Ninja Terminator

 Godfrey Ho's name is synonymous with legendary terrible movies. The guy was so prolific, and his output so truly awful that his name is one of the few I remember from my martial-arts watching era as a kid; I didn't recognize Chang Cheh by name then, nor Ching Siu-Tung - but whenever uncle Godfrey's name popped up at the beginning of a movie, there would be a collective groan.

 The insanely prolific writer/director/producer started his career at the Shaw Brothers, but he soon branched out and formed a company with the like-minded Joseph Lai called IFD. There their MO would be to get the rights for some other Asian movie, cut it into pieces and shoot some supplementary footage with a stable of slumming western actors*; They'd then splice everything and re-dub it into a poorly stitched Frankenstein of old and new material which they call some random combination of buzzwords in a bid to win over the western markets. And hey, it worked; I rented several of their movies back in the 90s.

 Ninja Terminator follows this process to the letter. The 1984 South Korean film The Uninvited Guest Of The Star Ferry would provide the source material, and Ho would then append additional footage of grown men skulking around in pijamas. The result is an astoundingly bizarre fever dream, a perfect storm of incompetence and chutzpah. If the concept of 'so bad it's... still bad, but also funny as hell' appeals to you at all, this is essential viewing.

 Just how bad is it? Well, to be perfectly honest the Korean half of the equation is not bad at all. Cheesy as all hell, and probably pretty dumb even before Ho finger-painted his own plot all over it with his feces, but it looks like it was originally a decently fun action flick. It stars Jaguar Wong (Jack Lang), a cocky, assholish cop who goes up against a crime syndicate led by a heroin dealer in a beyond ridiculous He-Man wig (Hwang Jang-lee).

 The plot has been completely rewritten and re-cut to incorporate Ho's ninja shenanigans, but the fights are both frequent and very good, with fairly complex choreographies that succeed in giving Jaguar a recognizable personality. They don't quite stack up with what the folks over at Hong Kong were doing in that same time frame, but it's a honorable effort, and Lang has a great screen presence even if his character is an unlikeable dick.

 So half of the movie is a perfectly enjoyable police actioner. And then there's Ho's contribution: an incompetent, obviously tacked-on ninja yarn that frequently had me in stitches.

 The 'story' concerns an evil ninja empire that has finally reunited the three parts of a statuette that grants invulnerability. Concerned that it will be used for evil, three of the ninjas (Richard Harrison, Jonathan Watts and a third one that I think is never shown) defect and steal parts of the statue.

 The evil ninja master sends a red ninja (the ubiquitous Phillip Ko) to try and retrieve the statue pieces. He kills off the anonymous third ninja, and in response one of the good ninjas - named, I shit you not, Ninja Master Harry - calls Jaguar Wong from the other movie to get him to protect his dead comrade's sister.

 To give him a bit more gravitas, all of Ninja Master Harry's calls are placed from a Garfield phone. This... fucking... movie.

 So there's your link; In the Ninja Terminator version, Jaguar Wong is not a cop trying to stop a heroin smuggling syndicate while trying to protect an old flame, he's doing the bidding of a secretive cabal of ninjas who spend their free time bowing down to a chintzy cheap prop like an otaku venerating a bust of his favorite anime waifu.

 All the Ninja hijinks are categorized by wall-to-wall incompetence, terrible acting, stilted action, gratuitous cartwheeling, incoherent plotting and all sorts of ludicrous, hilarious touches. Here's a short, non-comprehensive list to give you a taste of the sort of batshit craziness you can expect:

- Ninja Master Harry's wife gets attacked by crabs while trying to cook them, and his husband protects her by throwing a kunai at one of them. Cue a shot of a poor crab walking around with a blade stuck in its back. For added drama, this scene has multiple dramatic zooms.

- Ninja Master Harry demonstrates his prowess with a katana by slicing a watermelon. It's such a thrilling sequence that another ninja master repeats it later (he eats the watermelon slice with a knife and fork; Sadly, he does it out of costume).

- The Evil Ninja Empire delivers ultimatums by VHS tapes borne by... a tiny, dime-store wind up robot toy. The robot (like the Garfield phone) has a surprising amount of screen time.

- Here's a short image sequence of a ninja master receiving an ultimatum from the bad guys. Imagine it set to the most overblown music possible, complete with sci-fi bleep bloop sounds:

 And there is so much more. Right up to a hilarious final shot, Ninja Terminator is a gold mine for this sort of shit. I have no idea if anyone involved possessed any self-awareness whatsoever; Is the Garfield phone Ninja Master Harry uses to communicate with the other movie a self-consciously ridiculous touch, or did they think that it would go down well with American audiences? I have no idea, and I don't care. Death of the author and all that - the only thing that matters is that it is hilarious. Good on them if they were laughing while making it, but given how shoddy this whole endeavour is it's hard to give anyone involved any credit.

 The links between the two movies-within-the-movie are tenuous, but sometimes pretty involved; I have to give Ho credit for that one scene where Ninja Master Harry and his wife watch part of Jaguar's story on a (robot-delivered!) VHS tape. The way Ho's script ties itself into knots to link both stories together just adds to the overwhelming schadenfreude.

 It's so bad it's glorious, and if you're in any way inclined to enjoy this sort of shit it is a fucking delight. The whole thing is available on youtube and, to be honest, given the way Ho exploited his stars and source material, pirating this is probably the best way to watch it. Gather a group of friends, maybe some alcohol and/or chemical assistance, and your night is sorted.

 

 *: This might sound familiar from several American re-releases of Godzilla movies; Corman's AIP indulged in this sort of thing too.