Ninja... the very word strikes fear in the heart of a person in a movie about ninjas, when it's that same person who the ninjas are trying to get. And yet it's a source of joy for a person watching a movie about ninjas, at home or in a movie theatre, or at a friend's house, when the person is me, and the movie is, if not good, than at least fun, or there are some cool parts.

I watched a bunch of ninja movies in the past year, partly for a project that I wanted to do, and partly because I felt drawn to it mysteriously (an urge I respect). And as a Gen X / Millenial cusp, ninja stuff is in my cultural programming. So there's a comfort food thing there too. My "Rosebud" is a smooth silvery weatherworn stick that looked enough like a katana sword, which I can still visualize *perfectly* 40 years later.

Anyway the ninja stuff is still marinating. The specific project idea I had is slipping away like a dream in the morning light, which is honestly appropriate-- some projects and some dreams are just like, a bunch of stuff, and you can't get too hung up on the pursuit of every single one. Nonetheless there's something there-- I'm still really enjoying thinking about ninjitsu and "the people of the garden", and this is still an active space for me. I'm resisting conclusions but thoughts are starting to take shape. Anyway I thought for this week I'd just blast out some movie reviews. If you have a favorite ninja movie PLEASE leave me a comment below!!! Not just martial arts but like, ninjas. You know what a ninja is. I'm especially looking for ones where they use less-common historical weapons and/or do mystical shit. Goofy stuff is OK too. I didn't mention Lone Wolf and Cub or the Ninja Turtles here, but yeah, obviously I'm into that shit. I liked the last 2 TMNT movies.

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Ninja, Shadow of a Tear (2013)

There is a truly exceptional clarity to every shot and move in this movie, it's kind of incredible. There's no camera shaking or lightning-fast edits-- everyone on the team respects the actors' abilities and the choreographer's intent, and it pays off. Every single detail is so crispy, I loved it. There's 2 good "getting suited up" montages, one where he finds the pajamas buried in the jungle, one he does the ninja version of shopping for bomb ingredients at the supermarket, but instead of getting fertilizer and milk or whatever he's buying fish liver and marionettes and making poison darts. The fighting is a good mix of showdowns in full regalia and bar fights with improvised weapons. He does the ninja hand thing.

This is the sequel to Ninja (2009), and I chose to watch the sequel first because I felt like that's the kind of movie this is-- your friend rented it and you're like "what happened in the first one" and they go "this guy became a ninja". "Wait, who are these guys?" "bad guys". No problemo. Not "a great movie" or even "nuts" but if this is your favorite action movie I respect that.

what is our code?
TO HAVE NO CODE
what is our way
EVERY WAY
what is our goal
TO THRIVE IN THE SHADOWS AS OUR ENEMIES PERISH IN THE SUNLIGHT

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Ninja Assassin (2009)

Pretty good ninja movie that I watched for a project-- I'm looking for movies where they use the kusurigami, a ninja weapon that's like a sickle on a chain. That search led me here but what he actually uses is more like a knife on a chain (Kyoketsu-shoge). Starts off pretty gory and crazy but unfortunately doesn't keep that energy up-- for the first 10 minutes people are getting chopped actually in half, but then the CGI budget runs out and for the rest of the movie people are mostly just getting sliced or stabbed. The main guy has a weird vibe and I learned later it's because he was already a popstar, in the KPop domain. He did an OK job but it was kind of like every shot was just him posing for the poster. Nonetheless I thought this was fun. With Naomie Harris from the most recent James Bond movies, and Sho Kosugi, the ninja from Enter The Ninja (1981). Small role for Han from Fast and Furious. I think ninja movies sort themselves into ones where they do the hand thing (the Nine Hand Seals), and ones where they don't. This one does.

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Heroes of the East (1978)

Gordon Liu is like a rich little pretty boy who marries a Japanese woman and tries to shame her into not practicing her native karate. She ankles back to the land of the rising sun, and then he writes her a letter which is misconstrued. Next thing you know he has put his own Chinese boxing skills up against some of the deadliest fighters of Japan! YIKES! He holds his own against the sword guy, the judo guy, the nunchucks guy and the sai guy, all of whom are clear and distinct characters from the very start, with different builds, faces, and ways of moving and speaking. Compare with today's action movies where it's just Big Baldies by the busfull and they're all trading haymakers. Well anyway these fights are all super-fun and everyone's going all out, with an absolute bombast of techniques. But then it's the ninja's turn and it's really not fair, I really think that shouldn't count. Imagine a tiddlywinks contest that's over the night before the match because one guy poisoned the other, or led him unawares into a booby-trapped corn field. Few would call that sporting. Aaaaaaaaanyway it was a great fight in a movie chock full of great fights, in which no one dies. How about that! LOTS of great lightning-fast hand-to-hand combat, really a thrill to watch, and no one dies. Everyone lives happily ever after!

