Magic, mystery, and mayhem — oh my! From sentient swords and CIA conspiracies to warring martial arts academies, the world of the movie ninja is as vast as it is weird.
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00:00Magic, mystery, and mayhem. Oh my. From sentient swords and CIA conspiracies to warring martial
00:07arts academies, the world of the movie ninja is as vast as it is weird.
00:12For most American audiences, the term ninja summons up a collection of pop culture references.
00:17The long-running Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles franchise and Chris Farley's Pratt Falls in
00:22Beverly Hills Ninja may be a couple that come to mind. For cult movie fans, it may be the
00:26avalanche of interchangeable 80s action movies featuring a mix of Caucasian and Asian actors
00:31tossing shuriken at bad guys.
00:34Thank you. That's very impressive.
00:41But the earliest movies about ninja long predated the 80s boom. Japanese filmmakers first began
00:46making movies about ninja as early as the silent film era. Many of these early titles
00:51centered around folktales, like those of Jiraiya and Sarutobi Sasuke. And yes, these
00:56stories directly inspired the Naruto characters of the same name.
01:01Unfortunately, like the vast majority of silent movies, very few of these early efforts still
01:05exist. In fact, the 1921 film Jiraiya the Brave is considered to be the oldest surviving
01:11ninja film, though only 20 minutes of the movie remain intact.
01:14Today, ninja are seemingly everywhere. When ninja went worldwide in the 1980s, other countries
01:19started making their own adventures, including Sweden, Argentina, South Korea, and India.
01:24There are ninja anime, giant monster movies, comedies, and even adult-only films.
01:31Ninja were inescapable in Japanese movie theaters during the 1950s and 1960s. The website Vintage
01:36Ninja breaks down this period into distinct types, with one being the fantasy-fueled efforts.
01:42These ninja were more like wizards battling evil sorcerers and giant monsters with a mix
01:47of swordplay and spells.
01:49The 1959 animated ninja film Shonen Sarutobi Sasuke fits in this vein, as we witness the
01:55titular proto-ninja and his fight against a lake demon. Unlike many of its fellow fantasy
02:00ninja films, it saw a theatrical release in the United States, but strangely, the American
02:04version called Magic Boy removed any references to ninja.
02:09The other ninja films of the 60s boom included black-and-white historical action dramas fueled
02:14by a mix of political intrigue, energetic camerawork, and bloody fight sequences. Some
02:19traits, such as the ninja's superhuman stealth and their array of unique weapons, would carry
02:24over into the brawny American cousins of the 1980s. But films like the stark, psychologically-driven
02:30Samurai Spy couldn't be more different from the action antics in the American ninja series.
02:36For many Westerners, their first exposure to ninja came from the 1967 James Bond film
02:43You Only Live Twice. It focuses on a dissolute Bond learning ninjutsu in Japan to carry out
02:48the assassination of his nemesis, Blofeld.
02:50The firing power inside my crater is enough to annihilate a small army. You can watch
02:57it all on TV.
02:59Two real-life martial artists were hired by the film's producers to lend authenticity
03:03to the ninja sequences. Judo champion Don F. Draeger not only trained Sean Connery in
03:08many fighting styles, but also served as a stunt double. This wasn't uncommon, as Draeger
03:12had previously served as John Wayne's stunt double in the 1958 film The Barbarian and
03:17the Geisha. The other consultant was Masaaki Hatsumi, recognized today as a grandmaster
03:22of the Nine Schools of Martial Arts, who also appeared in the movie as an aide to the spy
03:26Tiger Tanaka. Hatsumi later used his training to found a dojo in Japan, where thousands
03:31travel each year to learn ninjutsu techniques.
03:35By the mid-1970s, ninja had infiltrated American pop culture. They appeared on television series
03:41like Kung Fu and Hawaii Five-0, while Marvel and DC introduced ninja characters in Judo
03:47Master, Shang-Chi Master of Kung Fu, and The Deadly Hands of Kung Fu Anthology. However,
03:52ninja wouldn't turn up in a Hollywood movie until 1975's The Killer Elite.
03:57Directed by action auteur Sam Peckinpah, the movie concerns a pair of undercover agents
04:02for hire played by James Caan and Robert Duvall. Their testosterone-fueled friendship comes
04:07to an abrupt end when Duvall double-crosses Caan and leaves him for dead. Caan's rehabilitation
04:13involves intense martial arts training, which serves him well when he hits the revenge trail
04:18to stop an assassin from killing a Taiwanese politician. This doesn't sit well with Duvall,
04:23who summons a small army of ninja to finish the job.
