Ninja films, 8 for 10£

The following is a compilation of diary entries in elftown that I submit for your reading pleasure simply because I feel they deserve a better audience. Well, that sounded unnecessarily pompous. ;) Sorry. Elftown really isn’t the place for blogs. Anyway, here it begins, in chronological order. (Lots of pretty pictures further down!)

I picked up four movies for £5 today… It still remains to see whether this was a violent rip-off or not.

They’re all rated 18.. HUR HUR HUrRrr… :D
Anyway. Two of them star some blonde pink guy called Richard Harrison. They’re called “Ninja Dragon” (also starring Bruce Stallion.. (WHO??? This sounds like a bad porn movie already)) and Ninja The Protector (ONLY A NINJA CAN DEFEAT A NINJA).
Then there’s “Revenge of the Drunken Master” with Johnny Chan, the New King of Kung Fu. That one might actually be good.
And finally, last and perhaps least, there’s “The Dragon, The Hero” (THEY MUST FIGHT TOGETHER AS FRIENDS, OR DIE TOGETHER AS ENEMIES…) starring John Liu and Dragon Lee.

Think I’m going to look up their imdb ratings :D

Ninja Dragon: 4.4 / 10 and that’s with 8 votes, 2 of which said 10, the rest of which felt it was worth 1-3 stars. Ok, one thought 6..
Ninja The Protector: 2.7 … with 27 votes. I’m liking this one already.
Revenge Of The Drunken master 5.8 . I might genuinely enjoy this one… as opposed to the one previously mentioned.
The Dragon, The Hero 5.5 The review looked promising.

I shall begin with the “good stuff”, the genuine Hong Kong action flicks, as opposed to the Pink Blonde Guy Who Looks American And Dresses As A Ninja.

Written about Monday 2004-05-10 
Written:2004-05-10 12:38:21

I’ve now watched 3 out of my 4 crappy films.

I was wrong about Richard Harrison being American. I have no idea what he is. Either it was all dubbed or the lipsynch sucked massively and was off and had terrible, terrrrrible actors. Bruce Stallion, if he was who I think he was, was a hunk. In fact, by the end I was half-disappointed the only naked people in the film are women. Or old, wrinky guys wearing towels. *sigh*
Ninja Dragon was painfully bad. Except for Bruce Stallion(?). :D Really really really bad. I can not stress how horrible it was. I cracked up and laughed so the walls shook. I kept forgetting to take screenshots because I was so horrified. And yet.. judging by the trailers, it could have been a lot worse. I’m half-sad I didn’t get Golden Ninja (female ninjas fighting each other), or NINJA SQUAD (power-ranger-like costumed ninjas battling each other. Ech.)

Next, I saw The Dragon, The Hero. I was mildly disappointed at first because I thought I had put in Revenge of the Drunken Master, but I decided to see it through anyway. It was definitely dubbed. It had lots of extremely bizarre translations with strange undertones to them, like something about a world-premier of Kung Fu, DOG STYLE! Mad dog style, at that. You see, one of the characters goes mad after a rape-attempt in his youth is foiled by a German Shepard dog who rips his “frontal tail” off and runs off with it.
There was a fellow who had an extremely cute Tiger Fist style.. :) He left little kitty scratch-marks on people and pulled out their hair. Unfortunately, you knew he was going to die very fast because they had chosen a bad dubber with the typical “i’m very temporary”-voice.

Next up, Revenge of the Drunken Master. This one featured obscure gay innuendo and the worst subbing ever. It had the same director as The Dragon, The Hero, and it truly showed in the bizarre cut off frames, zooming around randomly, etc. And the ending. Especially the ending. His films all end after the final boss-fight. No aftermath, no weeping over loved ones, no arresting or anything. Just there, in big bold capital letters across a black or red screen: THE END

After this film, I decided to go sleep. I also decided that I enjoyed them and that I didn’t want to spoil the relatively good aftertaste of the Ho-directed movies with another Richard Harrison film.. so I’ve left that one for today.
Not only are they good for comic relief, a glimpse into another culture, etc, but they also feature a lot of really fit, trim, muscular-but-not-too-muscular men who are impressively flexible and can do insanely cool moves. I’m thinking about buying another 4 for £5…

Written about Wednesday 2004-05-12 
Written:2004-05-12 15:12:01

Listening to “Ein fall für zwei“‘s theme music as I write this.

