During its reign, The Cannon Group were responsible for some truly bizarre choices that stretched far beyond their infamously curious business plan. There’s their attempt to cheap out on the fourth Superman film despite it having the most ambitious plot; there’s the fact that they released two breakdance movies in the same year and let’s not forget their insistence that Charles Bronson could still be a viable action hero well into his sixties. However, possibly their most eccentric quirk was their obsession with Ninja as virtually unkillable murder machines and in 1984, they released the third part of a trilogy – that no one actually realised was a trilogy – and it ended up possibly being one of the craziest movies that Cannon ever made. Now, that’s quite the statement when you remember that the studio also bankrolled Tobe Hooper’s utterly deranged Lifeforce, but in the annals of Ninjploitation, Ninja III: The Domination stands as the pinnacle of unhinged, Ninja cinema. What could have possessed them….?
Allow me to introduce to you Christie Ryder, a hot single woman who earns a living doing what we’ve have had to do sooner or later – obviously alternate between being a hot telephone lineswoman and a hot aerobics instructor. Anyway, one day, while she’s at the top of a telephone pole doing her thing, she just so happens to witness the end of a bloody battle between half of the LAPD and a single Ninja assassin that ultimately ends with dozens of cops sliced and diced and the fiersome Black Ninja riddled with more holes than the plot of your average Cannon actioner. However, as Ninja’s apparently can shrug off gunfire like a Terminator, the evil warrior manages to drag himself over the stunned Christie and nails her with some spiritual mumbo jumbo before finally succumbing to his extensive wounds.
Naturally figuring that what just occurred was decidedly on the odd end of the spectrum, Christie goes back to earning her other living, sweating through spandex, but soon she finds that something is decidedly amiss. Not only is there a glowing sword floating in her closet, but she keeps experiencing black outs that repeatedly put her in awkward situations. It seems that before he died, the Black Ninja managed to move his consciousness into Christie’s body and it now possesses her at will in order to avenge itself against the five police officers who finally managed to take him down. But while slaughtering sleazy flatfoots while they womanise in a hot tub, or attacking them while they play pool alone in their underpants is alarming enough, it seems that the cop Christie’s dating just so happens to be one of the cops the ghostly Ninja spirit has on his shit list. However, salvation may be at hand in the form of one-eyed martial arts master, Yamada, has arrived in town and is looking to settle some scores with the deceased assassin. Can he cure Christie of what ails her before she slices her boyfriend into sushi?
Even by Cannon standards, Ninja III: The Domination is an amazingly immature piece of enthusiastic trash cinema that takes the studio’s irrepressible worship of all things Ninja to crazed new levels. For a start, the introduction of a supernatural element not found anywhere in the series up to this point may be a neatly original twist for the genre, but it’s also completely insane that takes the iconic, costumed assassins so far into the realms of the spooky, you’ll wonder why they didn’t call it Ninjageist, or even The Ninjacist instead. However, on top of the added horror content which sticks out like a sore thumb, Ninja III also attempts to be the most 80s movie in all of existence that confoundingly attempts to cram the sort of heroine you’d usually see in the likes of Flashdance (she even has the scrunched up leg warmers) into yet another out of control adventure featuring lots of people getting killed by snazzy weaponry.
Thankfully, what could have been an unwatchable mess is made into an incredibly watchable one thanks to the combined talents of both director Sam Firstenberg and actor Sho Kosugi who managed to shepherd the previous movie into kickass version of VHS rental nirvana. However, while Kosugi is sidelined somewhat due to the notion of an aerobics teacher going into a ghost induced martial arts meltdown, Firstenberg keeps things moving, embracing the absurd by diligently trying to convince us that this is the coolest shit we’ve ever seen. The joke is that taken on its own cartoonish merits, Ninja III kind of is the coolest shit you’ve ever seen – but you’ll need a particular type of humour to recognise it.
On the action front, Firstenburg goes for fucking broke, delivering an extended action sequence that has to be seen to be believed. After assassinating his target while he plays golf, the evil Ninja then proceeds to have beef with the entire LAPD and tears through multiple officers like a finger through cheap toilet paper as he outruns motorbikes, jumps on the roofs of moving squad cars and even dangles from the struts of a helicopter while absorbing an endless fusillade of gunfire that could probably stop a Brachiosaur. It predates a similarly awesome opening sequence seen in The Hidden by a couple of years and even harkens to the future antics of Robert Patrick’s T-1000 – but far more ridiculous. However, even though the movie expects us to buy a single dude taking out dozen of cops while ignoring his own bullet-shredded vitals, it’s so endearingly ludicrous, you can’t help but be swept up.
Even better, the possession stuff is even weirder and involves large amounts of dry ice, flashing strobes and synth music that you’ll be convinced that the ghost Ninja is starting his own dance club, but not only do we get the genuinely fetching Lucinda Dickey growling and thrashing with the same giant hair Sigourney Weaver had as the Gatekeeper, but it’s hilariously awful that a movie would go through all this trouble to come up with this ghost shit simply because they didn’t think an 80s audience would simply accept a female Ninja.
Yes, when Kosugi is finally allowed to strut his stuff in the finale, he once again kicks serious ass, but full credit has to go to Dickey for bearing the brunt of the full force of Ninja III’s weirdness for the duration of the runtime. When the impressively game actress isn’t spinning like a propeller in chains in James Hong’s basement, she’s instigating sex by inexplicably pouring V8 juice over her own breasts or getting hypnotised by the zappy lasers beaming out from the arcade machine in her apartment. Still, even though she’s unfairly relagated to watching from the sidelines during the finale, she still proves to be a noticable presence – especially when gyrating to atrocious pop music.
While lovers of more serious, restrained fare will no doubt not have a clue what to do with it, I can genuinely say that I’ve never seen a movie quite like Ninja III: The Domination before or since and surely that’s worth something? OK, the merging of horror and martial arts has been done better in everything from Mr. Vampire to Encounters Of The Spooky kind to Blade, but even in their wildest dreams did could they not hope to come up with something as gleefully stupid as this.
When it comes to unstoppable, 80s, Kung Fu cheese, The Domination dominates.
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