04:26But Peckinpah's ninja are no more effective than standard-issue henchmen, falling hard
04:31to a guy with a cane, a dumpy Bert Young, a middle-aged diplomat and his daughter, and
04:36machine-gun-toting Bo Hopkins. According to the martial arts compendium, these fists
04:41break bricks. The early 1980s ninja were thriving on TV, in best-selling books, and even in
04:47perfume. The time was right for a Hollywood ninja movie, and Mike Stone thought it would
04:52be his ticket to stardom.
04:54Stone, a karate champion and instructor, pitched a ninja movie called Dance of Death to the
04:59Canon Group, the movie factory that would be responsible for many of Chuck Norris' action
05:03titles. With Stone signed on as both star and scriptwriter, the producers were hoping
05:08to beat 20th Century Fox's adaptation of Eric Van Lustbader's The Ninja to theaters. They
05:13didn't need to worry. That production fell into developmental hell, but they soon faced
05:18their own problems with the movie that would become 1981's Enter the Ninja.
05:23Producer Manahem Golan reportedly arrived on set and fired the director, crew, and Stone
05:28as leading man. As Stone said in the Canon Film Guide Vol. 2, in hindsight, there was
05:33no way I would ever be the leading man in any movie. Golan stepped in as director and
05:39hired Italian actor Franco Nero to replace Stone.
05:42Gentlemen, let's be reasonable. Why don't we talk?
05:47Golan would eventually walk back his decision somewhat, rehiring Stone as fight coordinator
05:52and as Nero's stunt double. He allowed Stone to hire his own stuntmen, including a Japanese
05:57kendo and judo champ named Sho Kosugi. Kosugi would also play one of the film's bad guys,
06:02a performance that made him the face of Ninja throughout the 1980s.
06:08Throughout the 80s, Sho Kosugi was an on-screen murder machine, laying waste to every bad
06:13guy who dared to cross his path. One of his most popular movies during this period was
06:181985's Pray for Death. That was the best you could hope for from Sho — that he'd kill
06:24you quickly. That image contrasted heavily with Kosugi's real life as a hardworking family
06:29man with a healthy skepticism about his status as an action hero.
06:33Though his on-screen characters made him exceptionally popular, his legacy was ultimately cemented
06:38as the first Japanese actor to top-bill an American action movie. While he had been elevated
06:44from the bad guy in Enter the Ninja to the hero in Revenge of the Ninja, he was dismissive
06:49of the loopy Ninja 3 The Domination and left the canon group over a contract dispute. After
06:54Pray for Death earned an X rating, he requested cuts to ensure that younger fans could see
06:59it. When the National Box Office returns for Ninja movies cooled off, Kosugi hosted
07:04the Ninja Theater VHS series and eventually returned to Japan, where he found new fame
07:09on television. In 2009, the Wachowskis paid tribute to his early screen days by casting
07:14him as the villain in Ninja Assassin.
07:17Though the canon group lost Sho Kosugi, they still saw money to be made in the shuriken
07:21and katana business. As noted in these fist-break bricks, the company pre-sold American Ninja
07:26as a vehicle for Chuck Norris. They had to go looking for a new action star, though,
07:30as Norris wasn't interested in the project. Enter Michael Dudikoff, a model-turned-actor
07:35who often played affable boyfriends and best pals in movies and on television.
07:40"...veal, par, what's this word? It's parmesan."
07:46Director Sam Furstenberg was instantly smitten with Dudikoff. Recalling to Kung Fu Magazine
07:50.com, it was like, who? This is the American Ninja! The way he talked, the way he behaved,
07:57his body language — everything. What Dudikoff lacked was the necessary martial arts skills.
08:02He knew some, but he wasn't entirely believable as someone who could fight multiple ninja
08:07at once or jump out of a helicopter. Thankfully, the producers still had Mike Stone on hand
08:12to choreograph the fights and help Dudikoff achieve ninja-level prowess. It certainly
08:16didn't hurt that he was paired up on screen with Steve James, a brawny, real-life martial
08:21artist. Dudikoff would play Joe Armstrong in two of the three sequels, sharing lead
08:26billing with actor David Bradley on American Ninja 4.
