Ninja Phantom Heroes (1987) User Reviews

I got the same version as rhobotdog

[sgbdestroyer · 2/10 · 25 January 2007]

My version also called "Ninja Empire" features the same cast and crew as rhobotdog's version. I believe this version is actually "Ninja Phantom Heroes." This film matches the cast and crew given in the credits. So if you get a movie called "Ninja Empire" and the credits say a Bruce Lambert(Another name Godfrey Ho goes by)film and stars Joff Houston, John Wilford, Christine Wells, Glen Carson, George Dickson, Allen Leung, Dennis Shek, Dinny Yip, and Bob Cheng. Then your actually watching "Ninja Phantom Heroes." Also the comment for "Ninja Phantom Heroes" talks about a US Ammunition Dump and a white and cameo ninja which appeared in the version I got.

Anyway, it doesn't matter much because Godfrey Ho's ninja films are all the same. Some cheesy ninja action edited into footage from canceled and terrible movies that have no relation to anything else in the move with a terrible script dubbed over it to try and make it coherent, but it ultimately fails.

NINJA

[BandSAboutMovies · 3/10 · 3 June 2022]

Brad and Bonnie may share a detective agency but as soon as you realize that Godfrey Ho directed this, the sooner you'll come to accept that Brad (Marko Ritchie) and Bonnie (Hsu Ying-Chu) are from two different movies that are only connected by the telephone, the same way that Chrissy Snow could keep talking to Janet Wood and Jack Tripper despite the contract negotiations of Suzanne Sommers.

How do we know we're in America when we're watching Brad speak to Bonnie by staring at her photo as if this is a late 80s Facetime? The Coca-Cola cans everywhere, of course.

After that call, Brad takes a call from a girl named Pam who wants to hire him to take her case before she's killed by this movie's big bad, Decker (Mike Abbott), who has bad guys in his employ from yet another movie, Tiger and Ringo. He's running a modeling school that hooks girls on drugs and then into white slavery and somehow does this by uniting multiple films into one strange and branching narrative.

So what does the modeling school teach?

Aerobics.

Will Bonnie go there?

Of course.

She's from a movie called Lover and Killer and she's awesome.

Meanwhile, we keep cutting back to Brad, who somehow becomes a red ninja because suddenly someone remembered that this was a ninja movie and then it all ends with a gunfight.

Huh?

This is also known as Ninja Phantom Heroes. There are moments where you have no idea what is going to happen next or even where the story is and the confusion feels like when drugs work. When the high isn't scary and you're doing what Huxley said about the doors of perception and you're just feeling that life makes sense because this ninja madness makes no sense whatsoever.

Pretty awful 80's ninja movie

[Red-Barracuda · 2/10 · 20 July 2016]

I've seen more and more cheap Asian martial arts movies as I have periodically worked through a Mill Creek box set. It has to be said that it didn't take very long for me to realise I had very little patience for them but I have to say that by now I actively dislike them! Ninja Empire is yet another. It's a late 80's Hong Kong ninja flick directed by Godfrey Ho; who incidentally, is a director responsible for one of my actual favourite martial arts movies, the Cynthia Rothrock vehicle Undefeatable (1993) which aside from being laugh-a-minute and thoroughly entertaining, also happens to have the greatest climatic fight scene ever committed to celluloid – watch it and you'll understand.

Anyway, back to Ninja Empire. Its chock full of the usual ingredients of these things, i.e. terrible dubbing, bargain basement production values, a sleep inducing plot-line and several martial arts fight scenes. It did seem to be distinguished a little by the fact that the ninjas – for reasons I could never fathom – appear and disappear in balls of flame. There was some unintentional hilarity with some of the dialogue and the ending was sudden even by the standards of chopsocky movies; so much so, I had to rewind it to see if I had missed something but no, it just…ends! Not that that was a bad thing ultimately because I was suffering watching this. For fans of this sub-genre I am guessing there are things to enjoy here but for me it just seemed like more interminable nonsense.

A West country ninja?!

[HaemovoreRex · 5/10 · 20 January 2006]

This film was released in the UK under the title 'Ninja Knight: Thunder Fox' which immediately presents a somewhat perplexing problem......Firstly there are in fact very little real ninja in this and secondly there isn't a single reference anywhere in the film to any character/plot/operation named Thunder Fox. Oh well, Godfrey Ho did direct this after all so it's only to be expected I suppose.

Another point of slight confusion is the IMDb listing this as from 1990....it's not, it's actually from 1988, the same year as the similarly titled (but very different film) Ninja Knight: Brothers Of Blood a.k.a. Platoon Warriors.

Any way enough of the quibbles, what is the film like?

Well it's complete crap actually. The 'plot' concerns a female investigator infiltrating a modelling school in order to find out why a number of them are disappearing (including her sister who vanished some time before) As it turns out, they are being filtered into prostitution and then murdered by some nefarious characters who needless to say meet grisly ends by the end of the film by our female leads skilled hands.