Shoutout to Creature for the recommendation!

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Revenge of the Ninja (1983)

IT TAKES A NINJA TO KILL A NINJA

A sequel of sorts to Enter The Ninja (1981), in that audiences wanted to see more of Sho Kosugi, and in this one he's got his well-deserved top billing. Well it's great. Swords, throwing stars, smoke bombs, spikey things, tiger claws, masks, zip lines, nunchucks, robot arm, mob bosses who say "capiche", weird looking street toughs, it's great. With Sho Kosugi's real life son Kane, Punky Brewster's real life dad, and a far too small role for Professor Toru Tanaka.

Probably going to rewatch this when I do my "robot arm" round-up later.

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Ninja (2009)

This was cool, and I liked it, but at one point there's an invoice of the treasure they're protecting and I freeze-framed it and the total comes to $350,000. And it isn't even magical???? That's a lot of clams but compared to the value of a human life it's hayseed. I'd be like bro, take it. It's just stuff. Then they send it to America for safe keeping but it's kept so unsafe and no one seems to care? The good guys have to break back in to the vault to get it out later and the security is so trivial, there's just 3 guys pulling minimum wage, and they're all reading magazines AND watching TV! If that was me up there obviously I'd do the best I could but afterwards I'd write a VERY stern letter to the dojo management.

Well anyway I had fun. Mostly sword stuff and kicking, some throwing stars, and brief moments with nunchucks and kusurigama. He does the hand thing. At one point a lady gets tied up elaborately, which is a traditional aspect of ninjitsu that I'm surprised we don't see more of in these movies. Probably if you're into rope stuff in a fetish way you have a lot of material to peruse and you know the best searchterms, you're not sourcing it from clips of action movies like the quicksand fetishists. Still it was a little shocking to see, and the sound design for this part was extravagant. The sequel, Ninja: Shadow of a Tear (2013), is better.

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Enter the Ninja (1981)

I think part of the appeal of the ninja to me is that they're faceless, anonymous, and uncountable, like a horde of skeletons. So any movie that's about ninjas is kind of false I think, because it's invariably about just one ninja. But what are you gonna do, not watch a movie about ninjas?? Not me. Not me not doing that. I mean me yes doing the opposite of not doing it. ?? I mean I'm cool. In this one the main ninja is Franco Nero, I thought he did a good job but every time he was masked up, wow, he really put 110% fury into his eyes and eyebrows, the only part of his face you could see. He was an overfilled tea kettle spitting boiling water out the spout. Sho Kosugi was the breakout star here, he was acting alone too but his story was like "we should get a ninja to fight this other ninja" "ok, here's one". He had his own personal ego narrative but he was closer to this idea of being a cloud of particles of sinister dexterity.

Nero was married (twice) to Vanessa Redgrave, but this movie's complete life cycle was in the long years when they were apart. I wonder if she saw this when it came out, with her then-partner Timothy Dalton... I picture her with a laugh and a sigh saying "oh Franco" softly while Timothy quietly bites his nails. She looks over at her handsome suitor and he quickly flips a superior smile, but when she turns back to the screen he resumes fidgeting in his tuxedo.

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Ninja Terminator (1985)

Honestly I found this pretty inspiring.

wikipedia:

Godfrey Ho frequently created movies by filming scenes that he then added to pre-existing films, re-cutting it together and dubbing over the actors with his own dialogue in order to create a new story. Similarly, ninja Terminator reuses more than 50 percent of its footage from the South Korean film The Uninvited Guest Of The Star Ferry. IFD owned the international sales rights for the film and decided to insert Caucasian actors into the film in the hopes it would then do better overseas. Ho did this and added ninjas to the storyline, as he usually did

Ho had the insight to realize that if you're dubbing an actor's lines into another language then you might as well give them new dialogue, and if you go that far, you might as well free the clip from meaning altogether and use it as raw material, as a mineral, in new productions. His other great realization is that if you're making an action movie and you make the main guy a ninja, you can conserve your star power by only using the actor for the mask off segments, and close-ups. With mask on it can and should be a stuntman. And the ninja stuff you can film in bulk. A couple days filming ninjas, a couple days filming faces, 2 weeks in the editing room, 6 movies. Release one a week while you work on the next batch.

