Ninja Terminator (1985)

Ninja Terminator concerns three rogue ninjas who have defected from the Ninja Empire for various reasons. Each has stolen a piece of the Golden Ninja Warrior- a relic which, when combined, allows one to summon the Supreme Ninja Spirit through practicing the Supreme Ninja Technique before it. Of course the Ninja Empire will have nothing to do with that so they try to kill these guys for roughly 90 minutes.

It only takes a few minutes to kill the first rogue ninja, the actual Japanese one. He is killed mid-Supreme Ninja Technique and his piece of the Golden Ninja Warrior is recovered. As for the other two, both of whom are white in the best tradition of 1980s ninja movies, one guy is evil I think and the other stole the relic piece because the, "NINJER EMPIRE IS EVIL!" He's the guy with the mustache that looks sort of like Chuck Norris, I guess.

I suspect that two movies were smooshed together because while the Ninja Empire is busy sending toy robot messengers to deliver threatening demands to the rogue ninjas , there's this guy named Jaguar Wong basically walking around getting into fights for no reason. At one point he is looking for a particular restaurant and so he asks three dudes playing catch but is told that, "you're lookin' in the wrong place.... around here... there ain't no restaurants buddy!"

This is the kind of 80s action film where every character is basically trying to out-macho each other. It's not as balls-focused as the more macho Italian movies from the 70s and 80s but Ninja Terminator is pretty damned macho. This is the kind of movie where the following conversation can take place:

"I heard Tomashi's brother was killed earlier this morning."
"Oh, that's too bad."
"Well, ciao!"

So a lot of the movie is unfortunately boring kicky fights. I'd say for every awesome ninja scene you probably get 2.5 scenes of Jaguar kicking people over and over. For a movie called "Ninja Terminator" there is just not enough ninja terminator in this! I wanted more ninjas flipping for no reason and disappearing and climbing stuff. More of the toy robot messenger, even though it does show up twice, once interrupting a perfectly fine watermelon eating session! More Supreme Ninja Techniques and maybe even a second Golden Ninja Warrior for everyone to fight over! But less kicky scenes, and definitely less really gross sex scenes between the mustached Chinese guy and his girlfriend.

The fighting and such is pretty decent for a 1980s ninja movie and the acting is thankfully both over the top and strangely laid back. The version of this movie I watched was dubbed fantastically in English and I recommend seeing it this way. Otherwise you would miss the fascinating droning speech one lady gives to her friend about how swimsuits are useful for not only swimming but also aerobics!

Okay, this review is beginning to turn into one of those "list everything that you loved in this movie scene-by-scene" reviews so I need to stop. You can basically watch this movie for free online, so if you have 90 minutes and appreciate the 80s ninja sensation, please give this movie a watch!

Watch Ninja Terminator Now!

As for me, I don't want to go so far as to say that this movie changed my life, but I will definitely think twice about asking for directions to restaurants in the future.