Bullet Points: Ninja: American Warrior
If you need an idea of how important Shô Kosugi was to the ninja craze of the 1980’s, look no further than Filmark International’s Sho Kosugi Ninja Theater collection.
The series of pieced together, cheaply made, often incoherent ninja films featured an introduction by the man himself, Shô Kosugi. I do have to wonder if Shô actually watched the movies if he would have been so willing to basically put his “stamp of approval” on them. More than likely he collected some easy money and went on with his day… like a true ninja would.
In this edition of Bullet Points, I will review one of those pieced together, cheaply made and often incoherent ninja films (Volume 9 for those of you keeping score), 1987’s Ninja: American Warrior…
- She Dead: The movie begins with a woman who I surmised was testing for her ninja license. This unnamed woman battles a yellow ninja, a red ninja and a ninja with fire hands out in a field and defeats them all. At this point she is pretty damn proud of herself and rightfully so… but there is one ninja that remains, The Black Ninja… whom she plans on dealing with later that night. The unnamed woman does not defeat The Black Ninja, in fact the unnamed woman is killed by The Black Ninja, so she will no longer be a part of this movie. Shortly after her death, an unnamed bad guy shows up in dramatic fashion… the music cue when he comes in made me feel like I really should have known who the hell he was, but I didn’t. The unnamed bad guy wants The Black Ninja to kill a police woman known as Amazonia. The Black Ninja quotes him a price of $100,000 dollars and the deal is done.
- Deal or No Deal: The movie cuts to a drug deal that is about to go wrong… drug kingpin Taylor and his entourage are delivering the goods when the authorities surprise them. Taylor, being a well trained killing machine (more on that later), manages to escape but he’s not going to leave his guys in the lurch. That means the drug deal gone wrong transmogrifies into an arrest gone terribly wrong. Taylor frees his captive minions and all the cops end up dead.
- Hit the John: It is time to meet our titular American Warrior… it’s a guy named John (who dons a white ninja suit when he’s in action). John is being tasked to go Thailand on a top secret confidential mission to take down Taylor’s drug empire. When John arrives in Thailand he is instructed to meet up with Amazonia, who will help him on this mission. So we briefly see a meeting between John and Amazonia, where instead of teaming they decide to split up… John will deal with the Taylor situation, while Amazonia takes care of the Triad led by The Shrew.
- Go Get Your Shine Box: Next up we get a guy in a vest, who hands a shoe shine boy some money and a cassette tape and asks him to deliver the tape to a cop named Charlie. Moments after the vest guy hands off the cassette, some goons who work for The Shrew catch up with vest guy and beat the crap out of him, they want that tape back. Vest guy keeps quiet and pays for his silence with his life… Eventually the goons turn their attention to the shoe shine boy, who sings like a canary… that leads the goons to Charlie’s place, where they recover the tape, but since it is possible that Charlie and his pregnant wife listened to the tape, they kill them both. After this I don’t think the tape is ever mentioned again… the shoe shine boy is mentioned later when The Shrew orders his death.
- Anybody Seen Ricky?: Amazonia ends up teaming up with a guy named Ricky instead of John like the movie promised. I assume Ricky is a cop, I know he is very upset that his friend Charlie was killed by The Shrew’s men, so he is out for revenge… At some point the price on Amazonia’s head jumps from $100,000 to $1,000,000 dollars… inflation, am I right?! The Black Ninja is looking to collect and he is going to do so with a deadly cobra that he lets loose in Amazonia’s bedroom while she is sleeping… it seems to me like it would be easier if he just stabbed her with his sword while she was sleeping. Amazonia wakes up before the cobra can strike and she bundles the snake up in the bed sheet and then proceeds to slam the sheet on the ground repeatedly before the action spills outside and we get The Black Ninja vs. Amazonia, who eventually fights him while she is wearing nothing but her panties. The Black Ninja does not manage to kill Amazonia and after their fight I don’t think he is ever mentioned again… the next day Ricky is ready to get his revenge but doesn’t know his own girlfriend betrayed him (she had been secretly working for The Shrew!) Ricky almost ends up dead, but Amazonia makes the save and ends up captured as a result. But John briefly shows up after battling some black ninjas, but not sure if any of them were THE Black Ninja and saves Amazonia. I am not sure what the hell happened to Ricky… he does pop back up long enough to get killed. Thanks for coming Ricky.
- What is it Good For?: The movie gets really John heavy for a bit… we see him visit Amazonia at the hospital, we see him nearly get blown up in a car, we see him dodging bullets by flipping and rolling… but then John gets shot while attempting to scale a wall. It turns out the bad guys that John was dealing with were Taylor’s guys, which does actually make sense since Taylor is the reason John is here in the first place. When Taylor takes off John’s ninja hood, he’s in for a shock… John and Taylor served in Vietnam together. We get some flashbacks to their time in Nam, when an injured Taylor sacrifices himself so John could get away and get reinforcements and then John and the reinforcements returning to rescue Taylor who found himself in quite the predicament buried up to his head in sand! It briefly becomes a happy reunion as the two old comrades share some wine, before Taylor goes on a drunken anti-Vietnam War rant and how he never went home because he didn’t want to be mistreated like so many others, plus what kind of work was he going to do there?!?! There’s not much need for trained killing machines in the United States. What a twist!
- Taming of the Shrew: We take a break from the John/Taylor story and cut back to Amazonia who takes out the unnamed bad guy who had the dramatic entrance way back when this movie started and then that goes right into Amazonia arresting The Shrew… Now it is time for John to finish his story with Taylor, which includes John battling a red and yellow ninja who show up, before he finally uses some magic hoops to trap Taylor, but Taylor proves to be a relentless foe which forces John to do something he really doesn’t want to do to his old war buddy.
Not surprisingly this “ninja masterpiece” was directed by Godfrey Ho… possibly the only man on the planet qualified to mash up the movies that made up Ninja: American Warrior and attempt to make a story out of it. I do have one question, after watching this does this mean I need to track down the other Sho Kosugi Ninja Theater movies?!
There’s no question that you should check out these Bonus Bullet Points…
- Favorite Quote: “She’s a mean old cow.”
- Bastard Count: I counted a total of four instances where “bastard” or “bastards” was said.
- Vague Quote: “That guy is some kind of dude.”
