Enter The Ninja (1981) – Review

While the 80s where hardly a fortress of restraint, surely one of the most amusing tropes of the decade was Cannon Films’ insistence that action cinema needed more movies featuring the most dangerous ninja in history being played consistently by white guys. Seriously, it felt like these guys made fuckin’ dozens of these movies that saw tone deaf cultural appropriation and cartoonish ass kicking go fist in fist as Caucasians in hoods made the world safe for American consumption.
The originator of this ludicrous trend was Enter The Ninja which saw co-head honcho of Cannon himself, Menahem Golan, step behind the camera to direct a script arguably more childish than most Saturday morning cartoon shows, that featured a proud, yet humble, American showing the Japanese how to do it even though the actor portraying him was fucking Italian!
Prepare to witness the birth of Americanised Ninjasploitation at its most hilarious – prepare to… Enter The Ninja.

After serving his time in the Nambian War of Independence, mustachioed merc Cole suddenly slammed on a handbrake turn on his life and then went to Japan to undergo rigorous ninjutsu training that he not only completes, but somehow manages to excel far beyond any other student there. Sealing the deal by mock-murdering literally every other Ninja on the premises and then “pretending” to decapitate his master to really put a exclamation point on it, Cole heads back out into the world to use his skills for good much to the anger of jealous rival, Hasegawa.
Cole’s first order of business is to visit his old war buddy Frank Landers and his wife, Mary, who run a large farm in the Philippines and “generously” stage a worryingly large amount of cock fights to keep their workers entertained. But beyond Frank’s sizable drinking problem, the Landers also have the grave misfortune to be in the malevolent crosshairs of flamboyant CEO, James Venarius who desires their land and isn’t beneath sending hook-handed, sinister accented lickspittles to try and throw some muscle around.
Thankfully, Cole has some muscle of his own and when he isn’t kicking goons in the face or practising twirling nunchucks with his shirt off, he’s also catching the huge eyes of Mary who has just about had enough of her drunkard hubby. However, after pummeling enough men on Venarius’ payroll, the dastardly one percenter decides to fight fire with fire and get himself a Ninja of his own – no prizes for guessing who. That’s right, soon Hasegawa has reentered the chat and has his sights on trying to carve up the Landers in order to lure Cole into a duel to the death. Can our hero stand up to such a monumental challenge without getting so much as a stain on his white Ninja suit?

As Cannon funded Ninja movies go, there are bigger examples and there certainly are sillier (the possession orientated Ninja III: The Domination has to surely claim the insanity cake by a country mile), but even in the face of overwhelming competition, Enter The Ninja is still close to being the mac daddy of them all. I’ve said this about many a Cannon production, but I still have great difficulty in accepting that an actual adult wrote this movie, let along signed off on it and calculated how to budget it, because once again we’re muscling through so-bad-it’s-good territory so blatent, at numerous times you have to remind yourself you’re not watching a spoof or a parody. However, the real joke is that if Enter The Ninja (which in itself sounds suspiciously like a double entendre) was a comedy, it still wouldn’t be as funny as the version we actually got.
For a start, as I mentioned before, our ninjutsu weilding, all-American hero is played by Franco Nero whose thick, Italian accent is mercilessly dubbed as his middle-aged ass and proud Tom Sellick mustache (which can clearly be seen bulging under his Ninja mask) struggles to match his fight double in a near endless – and virtually plotless – string of violent scrapes that see him clumsily using all manner of weapons to murder his way through every stuntman Cannon can afford.
But wait, it gets worse – and by worse, I mean it ironically gets better – when the villains are rolled out and while Cole works his way up the criminal/corporate ladder through various street level thugs all the way up to snivelling henchmen with spikey arm prosthesis and British accented second in commands, we get to Christopher George’s utterly illogical arch bastard who proves to be a veritable gold mine of outlandish quirks. Sporting a voice so gravelly it makes Danny DeVito sound like Prince, the diabolical Venarius lounges in his office slash swimming pool, concocting various evil deeds while training synchronised swimmers to create his “masterpiece” in an act of confounding multitasking that Blofeld couldn’t hope to pull off on his best day. Rounding out the cast is an overacting Alex Courtney as Frank who seems to believe that all of life’s problems can be cured either by draining whatever liquor is close to hand or organising yet another cock fight at the drop of a hat – seriously, this guy fucking loves cock fighting – and Susan George who, apart from looking mighty fine holding a shotgun and who has to endure bring bound and gagged for the last twenty five minutes of the film, has the only remotely normal role of the cast.

But no one came to Enter The Ninja to enjoy the remotely normal, and whenever the plot starts to lag – which it does frequently – the action kicks in with gusto as Golan knows the real reason cinema goers have come to party is to watch awkwardly staged martial arts battles and various gruesome deaths at the blades of various Japanese weaponry. Simply put, it’s gloriously terrible but insanely fun to watch. Arrows thud into torsos, blow darts thwip in carotid arteries and countless many fall before Cole’s “skills” with a katana, but it doesn’t take a martial arts expert to see that Franco Nero (clad in a white Ninja suit that makes him looks like he works for the CDC) may have given Clint Eastwood a run for his money in the Western stakes with Django, but he probably didn’t even know what ninjutsu was before stepping on set and looks visibly relieved when his fighting double gets to take over.
While my conscience absolutely will not let me rate this thing as a “real” movie, rest assured that Enter The Ninja contains more than it’s fair share of five-star moments even is Cannon came upon them purely by accident. After all, tell me that a moment that sees Venarius’ eternally calm number two take an arrow through the forearm only to casually announce “I think I’m injured, sir.”, or the climactic moment where the preening, villainous, man-child takes a throwing star to the chest and then just inexplicably throws up a slow motion shrug as he collapses out of frame.

But for all of its obvious filmmaking flaws, you have to remember that for better or worse (probably worse considering the racial implications) this movie started the 80s Ninja craze, which might not be considered that impressive when you realise that most of the major copycats also came from the Cannon stable. But still for 80s trash enthusiasts, this movie successfully kickstarted an entire sub-genre and that thoroughly cringe-worthy wink/freeze frame combo Nero flashes at us at the end seems to be saying “You’re welcome” whether we’re grateful or not. Pure Cannon, then….
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