08:29Let's say it's 1982, and you're an independent distributor with a sizable catalog of martial
08:34arts movies. Audiences aren't lining up for these titles like they used to — not like
08:38the new crop of ninja flicks cleaning up in theaters and on home video — so, being the
08:42enterprising type, you snip off the title cards from a handful of your movies and stitch
08:47on new ones that prominently feature ninja. The fact that your movies have little or nothing
08:51to do with ninja? Well, that's beside the point. According to a 1986 New York Daily
08:55News interview with Rod Hurley, vice president of Master Arts Video, the joke is you put
09:00the word ninja in the title, and you can sell a couple thousand extra copies.
09:04One of the more amusing examples includes 1982's Shaolin Prince. When it finally arrived
09:09on American VHS, it bore the title Death Mask of the Ninja, despite no ninja being
09:14in the film. The 1978 period action-drama Heroes of the East features Chinese and Japanese
09:20martial arts, but its real concern is a broken marriage. Nevertheless, it was renamed numerous
09:26times, given titles such as Shaolin Challenges Ninja, Challenge of the Ninja, and Shaolin
09:31vs. Ninja.
09:33When a film's subgenre runs out of gas, one of the most common ways for producers to retain
09:38fan interest is to fold elements of other genres into their titles. This cross-pollination
09:43has resulted in some inspired hybrids and some genuine oddities, and ninja movies are
09:49no exception.
09:50"'Curses! Get him, boys!"
09:56During this period, fans would stumble across mutations, like 1989's Robot Ninja, a no-budget
10:02comedy about a comic book artist fighting crime. Ninja Academy, from the same year,
10:06applied the Police Academy formula to a pair of rival ninja schools populated by misanthropic
10:11weirdos. Of course, the hands-down winner for most bizarre ninja hybrid movie might
10:18just be 1984's Ninja 3 The Domination.
10:22Intended as another sequel to Enter the Ninja, the film takes an unexpected turn into the
10:27supernatural. Lucinda Dickey is an aerobics instructor possessed by the spirit of an evil
10:32James Hong is an exorcist who fails to remove the spirit, which prompts — who else? — Shokosugi
10:37to step in. Floating swords, lycra bodysuits, and mind control all combine into a truly
10:43absurd experience.
10:46While it's unlikely that the American-made ninja movies of the 1980s will ever be described
10:50as classics, even the worst canon group titles can appear worthy of the Criterion Collection
10:56when compared to the films of Hong Kong's Godfrey Ho. He flooded international markets
11:01with hundreds of cheaply-made, nonsensical ninja movies during the 1980s and 1990s.
11:06Hey, all right, you better come out now.
11:11Oh, I think we better do what he says.
11:16After catching wind of Enter the Ninja and wanting his own Frank O'Nero for his ninja
11:20projects, Ho would hire American actor Richard Harrison, a star of spaghetti westerns. However,
11:26Ho didn't seem to care that Harrison didn't know martial arts. He also didn't care that
11:30the props and sets were dollar-store quality or that the movie's dialogue was seemingly
11:34endless verbal loops on ninja empires. Ho simply hid his stunt players behind hoods
11:39and masks and threw in plenty of gunplay and smoke bombs to hide the seams.
11:44But what set Ho's movies apart from other low-budget martial arts titles of the era
11:48was his practice of recycling footage from one film to create dozens of others. Scenes
11:54of Harrison shot for one movie would turn up in several other Ho titles, and Harrison
11:58later claimed that Ho's movies caused him to quit acting completely. When Ho exhausted
12:03his footage of Harrison, he bought movies from other Asian markets and dissected them
12:08for more Frankenstein creations. Quality, or lack thereof, didn't stop Ho until he supposedly
12:14retired in the early 2000s to become a film teacher, of all things.
12:19In the 1980s, ninja exploitation films wreaked low-budget havoc across international screens
12:25in the Philippines, Hong Kong, Turkey, and even India, but one probably wouldn't expect
12:30a ninja movie to come from Sweden. However, the Scandinavian country produced a small
12:35handful of homegrown ninja titles in the late 80s, with the best-known to international
12:39audiences being 1984's The Ninja Mission.
12:43Listen, Mason, and listen good. You're to take the ninja into Russia and get Markov out.
12:52A hopelessly convoluted and astonishingly gory thriller that pits a CIA-backed team
12:58of Swedish ninja against Soviet forces that hold a defecting Russian scientist hostage,
13:04Bo F. Munta, the self-described grandfather of European ninjutsu, co-stars as a member
13:09of the ninja team, whose martial arts skills could be charitably described as rudimentary.
13:14However, their ability to kill bad guys in as messy a manner as possible is top-notch.
