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Reviews
Golden Ninja Warrior (1986)
This movie left a bit of a bad taste in my mouth.
****Plot spoilers ahead! Beware!****
Okay now I like old ninja movies. The fights are usually pretty well choreographed, the storylines are unbelievable and the dubbing is hilarious. While Golden Ninja Warriors has all these things there are a few points that I didn't totally enjoy.
The good side of Golden Ninja Warriors is that it is bad. The Golden Ninjas (who don't wear gold, only black by the way) and the Red Ninjas have fought for centuries over a butt-ugly statue that gives the owner ultimate power or something else stupid. I wasn't paying a whole load of attention to the narrative at the start. There is another storyline involving the female golden ninja and hunting down the killer of the father. It turns out that the evil ninja (okay I'm not using the characters' names but I really gave up caring about names about fifteen minutes into it.They will be known as good ninja, girl ninja, evil ninja etc. It's easier) works for the girl ninja's father's killer. What a coincidence! Now the fighting in this movie is pretty good. The only thing is that they have sped up the film speed so it comes across as more Keystone Cops than Ninja Action! Hilarious!
Another excellent thing about this movie is the ninja magic. Now when I first remember hearing these words in American Ninja I laughed. A lot. However this movie makes American Ninja look like oscar winning stuff! Badly done stop motion camera action stinks this movie up seriously. The editing jumps around all over the place. Don't get me started on the Wonder Woman costume changes. Man it's really bad. But good. You know what I mean.
Now for the bad points. Like I stated above I have a problem with this movie. It's the attitude towards women that this women has. I know that it is an early Asian movie but it made the movie unappealing. Within the first ten or fifteen minutes we get to see a girl being viciously whipped for a prolonged period of time. This is followed by the beginnings of a sexual assault. Now there is plenty of nudity and sex in this movie and, usually, I'm all for it but this movie just makes it look as unappealing as possible. Women seemed to be continually beaten in this movie and not just in the fight scenes. The part that really got was the rape scene near the end. The good female ninja is captured by the evil ninja and given to her father's killer. When we next see her she has been bound and proceeds to be beaten for about five minutes in pretty bad way. She is then raped. Now this is the part I didn't get. She is a highly skilled ninja assassin. Now I was expecting some amazing escape before this happened. I sat there thinking any second now she will break this guys neck and get away. Any second now. Any second. Okay this isn't a good thing at all. Now I have watched a lot of movies, good and bad. I've seen movies that slightly glamourize it and I've seen movies that portray it as the brutal act it is. This movie just makes it seem a bit bland really. It just seemed a bit pointless.
All in all there were large parts of this movie I could have done without. The action was comedically good but it could have done without most of the sex and nudity (am I really saying that?).
Where's Michael Dudikoff when you need him....
The Ninja Squad (1986)
Wow who would have thought that ninja headbands were so cool!
****WARNING! SPOILERS AHEAD!****
Oh boy what can I say about this movie. It killed me to watch this, both because it is awful to watch and as a result it is amazingly funny. It is also incredibly confusing. There are two stories in this movie that have almost nothing to do with each other and barely impact on each other and then the film just ends.
On one side is Billy and his quest for vengeance against some local drug dealers who killed his mother and kidnapped his sister. Now Billy is a terrible ninja. In fact he barely does anything ninja-like whatsoever, unless you call using semi-automatic weapons and getting gunned down by the police at the end.
The other story involves Billy's master, Gordon and another ninja called Ivan the Red. Now this is just plain silly.Gordon won't fight Ivan to begin with so Ivan decides to kill one ninja a month to persuade him to change his mind. First of all, what's with these dumb names? Gordon the ninja!? What!? How is that in any way meant to instill fear in an enemy? No offence to anyone called Gordon but if you were going to be a ninja, change your name to something a bit cooler. Next of all how can the ninjas in this movie meant to be inconspicuous with those outfits? The two main ninjas in this film have a load of tinfoil on them! Shiny!. The next thing I noticed is that all the ninjas are all middle-aged European dudes. Not one Asian ninja among them. Now the ending of this movie just sucked big time. The ninjas fought for like thirty seconds, the good guy won and then it ended. That's it! No more!
