Thursday 17 January 2013

The ‘Dull’ of Cinema [The Ultimate Ninja (1986)]

From http://faf-media.findanyfilm.com/film_images/L_Synd4017-379635.Jpg


Dir. Godfrey Ho
Hong Kong
Film #17 of The ‘Worst’ of Cinema

From http://www.fareastfilms.com/cmsAdmin/uploads/ultimate_ninja3.jpg

I may have hinted at this with my first review of a Godfrey Ho ninja film for this season, Ninja Terminator (1985), but his and his producer Joseph Lai’s concept of taking unreleased or unfinished films made by other people and splicing into them scenes of Westerners in cheap ninja costumes could have mixed results. While able to create films like Ninja Terminator, it could also lead to bad films like The Ultimate Ninja. The film consists of two parts that tentatively connect together. The first is a good red ninja, who we know is a ninja because the word ‘Ninja’ is on his headband, trying to get a ninja statue, of British seaside store quality in its tackiness, back from evil black ninjas. We know they’re evil because they’ve got skulls on their headbands, eliciting from my mind a moment where one of them, like in a sketch by David Mitchell and Robert Webb, looks at his headband and asking another “Hans... are we the baddies?” The second storyline, the original film redubbed into English and edited, is about a gang leader who takes over a rural town, and twenty years later, has his gang of thuggish debt collectors undermined and beaten up by an increasing amount of people who either want revenge or are fighting for the good guys.

From http://www.fareastfilms.com/cmsAdmin/uploads/ultimate_ninja5.jpg

The immediate problem with The Ultimate Ninja is that Ho attempted to make a new film with the material he had but ended up making something that doesn’t go anywhere. The original footage has far too many characters, especially on the hero’s side, which could have easily turned into a twisting of Seven Samurai (1954) or a Western with a team of heroes, but merely becomes a jumble of random scenes. Certain individuals would look identical to each other if it wasn’t for their hairstyles, awkward choice of English dubbing, and especially with one character with iron head and a sleeveless pink vest, their fashion sense. It isn’t an interesting film at all, the problem with Ho’s idea of making cut-and-paste ninja films with dull material as well as that which was entertaining, with rudimentary martial arts sequences and a blandness to its look and tone. The ninja footage doesn’t help either, with only one scene connecting the two aspects together, and not really working either by itself. There’s amusement to be had with a moustached ninja meditating on a picnic bench, but like the original footage the ninjas are interchangeable to each other and don’t get to do what Richard Harrison and ninja in other films did. They got to have motorbike sword fights, fight in car parks and suburban homes, throw smoke bombs and shoot flames from their sword handles, and do gratuitous back flips; the ninja in this are just white foreigners in low cost ninja costumes playing hide-and-seek in the bushes of what appears to be a park.

From http://www.sogoodreviews.com/reviews/tun.jpg

There are much better or at least far more ridiculous ninja films in Ho’s back catalogue. For a film called The Ultimate Ninja, the content barely stands by itself let alone live up to the title. The film is tedious. The amusement is occasionally there – including a training sequence which apparently couldn’t afford to get a trampoline, which even Turkish Star Wars (1982) was wise to have, and uses an obvious low camera to show a giant leap – but most of The Ultimate Ninja is a waste of time to view. Start with Ninja Terminator and go view other Ho/Lai collaborations instead, and only view this if you’re part of a secret, die hard cult of Godfrey Ho completists. 

"Have you noticed that our headbands actually have little pictures of skulls on them?"
From http://s3.amazonaws.com/auteurs_production/images/film/the-ultimate-ninja/w448/the-ultimate-ninja.jpg?1317228346

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