So where are the ninja in this you may ask? Well in a completely separate, newly edited in side story our man Ho delivers a plot involving Brad, the investigative partner of the female lead from the other film/plot (are you following this?) Whilst investigating the same case (in a very lacklustre manner I might add) Brad causes ripples for another crime boss played by Mike Abbott. Now for the twist.....it turns out against all levels of probability, that both Brad and the crime boss are in fact ninja(!!!) Well strike a light, what a coincidence eh?

Needless to say an inevitable ninja battle ensues at the movies climax.

Interestingly, the said conflict is somewhat less than traditional for these films and involves a bizarre take on a ninja shoot out!

Now as I said, the film itself is to put it mildly, somewhat less than entertaining for the most part, especially since there is really only two real ninja sequences in the entire film (!) You may well ask therefore why I have awarded the said movie such a respectable score of seven......the answer (bizarrely) lies in the voice of the movies main villain...

Reading up the brief bio on IMDb, I see that the relevant actor (Mike Abbott) hails from beautiful Cornwall. Interestingly, although obviously overdubbed in this film, it appears that Mike may have in fact re dubbed his own lines(!) as his character to speaks with a mightily broad Cornish accent. 'So what?' You might ask. Well, (and please note that this is in no way an insult to Cornish people or their accent) words simply cannot describe how hilarious it is to hear a cinematic villain (and ninja to boot!) speaking with a deep West Country twang!

And not just his voice either, the side splitting dialogue on offer here also had me in hysterics.....the best line of the movie for instance when the crime boss berates some of his cronies for their ineptitude by uttering the immortal line, 'You're all a bunch of filthy scums!'

Absolutely priceless! For fans of craptastic movies, this is pretty much a must see!

Just about saved by the demented finale.

[HaemovoreRex · 5/10 · 24 April 2008]

Yep, it's time for yet another completely nonsensical cut & paste abomination, produced by infamous hack maestro, Tomas Tang. This one also boasts the indignity of some of the most inappropriate music ever to grace an action scene; the sort of mundane arrangement one might very well expect to hear playing in a shopping centre in fact!

To be entirely fair, even though the main body of the film is sadly, rather a chore to sit through, the last five or so minutes more than make up for it; Indeed, you'll hardly believe your eyes as our ninja pals battle it out with metal discs(!), a bullet firing parasol(!!) and last but not least a bizarre twirling thing which closely resembles the inner blade component of a food mixer!!! If this wasn't baffling enough, we are finally treated to a completely 'What the fu- I mean, hell?!!' ending which appears to have been tacked on for no apparent reason whatsoever! Deranged stuff indeed, but with Tang on the credits, what more could you possibly expect?

Terrible, but hilariously terrible!

[kid_rondeau · 1/10 · 9 September 2004]

I read on a different site that this film was put together from generic stock footage of various martial arts films. I believe it! The soldiers in the Military Prison wear outfits that look like they are made of vinyl. The "ammunition dump" is indicated by a white bedsheet that has "U.S. Ammunition Dump" scrawled across it in shoe polish.

With such lines as, "Maybe it's a plot to kill US"(accent on "us") and "They're throwing a party in honor of the local rich," it will leave you confused long enough to see the final "climactic" fight between the white ninja and the cameo ninja...with weapons like an umbrella that shoots fireworks, a flying percolator, and a bunch of silver-painted LP's!

Somewhat hard to come by...so if you do, be sure you have beer handy.

Not what this movie was about

[gillman-3 · 1/10 · 3 July 2005]

I don't know what the guy was watching or smoking who commented on this before, but that isn't what this is about.

Some random publishing company got the rights to old Asain movies and decided it would be a good idea if he went to the Dollar store and bought ninja outfits to Americanize it a bit. Take half of a movie that made sense, then add in as many parts that make no sense, but have people with a strange habit of changing in and out of character.

This is possibly one of the worst things to do to your friends when they are drunk, yet one of the funniest things to make fun of. If MST3K was still going they would have a blast with this.

The movie makes no sense, you can't get any type of plot out of it, and it has random nudity. It is rather important that you not watch this movie unless you are trashed.

whew, what a stinker

[rhobotdog · 1/10 · 4 April 2006]

My package for Ninja Empire listed the same credits as IMDb but the names that rolled by and the story line were completely different. Maybe there are two 'Ninja Empires'? Here is who I saw: Directed by Bruce Lambert, Staring; Joff Houston, John Wilford, Christine Wells, Glen Carson, George Dickson, Allen Leung, Dennis Shek, Dinny Yip, & Bob Cheng. The Ninja, paramilitary, gangster plot is very fragmented and the fights are even more unbelievable than usual. I didn't find myself rooting for a hero because there wasn't one and I couldn't hate the villain because there were so many, and they were kind of likable in that "nice guy playing a villain in a really bad movie" sort of way.

