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Revenge of the Ninja (1983)

Dir: Sam Firstenberg

Cho Osaki (Shô Kosugi) an artist living in Japan who returns home to find that Ninjas have massacred almost all his family. Only his Son Kane (Kane Kosugi, real-life Son of Shô )
and his Mother (Grace Oshita) are left alive.
His American art-broker chum Braden (Arthur Roberts) persuades Cho and his surviving kin to move to America to start a new life and Cho opens a gallery to display his hand-made Japanese dolls and vows to turn his back on the ’Way of the Ninja’ and forbids his Son to fight.

6 years on and things seem to be going alright until Cho’s Son gets in the way of a drug smuggling plot that involves The Mafia, headed by the thuggish Chifano (Mario Gallo) using his father’s dolls to smuggle heroin into the Country!
Cho is soon forced back into action (while we discover the enemy is closer to home than he expects) and once more takes up arms to protect his Son.
But there is more to this dastardly plot than meets the eye, as a mysterious masked and ruthless Ninja is also involved…

 

Ahhhh….The 80’s.
American glossy Trash cinema. Ninja’s. Vigilantes. Martial Arts. Shootouts. Old stars given a career boost. New stars making their breakthrough…‘Cannon Films’!
Yes folks it was the last, really great, moment of unpretentious, exploitative, violent, trashy, cheesy and just plain fun movie production.
The great decade of the 70’s was gone, many of the film makers and distributors had gone with it but with a semi-healthy flea-pit, Drive-In and Grindhouse cinema set-up (and the growing colossus of the VHS breakthrough) a few of the bigger film studios (especially MGM) still kept the production going for pure, popcorn, entertainment.
But it’s a few balls-out distributors willing to finance and handle this less ‘respectable’ product we really have to thank for delivering these movies to us with such aplomb. The greatest, most prolific and still best loved distributor of that time was ‘Cannon Films’, run by Yoram Globus and Menahem Golan (who was also a prolific Director).
‘Cannon’ were doing their thing in the 70’s as well, delivering to a hungry public everything from imported Kung-Fu flicks to home-grown Drive-In faves like “Northville Cemetery Massacre”. But they were just one of many in the 70’s and it was not until the 1980’s, where as mentioned many other distributors/producers had faded away, that ‘Cannon’ really came to the forefront.

Legendary veteran Charles Bronson was bigger than ever thanks to many ‘Cannon’ distributed films, breaking out stars like Michael Dudikoff , Robert Ginty and Steve James would become hugely popular and semi-famous journeymen like Chuck Norris would hit dizzy heights of popularity and fame. All solidified to (seemingly, but sadly not) indestructible standing as VHS took hold.
East and West would be mixed in many of ‘Cannon’s’ flash bang Martial Arts films as Black and White American action actors would rub shoulders with Japanese and Chinese action thesps to deliver a weird mix of ultra violent mayhem, Blacksploitation attitude and over the top Eastern mysticism and legend.

As far as Martial Arts went, the traditional Chinese Kung-Fu action and characters were on their way out with most American (Western) audiences as the 80’s arrived and instead it was the turn of the Japanese to move in with their ancient, deadly assassins…The Ninja!
The extremely unlikely (and rather unconvincing) casting of Euro fave Franco Nero (“Django”) in Menahem Golan’s directed “Enter the Ninja” (1981) would reap huge benefits when it became a popular hit and basically launched a run of mostly American Ninja/Ninja inspired action movies.
One of the best and mostly fondly remembered is “Revenge of the Ninja”.

“Revenge” stars the hugely prolific, and extremely popular at the time, Japanese born Martial Artist Shô Kosugi, who had made a very big impact in the aforementioned “Enter the Ninja”.
Flicking between villains and good guys Shô Kosugi would become the most recognisable non-American in ‘Cannon’s’ movies (as well as having a semi-regular role on TV in the fun but bizarre Lee Van Cleef Martial Arts show, “The Master”) and would churn out many movies with ‘Ninja’ in the title.

Right from the opening Ninja attack on Cho’s family, Director Sam Firstenberg (another stalwart of ‘Cannon’s output) decides to rub our faces in the violence with gloriously gratuitous glee.
Victims are held still in front of the camera as swords are thrust into them, a woman has her throat cut from behind but is turned into camera shot to ensure we get the full effect, a shurikan throwing star embeds itself in a child’s forehead and as he slumps to the ground his face slumps to the side to once again give us a full view.

Not even the unintentionally funny sight of Ninja’s skulking around with skilful stealth in the foliage, and yet sporting bright pink decoration on their black costumes, can take away from the in your face violence.
Some of the violence is less effective though and looks more like play acting and the quickest (and lamest) drowning in cinema history is a definite lowlight. But at least a slow torture by bubbling hot tub sequence adds fun to it’s feeble execution.

The stunt work goes from the rather impressive (an extended, frenzied, delightfully crazy speeding van fight which is a major highlight) to the outright clunky. The lowlight here being a couple of ‘clasping hands to chest and slowly rolling off the roof’ moments when two Ninja’s are shot.
But generally this is solid stunt work and is well used to punctuate the martial Arts sequences (choreographed by Kosugi).

