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| From http://faf-media.findanyfilm.com/film_images/L_Synd4017-379635.Jpg |
Dir. Godfrey Ho
Hong Kong
Film #17 of The ‘Worst’ of Cinema
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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"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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