a talented on-screen martial artist, this is NOT one of his better endeavours. He’s much better as a grimly silent, noble man who, reticent about his ninja past, unleashes his skills only at need and then retires to the shadows once more. . .
Oh dang. I just spoiled the plot of every martial arts film ever made. Sorry.
Then there’s the Stallone/Norris/Olivier clone, an all-American testosterone machine with a great big. . . . . machine gun. He also tramps through the jungle with a full backpack of beer. Don’t we all?
Rounding out the team is a buxom blonde woman who doesn’t really do much except show up in every scene demonstrating all the different ways one can jazz up those boring green fatigues with snappy accessories. Like a cream-coloured Stetson. With a pink bandanna. No I’m not kidding. I wish I was.
Sorry about the Olivier reference back there. Didn’t really mean it.
Then there’s the Villians. These guys are better than the Heroes. Meet Alby the Cruel, a wheelchair-bound homosexual paranoid-delusional drug-dealing neo-Nazi. If that’s not a combination guaranteed to offend, I don’t know what is. His accent waivers between fake German, fake Italian, and probably genuine Brooklyn, although it’s hard to say.
His partner in ickiness is Rahji, an almost invincible terrorist who, as far as I can recall, as no lines except a manic chuckle, repeated every three-point-two minutes, for effect. He’s almost invincible because Sho Kosugi’s in this movie, remember?
Their female partner has the best name in the whole film. You thought Alby the Cruel was good? Meet Colonel Honey Hump. She is to gay women what Alby is to gay men, complete with with scary-ass eyeshadow, an 80s-hairspray-filled-out-to-here ‘do and a delightfully unhinged laugh. She commands a trio of Jungle Jane Sisters in Arms, whose talents not only include high-velocity weaponry, but also dancing the polka. Colonel Hump’s dedication to her gender slips a little at one point, for while in one scene she’s exhorting a poor hostage “to see what a woman’s touch can do for you”, a bit further on, she promising one of the Janes to the man who fights hardest against the evil tyrannical government forces. Hmm.
There are several high points in this movie, but three in particular stick out. The first is the Midget Fight Scene at the Museum of Asian Culture. No, I`m not joking. You can`t make stuff like this up. Sho, staking out some Bad Guys, is set upon by four unshaven midgets, all in Blues Brothers sunglasses and hats. And just as if to prove that there is no depth of bad taste to which this film will not sink, there’s midget tossing.
The opening credits are (un)worthy of note as well. It’s sort of a David Bowie video meets James-Bond-title- sequence-on-acid, featuring a barechested Sho waving his ninja sword around whilst the Hotlegs Dancers (yes that’s really their name, check the end credits) cavort, spin and pirouette, burdened by some truly impressive eyeshadow. The sad part is that about half-way through the song, Sho runs out of maneuvers and starts his routine all over again. Sigh.
The award for Most Inexplicable Scene goes to Madam Woo-wei’s Floating Palace, where Rahji goes for relaxation after he’s been sprung from jail. If he’s gay, why go to a female-filled brothel-on-a-barge? If you’re two Heroes flying a helicopter right over the barge, why can you land it in a jungle(!), swim out to the barge and climb on undetected? Why, when you’ve been discoverd and dive overboard, will ripping the bikini top off (Gratuitious Nudity Shot!) one of your deadly scuba-wearing, spear-gun-wielding prostitute-cum-assassin make her retreat in helpless confusion and apparent embarrassment? Why? Why?
This scene, however has one redeeming feature. Sho Kosugi, ninja, master of a thousand martial arts, takes down a bad guy with nothing less than the Vulcan Neck Pinch. . He even arches an ironic eyebrow. It’s sheer poetry
Then there’s the Gratuitous Ninja. Our Heroes are sneaking along to the bad guys’ lair, when all of a sudden a whole truckload of ninja jump out to get slaughtered. We’ve never seen them before. We don’t know why they’re here, except perhaps that the director realised that the movie had ninja in the title, but just about nowhere else.
Finally, the Award for Most Unpredictable Death goes to Alby the Cruel, who, fleeing in his motorised wheelchair from Mr. Kosugi, bursts out of the jungle onto a wide grassy field. Gunning his engine, he races across the greensward, not realising that Sho has attached a cable to the back of his chair. It pulls taut. He’s catapulted forward. Lying helplessly on the ground, he looks up in terror at his onrushing doom.
And is run over by an entire team of polo players.
The sound of one hand clapping....