Last night I watched the final Ninja film. Fortunately, it was better than Ninja Dragon. This was called Ninja, The Protector. As with all bizarre Richard Harrison films, there were two plotlines going on at the same time: one featuring him as a successful somethingorother (business tyccoon in one, police in this one..), and the other featuring his “pet”/henchman who goes around seducing women, saving good guys, and getting into fist fights with the baddies. This henchman also always looks a lot better than him and gets a lot of sex. Lots of half-hearted sex with bad 80’s music and weird lighting.
Meanwhile, Richard puts on mascara, eyeliner, and the sorriest excuse for a ninja costume and runs around assassinating various little henchmen. These henchmen always wear cool, black ninja outfits and tend to have gorgeous eyes. They are also not pink and super-greasy like Richard. I’ve added a few relevant notes.

And here, is the big bad .. bad guy.He is always about as hideous if not worse and always wears the red ninja suit. Inevitably, he also dies in a final showdown in which Harrison hardly has to make an effort and which ends in big, bold letters: THE END

Here, I shall insert an image of Richard for your viewing pleasure.


Ah, by the way… I have also recorded a snippet of the beautiful dubbing done in Revenge of the Drunken Master. It can be found here.

mp3 file

Here is a picture of the scene… It was, as you may imagine, rather frightening…


Written about Tuesday 2004-05-18 
Written:2004-05-18 23:20:55

Guess who went off and bought 4 more ninja films for £5!
Muheh.. eheheh.. EHEHEHEHEHHEEHAHAHAHAAAA!!!

I watched one today. It was called The Leopard Fist Ninja. The dubbing was by Americans again, but for once, none of them put on fake British accents, which was a relief!

Good things first. It had the best music I’ve ever heard in a ninja film. You can listen to it here! (mp3 file)

If that’s not Ennio Morricone inspired, I don’t know WHAT is! On the same level of coolness, this ninja wore a poncho! YES!

I realized this was by the same director as all the other ninja films I’ve bought. This meant that, yep, it was going to end in big THE END letters across the whole screen again. *sigh.* Oh well. But to my surprise, it was of the highest quality yet!

It begins with the story of a family that tries to protect the manual on secret instructions on making very high quality pottery stuff.
The father and mother are killed and the two kids who are dubbed with womens’ voices escape with the grandpa. One of the little girls wants to go after the big bad guy (I think he’s Japanese? This happens in Manchuria..? I don’t know enough about history, but his name sounded Japanese.) but grandpa stops her and says that they must train before they can go off and get revenge.

So the two pretty little girls train…

And grow up to be Beautiful young

MEN!? Wtf? Woops. Fooled by the dubbers again!

Like all Ho-directed movies that don’t have Richard Harrison in them, it instead featured the mysterious old geezer featured here:

Now I really liked this film. Although it got boring at times, it didn’t back away from real issues like girls fighting men and getting beat up or beating them up:

Killing what looks like pigeons:

And then

eating them. But that actor, the main character with the horrible moustache is the only guy in the film who ever eats that stuff. Maybe the others refused, so they had to make it a plot device?

The martial arts in the film were fabulous! I seriously loved it. Supreme coolness. Makes me wish I could move like that.. *sigh*. It also featured spiffiness of men with swords fighting one unarmed man:

Our unarmed hero won, of course. Every badguy, including this poor guy who constantly keeps getting beat up:

are controlled by this evil bastard whose hair matches his clothing.

I found it most strange that while the big bad guy singlehandedly defeated our main character, who was meant to be an expert in the art of the Leopard Fist, was himself defeated by our man’s younger brother, an inferior warrior. Then, he got scared of fighting them personally again and ran away to hire Genji, the biggest and baddest of the bad, who in return for his services did not want money. He instead wanted the big bad guy’s daughter, who is never seen except when she’s getting beaten up by the goodguys and in this scene, which I found extremely repulsive:

Yes, so not only do the goodguys beat up women and slaughter innocent birds, but they also have no mercy for the swine (the badguys), will not hesitate to kill someone from behind, or gang up on people! I loved it! Finally something more realistic! Finally someone who knows how to take advantage of situations! HURRAH FOR NINJAS!

Swords could not defeat our hero. (I confess, can’t remember his name.) White ninjas who can do pretty little cartwheels and backflips and who keep bouncing back up onto their feet could not defeat him. However, this shirtless guy could.

As soon as our hero saw him, he tore off his own shirt. And so did his brother when he arrived on the scene. Interesting.

Although I’ve just given away just about the whole plot of the film, it is well worth seeing for its spectacular martial arts. They move beautifully, weaving kicks and punches and dodges in and out of each other.
THE END.

Written about Saturday 2004-05-22 
Written:2004-05-22 22:50:36