Revenge Of The Ninja (1983) – Review

If I’ve said it once on this site, I’ve said it a thousand times, sometimes the thread marking the barriers between a bad film, a so bad it’s good film and a so bad it’s fucking awesome film is often gossimer thin and almost untraceable to the casual filmgoer. It’s also incredibly subjective, varying wildly from person to person regardless what glorious piece of exploitation trash you may be watching. One may embrace a grotty Italian zombie flick stuffed with sloppy gore and endless crash zooms; another may embrace a goofy 80s slasher dripping with casual nudity and unsubtle synth scores and some may get their rocks off watching whatever ludicrous, overzealous ninja-themed action movie that the Cannon Group were constantly releasing from under a rapidly spreading mushroom cloud of cocaine. However, while the infamous studio cornered the ninja market with 1981’s Enter The Ninja, they surely broke the fucking mould with the sequel: the utterly magnificent Return Of The Ninja.

After his family is enthusiastically massacred by a rival Ninja clan, a shell shocked Cho Osaki returns the favour with gusto as his superior martial art skill decimates his enemies leaving only his mother and his baby son as the other survivors. American business partner and friend Braden wisely suggests that the prevailing Ninja take what’s left of his family and bounce on over to the States to start a new life and years later, we find him living a simple life as he co-runs an Oriental art gallery with his best buddy and has trained his lil’ ankle biter, Kane, to be a chip off the old block when it comes to fighting skills even though he has forbade him to use them in public.
Yessir, life seems pretty sweet for Cho (except for a dead family, of course) and the inly worries he has is to keep an eye on his son, keep running the gallery and keep avoiding the sexually forward advances of the super-horny Cathy, Braden’s pneumatic assistant who seems to be gagging for it like it’s oxygen. Of course, no one remains content in a Cannon funded Ninja movie for long and wouldn’t you know it… Kane just accidently discovered that the art gallery is just one big front and that all the Oriental exhibits are stuffed with more China white than an 80s movie exec. Worse still, Braden is not only the kingpin, he also is a Ninja of some great skill who has been utilising his skills of death to eradicate some local mobsters to settle a turf war.
Before you know it, bedlam has erupted as Kane flees Braden’s Demon Ninja alter-ego, a hypnotised Cathy struggles with her allegiances and Cho finds himself brawling to the death with every Village People looking motherfucker who is on Bragen’s payroll. While the police are helpless, Cho still finds aid in high-kicking police trainer, Dave Hatcher and the two team to try and take down the flame flinging, gadget using, back flipping Demon Ninja, save his son and maybe even score some quality time with Cathy.

So, I’ll admit I was kinda harsh on the first movie that featured a completely unrelated plot and characters, but if I truly went with my heart or hearts, the sight of a pornstached Franco Nero struggling to convince that he’s the greatest Ninja on earth fell well and truly in the so-bad-it’s-good bracket; however, with the sequel we got an unrestrained action freakout that not only featured a central Ninja character who not only could perform martial arts to a high standard, but who actually was Japanese to boot. While Sho Kosugi appeared in the first Ninja as a vengeful, villainous henchman, here he finally was promoted to the lead – which, considering this was an American movie made in 1983, is pretty forward thinking if you ignore the predictable, casual racism – and the vast improvement is staggering. The result is a hypnotic explosion of 80s excess that still has that lingering feeling that it was scripted in crayon by a child, but a lot of the awkwardness of the previous Ninja installment has all but vanished. While there’s nothing here to properly challenge, say, Jackie Chan’s Police Story, the fights are well planned, well executed, very imaginative and awesome as fuck. In fact, from the opening attack scene (which features a child catching a throwing star to the face in the first 3 minutes), to the thrillingly ludicrous final fight where two Ninja battle to the death on a high-rise tennis court, the film literally refuses to stop and deals out all the ridiculousness of a stupid 80s actioner with all the subtlety of having your plaque removed by throwing a brick at it.

In fact, it somehow (probably accidently) walks the zip line between pure trash and funny as fuck with such confidence, director Sam Firstenberg can pat himself on the back for making probably the best of all of Cannon’s ninja-obsessed efforts. However, while I’ve bigged up the movie on a technical level, I haven’t even scratched the surface when it comes to how utterly insane the film actually is, so I might as well just launch into a list of some of the most outrageous moments this movie gifts us just to get my point across. But the real problem with this tactic is where do I even start? Do I begin with the fact that the majority of Cho’s foes are inexplicably clad like they’re expendable cannon fodder in a scrolling beat ’em up videogame that sees various, camp looking thugs get their ass beat while dressed as Native Americans, line dancers and leather daddies? How about the moment when the villainous Demon Ninja gets into a battle to the death with the hero’s mother who suddenly displays all the acrobatic skills of a woman a third her age? How about the fact that chief baddie, Braden, looks like a vaguely like a methed-out Will Ferrell and that the mob boss he’s feuding with seems to have tumbled out of a time portal from the 30s? The dialogue also seems reliably unhinged as Cho tries to deflect the obvious, lusty advances of Ashley Ferrare’s curvy Cathy with a terse “If you wanna work out, you’ve forgotten your pants.”, but the filmmakers obviously didn’t want her physical attributes going to waste, so they whipped up a truly bizarre sight of the villains dressing her in a white shirt and tying her up in a bubbling hot tub which no doubt kickstarted puberty early for anyone seeing it at a formative age.
And the craziness continues. Gangsters trip face first onto waiting spikes like some sort of Tom & Jerry skit, Cho beats a foe by crushing his balls with his bare hands and throwing him down a playground slide, a fight un a speeding van sees our hero dragged behind it on concrete but still finishes the brawl despite looking virtually shredded. But yet, the more ludicrous it gets, you can’t tell the filmmakers are truly trying to deliver the most insane action they can and the finished result manages to score a death blow right in the sweet spot between being completely laughable and transcending the silliness into something approaching a cartoonishly goofy nivana.

Some will say I’m overselling, some will say the opposite, but all I know is while I was laughing my unmentionables off while the film was playing, it felt like I was definitely laughing more “with” the film than “at” it. “Only a Ninja can kill a Ninja” gravely states Cho at one point; I’m certainly not a Ninja, but it still fucking killed me.
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