Handsome lead Caucasian Richard Harrison went to Hong Kong to film what was supposed to be a small number of ninja movies and wound up inadvertantly starring in at least 24 of them. Like how the Winston Brothers drummer "played on" tens of thousands of records (via the collosally sampled "Amen" break). FWIW Harrison hated it, he said it ruined his career. The Amen drummer died poor and destitute and totally unaware of his impact, but at least he didn't lose anything.

Anyway this was fun to watch, and honestly I thought it worked pretty good. When I imagine myself in the primary audience for this, a loud theatre filled with screaming children and drunk losers on a Saturday afternoon, I can see that this is not only adequate fare but fun, wild, cool action, a little bit of kissy kissy, a lot of hi-ya. Totally cool. Cool (and absolutely stolen) soundtrack. Me and my friends afterwards fighting over who's going to get the new nickname "Tiger", and maybe reassessing wigs as a viable part of an outfit. As an adult watching this in the 21st century, zoning out on a couch, this gave me a lot to think about, though to be completely honest I was like "wait who is this guy" a lot of the time. Bottom line, I had fun.

As we enter a new era of AI movies shemping smoothed-out actors infinitely I must note that I find automated versions of this material/mineral sampling idea pathetic, unwatchable, a crisis, an unpardonable sin against the spirit. But in the elbow grease era, and as an anomaly, and as, ultimately, a failure, with rough visible edges, there's something special here. Something new is being created.

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Duel to the Death (1983)

★★★★★

ANOTHER really good Chinese vs Japanese martial arts duel movie with ninjas, and this one is maybe the best, it's so sick. They DON'T do the ninja hand mudra but they DO slide a single drop of poison down a thread. They DON'T have nunchucks but they DO swarm in to the battlefield silently on huge kites (!?!?!?). All the ninjas in this movie are perfect, they're quiet, sudden, flip in flip out, you don't know how many of them they are, and their collective bag of tricks is seemingly inexhaustible. In this one both the honorable Chinese fighter and the honorable Japanese fighter are like "hmm... kind of... dishonorable???" about the ninjas, which appeals to me. It's a dirty business!!!

There's a lot of pretty unreasonable stuff here in terms of like, how far can a person jump, what would you do if someone cut your arm off, etc.. But it's kind of like if someone told you the story and then you told someone else. Like yeah he punched the guy's head OFF like totally OFF and then it said something ominous and THEN it blew up. I 100% believe that if actual ninjas swarmed my IRL temple there'd be so much crazy shit going on that my mind would sort it out later as "they flew in on kites, then it was just one huge guy, then he dematerialized into 12 guys, then they all turned into leaves" and I would swear on a sacred scroll to the veracity of my statement. Anyway this was super sick, strongly recommended!!!! Great choreography, great special effects, great editing, great sound, loved the two cute main guys, imaginative and joyous, this rocked. Shoutout to Lee for the recommendation!!!

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Five Element Ninjas (1982)

Totally bonkers Shaw Brothers movie with color-coded ninjas in a villanous role. The heros are these corn fed nice boys with high pony tails and wide "hi how are you" stances, always in white, and then in contrast the faceless villains leap out of holes to stab you unawares with iron claws, dressed like a box of crayons. Recommended!!!! CW: this is the one where the guy's fighting with his guts hanging down below his shorts, and then he steps on his own guts by accident. YOWTCH!

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Black Tight Killers (1966)

A fun and stylish romp with go-go dancing lady ninjas who use almost Bondian updates to the traditional ninja weapons-- instead of gardening tools of the 9th century we got bubblegum darts and exploding falsies. There's a few really great shots but this falls short of being bonkers enough to trancend the genre. But if you like go-go dancing lady ninjas, this is a must. I liked it. Feels like it could only have been made in 1966, though I can't really elaborate on that. With Bokuzen Hidari, the droopy guy from Seven Samurai (1954) and the Human Vapor (1960).

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