On the plus side there are two really shining moments in this film for me. First is the always good dubbing. Method actors these guys are not. Any more wooden and I would have got splinters in my eyes from watching. The other is the headbands. Every ninja in this movie has a headband on that says ninja. What is that all about? Do they think that we need to be told that they are ninjas? The masks, sharp pointy weapons and ability to kill people stealthily kind of gave that away. Maybe it's an advertising thing. Sponsored by ninja...
Cool.
Now where can I buy one of those cool headbands....
Shark Attack (1999)
More like Shark Plot Point than attack
****Plot spoilers ahead... Again though the title is basically giving it away. Ummm I'm fairly sure that this movie is going to involve more than one shark and they will be attacking.****
What can I say about Shark Attack? Well its got Casper Van Dien in it! That makes worth at least one look for a start. I like Casper. He's a pretty cool guy. I can almost believe that he really is a kick butt marine biologist. Man I may have watched too much movie crap.
I like this movie. It's bad. Seriously. It doesn't even really have all that much to do with sharks directly. Sure they bite a few people but they are there more to advance the plot than anything else. As far as the plot goes some scientist guy whose name we don't really care about gets murdered. Casper runs to investigate. Discovers secret experiments involving sharks and a cure for cancer and an even more unscrupulous plot involving oil drilling rights. Casper wins and gets the girl. Now I have to say this. Casper pends a lot of time in this movie wet. A LOT. I thought he was destined to become some kind of were-shark thing for a split second.
Obviously the real selling point for this flick is Mr Van Dien. I like the dude. He makes some seriously dodgy movies. In this movie he did everything. He was the scientist with the answers. He takes on sharks single handed ( by the way Casper when fighting sharks single handed don't poke the shark with the harpoon gun, shoot it. SHOOT! ) He rouses the local fishermen to fight back and take on the armed, trained, although admittedly pretty dumb, bad guys and he leaps onto a moving helicopter and take the head bad guy ( hammed up in style by Ernie Hudson of Ghostbusters fame. Nice accent there Ernie. ). By the way, I felt there could have been a bit more blood and sharks invloved in the big finale. One rubber shark just doesn't cut it with me
So my opinion of this movie... see it. It is better than I was prepared for even if it was dumb as a bag of hammers. Hey it still more watchable than Jeepers Creepers though.
Octopus 2: River of Fear (2001)
This movie hurts my head.....
******WARNING. Spoilers ahead... although the movie is called Octopus 2. You kinda know what you are going to get really.******
I got this movie for Christmas along with 23 other top quality movies (including the first one) from my fiancee and her mother. They must really hate me! Only joking! Can't beat a load of bad movies for a great xmas!
Now Octopus 2 is a movie you have to be in the mood for. It's bad. The movie is about an octopus attacking people in New York. Okay this will be a stretch of the imagination from the very beginning. The first question that sprung into my warped little mind was how deep is that river? I mean that octopus is pretty damn big. It tries to cop a feel of the Statue of Liberty at one point. It's obviously very lonely too. Now here is the plot spoiler- big mutant octopus attacks and eats random people in New York using bad special effects and stock footage from the first Octopus movie. What a cheap killer octopus!
Now I don't think that this review needs an in depth synopsis of this masterpiece. It's bad and that is all that needs to be said really. BAD! However I would like to highlight just one thing that stands out in this movie and that is our hero Detective Nick. I like this guy. Once he has an idea in his head he will not let it go. About twenty minutes into this movie he has realised that there is an octopus killing people and everyone else is wrong. There is no evidence to support this but damn it he is right! How could it be anything else! His partner as well was so stereotypical it was scary. He was leaving the scuba team that week! He might as well have tattooed VICTIM in glowing letters across his forehead.
My recommendation for this movie is buy it! Hilarity prevails in every scene. Not for the faint of heart or the sane of mind. Oh this is so bad. Did I say that already?
Highlander II: The Quickening (1991)
What?!
Highlander is a classic film. It had an original plot, top quality actors and an amazing soundtrack. Even the little things that meant we had to have a suspension of disbelief ( Connery as a Spaniard with a Scottish accent who lived in Japan or a French sounding Scottish Highlander. C'mon. Seriously) were a good thing. So what happened to the second one? Aliens? Where did that come from? Ramirez is still alive? How does he get his head to stay on his shoulders? Staples? I thought the prize was to help mankind. Didn't work did it? They should have left well enough alone, let alone made more. It all leaves one burning question: in the first movie the premise was "there can be only One". So where the hell where all these other ones hiding? Is there more than one prize? Someone cut my head off because it really hurts right now.