Goofy ninja action means dull crime drama

[Leofwine_draca · 4/10 · 21 November 2017]

NINJA PHANTOM HEROES is one of the typical cut-and-paste ninja concoctions from director Godfrey Ho (hiding under his pseudonym of Bruce Lambert) and partner in crime producer Tomas Tang. As usual, there's some really goofy ninja material featuring the most wooden western actors they could find mixed in with an old Hong Kong or Taiwanese crime drama which is a real struggle to sit through. You'll be tempted to fast-forward the pasted-in movie segments just to enjoy the madness of the ninja action, complete with very basic camera FX and bizarre weaponry. I think if they took all of the various filmed ninja segments from Godfrey Ho flicks and put them into a film on their own then they'd have a masterpiece on their hands.

At 78 minutes, Ninja Empire is a decent return on your time investment

[tarbosh22000 · 5/10 · 27 December 2013]

Heaven help us all, it's Godfrey Ho time once again. In this nutty, wacky, nonsensical ninja outing, an evil baddie named Morris is using ninjas to smuggle Russian arms to the Middle East. You have a better way? But when two Hong Kong businessmen named Mr. Wong and Mr. Chan begin vying for the arms-trading deal with the Arabs, and a Korean assassin named Burt enters the picture, things quickly spiral out of control. Come to think of it, things were never in control in the first place. Knowing the full volatility of the situation, a Sgt. Glenn sends a man code named "Condor" (though it sounds like they call him "Condo" which would indeed confuse anyone who heard it) to HK to meet up with a woman named Christine, code named Yellow Bird. Together, the two crimefighters do their darndest to stamp out arms deals, nefarious ninjas, and other world ills. Can they do it? All of Godfrey Ho's (or as he is known this time around, "Bruce Lambert") trademarks are once again on display here: dubbing that does more harm than good, a confusing patchwork of different movies/plots/characters, funny abrupt cuts, and more silliness and absurdity than you can shake a ninja stick at. Truly this type of cinema is not for everyone - heck, we're not entirely sure it's for us - but fans should be comforted that there is no deviation whatsoever from the formula that they know and love.

The opening credits alone provide some laffs, what with the computer-generated title "Ninja Empire" appearing on an out-of-place black screen looking awkward, along with a bunch of seemingly misspelled names in the credits such as "Joff" and "Duncean". So far, so ridiculous. But there are minimal ninjas in this one. Whether that's a good thing or a bad thing is a matter of interpretation, but the movie is called Ninja Empire. No Ninja Empire is ever actually seen, but maybe it's an allusion to the Ninja Empire in our minds, hearts and souls. Hey, if I don't stretch, who will? But there are some excellent "ninja transformations", when people magically go from their street clothes to their ninja duds, and a ninja walks upside down on monkey bars using only his feet. So what ninja goods we get are noteworthy. But there should have been more of them.

But because of the dearth of ninjas, it's easy to forget this one. Outside of what we just mentioned, nothing really stands out. Besides footage of an airplane landing matched with sound effects sounding like a teapot whistling. This teapot airplane, or "Teaplane" will surely be studied by sound effects students and aviation fanatics for years to come. And at 78 minutes, Ninja Empire is a decent return on your time investment, but know you're getting into something pretty inconsequential. As long as that doesn't bother you, there is some fun to be had with Ninja Empire.

For Hardcore Bad Ninja Movie Fans Only

[rcoates-661-22249 · 6/10 · 26 August 2010]

There are more outrageously entertaining Godfrey Ho movies than Ninja Phantom Heroes, but those who have come to appreciate the man's unique vision will find more of the same to enjoy here. Mostly cobbled from a Chinese gangster potboiler, the movie's actual ninja to non-ninja screen time ratio is pretty paltry. Even the somewhat dull segments have a usually unintentional charm, however, with more than enough silly dubbing and odd dialog to keep bad movie warriors watching.

Among the highlights are a brief fight between a drunk white guy and three goofy Chinese guys; a guy throwing a cup of tea in his own face; any scene involving the characters "Baldy" and "Fatty"; gratuitous evil Chinese gangster chuckling; stick-wielding motorcyclists attacking a car; revenge accompanied by the line "You dirty rat"; and, of course, the obligatory disappear-and-go-poof ninja henchmen.

Potential victims, I mean viewers, should be aware that the version of this movie available as part of Mill Creek's Ninja Assassins 10-pack, confusingly retitled Ninja Empire (also the title of a different Godfrey Ho movie), is only 78 minutes long, whereas another version apparently runs 90 minutes. Frankly, though, since most people will be glad when it's over, it probably doesn't even matter.

Entertaining for lovers of z movies.

[dasa108 · 5/10 · 26 August 2020]

I don't have high expectations when it comes to Godfrey Ho movies. In this case, with actors who are not too prominent even in the sad world of Z cinema, we can say that there is safe entertainment. In this classic cut and paste we find eroticism and a story of white trafficking that ends with an unsustainable revenge (it is inconceivable that a group of murderers and mobsters cannot with a woman armed with a crossbow). Obviously, the villain of the Taiwanese film had a great chance to kill his enemy and wasted it. This cliché is too pitiful. Inside the ninja sequences things get worse: I've never seen a duel in my life where ninjas do pirouettes to shoot themselves. See to believe. In short, if you don't have anything to do, give it a try.