There are flat moments when Firstenberg concentrates on The Mob, with cheesy dialogue being delivered by (at best) average actors. And listening to one Virgil Frye, as the Cop in charge of the case, deliver lines with all the fluidity of a plank of wood gets really trying. Arthur Roberts as the shady Braden has lots of fun though and hams it up nicely.
But there are still many set-pieces that punctuate these sequences, which are so damn trashy, cheesy and fun that the film manages to hold the attention admirably.
Some of these highlights need describing here:

A supremely whacked out moment has to be when Cho’s old Mother suddenly turns into ‘Super Ninja Gran’ and, with the help of an hysterically obvious body double, Grace Oshita proceeds to ‘unleash’ a less than convincing ‘fury’ of kicks, flips and Ninja weaponry. It’s so off the wall you can’t help but love it.

Another is a grand bit of ‘Kid-Fu’ when Cho’s young Son Kane (American born Kane Kosugi would star with his Father in a number of these Ninja movies and go on to appear in “Godzilla: Final Wars” in 2004) is attacked by a group of bullies and proceeds to kick ass big time! The horrible kids are greeted with high kicks, spin kicks and speedy punches as Kane the actor shows great skill for such a young lad, he was only 9!
A later bit of sword training is also a joy to behold as Kane flicks and twirls the blade around with supreme confidence.

A fight in a playground (totally tacked on to make-up for a lull in the action) also reminds us we are in the 80’s as Cho and fellow Martial Arts chum Hatcher (Keith Vitali) take out a group of hysterical looking gang members who look like a ghetto dwelling ‘Village People’ tribute band! One poor, far too camp looking, bad guy even gets half of his gay porn moustache sliced off, resulting in a look of abject horror from him. It’s so bad it’s good and that’s okay with me.

The most unusual moment though is when leggy, blonde babe Cathy (Ashley Ferrare) appears in a tiny red robe for a ’work out’ with Cho (“Well, if you want to work out…you forgot your pants” announces the sadly confused Ninja) and suddenly indulges in a spot of Martial Arts slap down action with Cho, ensuring that her short robe rides up often enough for us to discover that she does indeed have no pants on and is also natural blonde.
But Cho is made of stronger stuff and such crude (and violent!) come-ons won’t get him unsheathing his weapon again anytime soon! No sir!
It’s a totally unexpected and gratuitous (though actually brief) bit of nudity and when put with the later sight of a pair of soapy breasts and a wet t-shirt, ensures that the movie has some flesh added to the blood to up the entertainment value.

In general the fight scenes suffer from the fact that many of Kosugi’s opponents are obviously in-experienced in Martial Arts action. But at least the Henchman can be entertaining, with a rather dubious looking, big knife sporting, Indian (or Native American for the PC crowd) appearing from nowhere during the aforementioned van fight and the late Professor Toru Tanaka (“Missing in Action 2”, “An Eye for an Eye”) as an unfortunately horny Sumo Mafia thug.
Luckily though the general violence on show in the fights, as well as many bloody (sometimes gory) flourishes, mean that they always remain entertaining if never really that impressive.
Kosugi himself shows some fine moves and a sense of well honed skill and his opening fight with the murderous Ninja’s contains some wonderfully theatrical moments of violence, like the moment when Cho sticks his sword in the chest of one Ninja, as a convenient place to leave it while fending off an attack from another Ninja, before retrieving it from the chest of the unfortunate guy and finishing off both of them with some deft strokes of his blade
But he is generally subdued in the ’Ninja action’ during a lot of the running time and it’s left up to the ‘Bad’ Ninja to have fun with neck breaking, swords and throwing stars.

Thankfully though the final 25 minutes sees Shô (after some essential spiritual workouts and application of rather camp looking eyeliner) get into his groove and go off on some Ninja shenanigans of his own, as he carries out his bone breaking, weapon wielding, blood spurting, task.

Another facet of the film is it’s attitude to the Ninja’s weapons and gadgets, which it treats with an almost fetish-like reverence and general fan boy enthusiasm. Something that often caused these types of movies much trouble with UK censors as they were seen as far too influential on impressionable young boys and more often than not were crudely removed from most scenes.

Thankfully the recent MGM R1 DVD is fully uncut in both the blood and the weapon department, as swords cut off hands and slice through bodies, throwing stars bury themselves in heads and eyes (a wonderfully gory bit of FX), smoke bombs blind and metal chains wrap and bash.

Spiky metal projectiles get spat into unsuspecting faces, knives get thrown into limbs, arrows get thrust into skulls and nunchukas thump down on silly a bad guys who get distracted when a child shouts “look! There’s Superman” (I kid you not!)

It all ends in a wonderfully silly rooftop fight as the two Ninja’s square off (with ‘Bad Ninja’ employing some ‘where the hell did he get that from’ tricks and gadgets that push any remaining realism right out of the proverbial window) which sees Cho going through lots of pain before a stupendously bloody denouement that will bring a smile to the lips of any Trash movie fan.

A cheesy, very 80’s synth based score follows the action and adds to the delightfully dated air of the film and generally (a few flat moments aside) “Revenge of the Ninja” still holds up as both a fun way to re-live old filmic memories and as a solid and bloody bit of genuine, Ninja based, action movie making.