I've always been of the principle that to truly appreciate good cinema, one must also experience the bad in order to be objective. As much as I love the good old fashioned exploitation, finding the good can be like looking for the proverbial needle in the haystack. Entertainment however is not necessarily dependant on quality. Which if you have ever experienced an International Film Distribution Release (IFD), then will know quality is a rare commodity.
Is this film any good?
In summary……no!
Buy This Title
But that would be a ridiculously short review and so let's put it into a bit more context. Richard Harrison the nominal “lead” was contracted to appear in several productions by Joseph Lai. What eventually happened was these scenes were spliced Frankenstein-like into other features to create fresh product. The fact that the joins were crudely constructed were of little interest to the producers, whose sole interest was profit rather than artistic merit. When later interviewed, even Richard Harrison had little idea of how many movies he actually ended up in.
The plot for what it's worth has “priest” Antonio along with off/on companion Dragon seeking a lost treasure whilst avoiding Ishihara and his assasins. In the meantime, Master Gordon (Richard Harrison) must protect his brother Antonio from Ringo (Stuart Smith) who is seeking vengeance on Antonio for putting him in jail.
So where to start…..
The dubbing of the English-speaking actors is atrocious as the lips don't even match despite being dubbed into the same language they are speaking. The hairstyles reflect the 1980's production with some truly awful mullets. Only slight problem is that these extra scenes are spliced into a movie apparently set around the turn of the 19th century.
As with other IFD efforts, the ninjas are brightly coloured, but who would have thought that for a supposedly secret sect, wearing bandanas with ninja emblazoned across them might be a giveaway? All these sequences appear to take place on top of the same hill, as Master Gordon stares sternly at each approaching opponent. Except for the one sequence where he talks to his brother, in order to join the two narratives together. This conversation may have taken place across time and space as clearly there are two different locations and time zones here or simply bad editing from a creative team that couldn't care less about continuity.
It also helps if your stunt doubles actually look like the person they are doubling, same colour hair would be a start. The final confrontation is actually rendered pointless by the actual narrative but then if you are marketing it as a ninja movie, you probably need some ninjas in there somewhere.
The narrative is unsurprisingly all over the place. Characters change relationships from scene to scene with Antonio and Dragon at one point fighting, going their separate ways, only to be back together again after a ninja interlude. Antonio and his cross are a blatant “Django” steal and it all goes spaghetti western style in the finale of the “original” part of the feature.
In short this is not good, it's not even competent. The fact it is even in focus is a minor miracle. Like a lot of B-movie producers, Joesph Lai was about profit. The goal was to make a quantity of product cheaply to sell internationally and capitalize on market trends. At the time, the Ninja was a popular trend with Cannon's “American Ninja” series and Sho Kosugi vehicles demonstrating a profitable genre which Lai was swift to exploit.
What you have as a result is quite simply trash. If you want quality then avoid. You'll only hurl out the disc from your player like a shuriken dart. However, if bad cinema is your poison, then be my guest. This is exploitation at its worst and for that perversely entertaining for all the wrong reasons. Just don't say you weren't warned!