13:19Director Mats Helge Olsson had previously made headlines in the early 80s for producing
13:23the historical epic Sweden for the Swedes, which landed him in prison for accounting
13:29this deeds. He rebounded with the international theatrical and VHS sales for The Ninja Mission,
13:35which he followed with a slew of other action titles, each one as technically inept yet
13:39enthusiastically made as the next.
13:42The VHS boom wasn't just a fresh revenue source for theatrical movies, old and new. It also
13:48provided aspiring filmmakers a chance to get their homemade productions out into the world.
13:53These backyard auteurs typically focused on the genres that attracted the widest viewership,
13:58so if you owned a headband and a rubber throwing star, this was your chance to be in the ninja
14:02movie business.
14:03Some of the best-known, or notorious, home-ground ninja titles included Justice Ninja Style,
14:09a 12,000-actioner-by-St. Louis detective-turned-filmmaker Ron White, and L.A. Street Fighters, where
14:15a 40-something former Bruce Lee clone plays a high-schooler battling drug dealers.
14:20But L.A. Street Fighters director Richard Park Woo-Sang also oversaw another amateur
14:24ninja picture, Miami Connection, that inexplicably found an enthusiastic audience three decades
14:29after its original release. According to Park, after seeing an interview with Type 1 Doze
14:34studio owner Master Y.K. Kim on a South Korean talk show, Park pitched him on making a martial
14:39arts movie.
14:40Kim recruited his students as cast members, borrowed money from friends, and even mortgaged
14:44his school to fund the movie. However, distributors took one look at its plot — a mishmash of
14:49non-sequiturs about a rock band running afoul of drug-dealing ninja — and advised Kim
14:54to just throw it away.
14:56Flash forward to 2009, when Alamo Draft House programmer Zach Carlson bought the film on
15:00eBay and screened a reel for audiences at their Austin, Texas, location. Rapturous response
15:06led to festival dates, leading Kim baffled, delighted, and ready to make more movies.
15:11He told Weekly,
15:12"...we have planned to produce one top-quality action film with modern philosophy every three
15:18years."
15:20Taiwanese actor John Liu earned a following for his superhuman high kicks in low-budget
15:24Hong Kong and Taiwanese kung fu movies during the 1970s. But as the old joke goes, what
15:29he really wanted to do was direct. In the 1980s, he established his own micro-budget
15:34production company and wrote, produced, directed, and starred in four nearly incoherent martial
15:40arts movies.
15:41The last of these, New York Ninja, began filming in 1984, but was abandoned after its distributor
15:46filed for bankruptcy. This drove Liu to give up filmmaking and return to Paris to oversee
15:51his own martial arts studio.
15:53"...You can't beat me! I'm immortal!"
15:59Flash forward three decades, and the film preservation and home video distributor Vinegar
16:04Syndrome locates the surviving elements, but no script or storyboards. When Liu declined
16:09to complete the movie, editor Curtis M. Spieler painstakingly assembled the footage into a
16:14semi-coherent storyline, earning himself credit as the film's redirector. After corralling
16:20several cult actors to dub the on-screen characters, New York Ninja played the film festival circuit
16:25in 2021, eventually receiving a national release. As for the finished product, well, seeing
16:31really is believing. Audiences may not fully accept the sight of a ninja vigilante patrolling
16:37New York City, occasionally on roller skates, in search of the cartoonish gang members who
16:41killed his wife. A radioactive villain called the Plutonium Men and an army of grade school
16:46ninja fans also factor into the mix, which wobbles and bops to a new 80s synth-style
16:52score by Voyager.
16:54Though Ninja appeared to be unstoppable on-screen, their appeal eventually waned. While remaining
16:59a popular draw in the home video market, theatrical returns began to dwindle as the 80s drew to
17:04a close. A wave of negative press started about how Ninja led to real-life crime, including
17:10a highly publicized 1984 home invasion of actress-director Penny Marshall. Profit-minded
17:15producers began shifting away from Ninja, with films like 1985's No Retreat, No Surrender
17:22elevating the marquee status of kickboxing, a more aggressive combat sport than ninjutsu,
17:27with less spirituality.
17:28With the help of the energetic Belgian martial artist and actor Jean-Claude Van Damme, kickboxing
17:33and mixed martial arts came to dominate the American action scene, introducing a host
17:38of new movie stars. These ranged from Steven Seagal and Bruce Lee's son Brandon, to directive
17:43video players like Billy Blanks, Don the Dragon Wilson, and Cynthia Rothrock.