Altogether gorier, and featuring a masked killer who takes out his opponents one by one, Revenge of the Ninja appropriates part of its form from the then-voguish slasher (“What is this, Halloween?”, a character is heard to ask), and part from the gangster flick. Indeed, genre ran even freer in the sequels. Who knows where the flashbacks to Cole’s Angolan Bush War experience fit into all this – but the anything-goes approach to genre is key to the whole trilogy’s charm.
Christopher George makes for a hilariously camp villain, dedicating his free time to choreographing female synchronised swimmers in his office swimming pool. Yet as recently certified ninja Cole (played improbably by the original Django, Franco Nero) intervenes to defend an impotent rancher and his wife against a ruthless land-grabber, Enter the Ninja proves to be as much oater as assassin’s actioner. The very title of Enter the Ninja riffs on/rips off the East-West martial arts clash of Enter the Dragon, and the opening credits boast a fetishisation of Japanese weapons and techniques that would pervade the trilogy. Though the groundwork was laid by 1980’s The Octagon, it was these three films that began a veritable explosion of ninja presence in mainstream action flicks.
The so-called Ninja Trilogy comprises Menahem Golan’s Enter the Ninja from 1981, and Sam Firstenberg’s sequels in-name-only, Revenge of the Ninja (1983) and Ninja III: The Domination (1984), all unified by the appearance of actor and real-life practitioner of ninjutsu Sho Kosugi (playing a different character in each title), and all rightly celebrated as showcases for the most egregious, ’80s-inflected cash-in excesses of Golan and Globus’ Cannon Films. Still, exploring is always best done at the outer edges – and so this column will be dedicated to direct-to-video dross, disinterred B pictures and the odd (and we mean odd) films orphaned at the festival fringes. Co-starring Susan George (Sudden Terror) and Christopher George (Day of the Animals).Psychotronic cinema is a hard and loose category of termite art which, whether because too shamelessly genre-bound or just too wacky-backy niche, occupies the critical margins. The two masters make use of all the exotic weaponry at their disposle, making this one of the most sensational battle-to-the-death sequences ever filmed! Hollywood legend Menahem Golan (The Delta Force) directed this fast-paced, high quality, tough-as-nails martial arts film with style and poise. Coming to the aid of his friends against some land grabbing oil barons, he easily takes on all opponents until a Ninja assassin Hasegawa (Sho Kosugi, Revenge of the Ninja) is brought into the fray. Set in Japan and the Philippines, the film tells the story of Cole (Franco Nero, The Mercenary) a westerner who's been inducted into the secret fighting rituals of the Ninja. The Ninja is the highest honor given to the dedicated followers of Ninjutsu, the deadliest of all martial arts Enter the Ninja explores the absorbing detail the Ninja's lethal, little-known the Art of Invisibility which includes the use of hypnotism, explosives, and super-human acrobatic fighting skills.