Ninja Trilogy series

(On Cable TV, June 2021) The Cannon Group’s Ninja Trilogy has never been about mature, respectable realism, but even by the wild standards of the series, Ninja III: The Domination is particularly ludicrous. Fully assuming the mystical portrayal of the ninja, this third instalment has a body-hopping ninja spirit taking over our heroine, wild action sequences (including the opening one, in which a ninja takes down a helicopter from a nearby palm tree) and impossible action beats (such as drilling down into the ground so hard as to, um, create a canyon?) Then there’s the production date of the film and all it carries with it — it goes without saying that our heroine is not only a telephone linewoman, but also an aerobics instructor, giving the film a chance for some leotard-driven leering. I’ll give it something: it’s hard to stop watching when you’re constantly wondering what crazy thing the film is going to pull out of its hat. But as far as narrative continuity, character development or even consistent tone is concerned, this is really not the best choice. “Only a ninja can destroy a ninja” is the guiding principle of the plotting in the film’s second half, and you get what you get from that. Definitely funny despite not being made as a comedy, Ninja III: The Domination does conclude Cannon’s Ninja Trilogy on a dubious high point — but there’s a limit to the appreciation that such a film can generate, and a late-night cult classic is really not the same thing as a real classic, or even a solid film that avoids derision.

(On Cable TV, May 2021) If you want to track down where the popularity of ninjas comes from, maybe you can follow the trail to a B-movie ninja craze in the 1980s, and you can probably pin down the source of that craze to 1981’s Enter the Ninja, a cheap Golan-Globus action movie that took full advantage of accommodations by the movie-friendly Marcos regime to film in the Philippines. The plot is a thin affair, with a ninja-trained American having to defend a friend’s farm from attackers. But that story is merely meant to justify the fight sequences, so as long as good guys and bad guys are scheduled to be at the same place and the same time, then the screenwriters can just call it a day. Unfortunately, we’re not talking Hong Kong-grade martial arts here — this is all fairly basic material, choreographed without much cinematic flair or storytelling sense. Enter the Ninja also has an unpolished first movie’s disadvantage, in that the filmmakers didn’t quite know what worked and what didn’t, and so limp along with substandard fight scenes when compared to later, more self-conscious works. It’s watchable only by genre fans that have an interest in historical work. What’s undeniable is the commercial success of the film — it directly spawned a trilogy of ever-wilder Ninja movies, as well as a few follow-ups (like the very similar American Ninja) and scores of imitators sensing that there was something to do with martial arts in a B-movie context. Not very many classics came out of that subgenre (it’s worth noting that the boom in prestige martial arts films in 2000s Hollywood cinema was far more influenced by 1990s Hong Kong action movies than 1980s low-end Hollywood) but it did create a few enjoyable B-movies, so that’s something.