Ranked: Shô Kosugi – 80s Edition
Shô Kosugi was born in Tokyo, Japan on June 17, 1948. And for those of us who have been lucky enough to watch his films over the years, we also know that Shô Kosugi was born to play a ninja!
In honor of Shô’s birthday we wanted to show him some love by counting down his epic run of movies (and his short lived TV series) from the 1980s. (Honorable Mention to Filmark International’s Sho Kosugi Ninja Theater).
In addition to most of the staff of Bulletproof Action, I invited some special guests to join me for this Kosugi celebration…
- Keith Rainville: Can’t have a ninja party without the ninja expert himself from VintageNinja.net!
- Austin Trunick: Shô is one of the action stars who helped build Cannon Films, so it only made sense to call in the services of the author of The Cannon Film Guide.
- Robb Antequera: The Cinema Drunkie isn’t just Don “The Dragon” Wilson’s #1 fan, he’s a Kosugi fan too!
- Matt Poirier: I would guess more fans were exposed to the works of Shô Kosugi on video than they were in the theater, so who better to weigh in on this list than the Direct to Video Connoisseur.
- Jason McNeil: Last but not least, a newcomer to our countdowns, you may remember Jason from the series, Stars Stunts Action. Jason may be the only contribution on this list to have actually met the man himself, Shô Kosugi.
Now let me throw it to Keith to get this show on the road…
Keith J. Rainville: It was January of 1984. The so-called “Ninja Boom” or “Ninja Craze” was in full swing. Unfortunately, that full swing was about to miss the ball in what ended up being one of the first visible cracks in the foundation of a pop culture movement I loved.
Cannon’s Revenge of the Ninja had set a precise tone and established an exploitation vocabulary that I, as a young teen, wanted more of in great volume. The recipe — ancient ninja cults still operated in Japan; a loner in the U.S. using those arcane skills was invincible; the black suit, sword across the back and throwing stars were as gospel as Batman’s horned cowl and utility belt; only a ninja can stop a ninja.
The promise of a weekly ninja TV show on network TV meant the craze was jumping out of R-rated grindhouse theaters and into primetime appointment television living rooms.
Sadly, what we got, NBC’s The Master, even in terms of formulaic fare like ChiPS and Knight Rider, left too much to be desired, and a potential great leap forward felt more like a trip and fall. Six months previous, ABC attempted a similar launch with Michael Beck of The Warriors fame and the legendary Mako in The Last Ninja, which sadly never took, despite being outright superb. Centered on an American ninja operating Batman-like against terrorists lead by Richard Lynch, it was heavy in the more esoteric aspects of ninjutsu and martial arts philosophy. NBC’s project was more grounded, less intellectual and due completely to the presence of Sho Kosugi, way more saturated with sweet-ass ninja weapons and high-kicking fight scenes.
The show’s initial director was Robert Clouse, which was a genuine history-making moment as he became the only auteur to work with the hat-trick of martial arts icons — Bruce Lee, Jackie Chan and Shô Kosugi. His work was heralded by the excellent Bill Conti theme song, an all-time banger and required for any aficionado of 80s TV music. The core cast of established TV star Timothy Van Patten, movie legend Lee Van Cleef and Kosugi as series villain, fight choreographer and stunt double was strong… on paper.
I remember my dad — and he was not alone in this — just couldn’t handle Van Cleef, who he had seen kill The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms, and dominate the screen in spaghetti westerns, now wearing a satin ninja suit pretending to be a Zen master martial assassin. It was probably the show’s single biggest misstep, as the spry and dynamic Kosugi doubled the 60-year-old Van Cleef for any combat scene. Suddenly this old guy was moving five times faster, crouching in positions you knew his old knees could never achieve, throwing kicks that body just could not accomplish. It looked silly, annihilated the credibility of show, and rather humiliated the screen legend in many a long-time fan’s eyes.
Besides that, the show suffered from not-enough-ninja syndrome, and too-much-wise-cracking-Van-Patten-syndrome, and WAY too much hamster syndrome and a new town every week/new innocents to protect structure that even in 1984 was eye-rollingly tired.
The Master was also pitted on a Friday night against lethal competition like The Dukes of Hazard and Dallas, so honestly, it had no hope from the start. Add to that the 1984 Boston Celtics and LA Lakers were at the apex of their legendary rivalry and games pre-empted several episodes of all primetime shows that year in two huge markets (including mine, dammit!), so yeah, in general only the staunchest ninja-maniacs were watching The Master, and the cold hard truth was there just weren’t enough of us…
A couple years later, VHS tapes under the series name “The Master Ninja” hit rental stores, with Kosugi-centric clamshell packaging. Did dweebs like me blow our paper route money on these new ninja movies? YES. Were they new ninja movies? NO. They were compilations of two Master episodes strung together to break our little hearts. Burned as we all felt, at least we could finally see the whole often un-aired series.
A couple of these “movies” accidentally fell into Public Domain, too, getting a whole new life as riff-fodder for Mystery Science Theater 3000 (Master Ninja Theme Song!) and filler on early 2000s Mill Creek DVD box sets. Finally in 2018 a Kino Lorber Blu-ray set did the show justice and the high quality presentation made it more enjoyable that it ever was previously.
So in 2024 is The Master worth watching? If you love 80s cheese, yes. If you love anything 80s ninja, hell-yes. But I can’t fault you for seeking out a YouTube super-cut of all the Kosugi scenes, either. The Master was a bit of tough pill to swallow in 1984, but time has helped, and decades later it is legit nin-sploitation history.
Austin Trunick: Shô’s trilogy of Cannon classics have more than their fair share of silly elements (the golf course massacre, the Village People playground battle, “the hook,” et al.) but 9 Deaths of the Ninja (1985) makes them look like grim, deadly serious affairs in comparison—and I love it.
Shô Kosugi plays Spike Shinobi (great name), aka special agent Lollipop (fantastic codename), the most useful member of America’s top anti-terrorism squad. When a Nazi kidnaps a busload of tourists and hides them away in his cave in a jungle on the side of a volcano, it’s up to this trio of heroes to mount the rescue mission.
9 Deaths of the Ninja has it all, from a wheelchair-bound Nazi bad guy with a Dr. Strangelove accent and a pet monkey wearing a diaper to an all-female commando unit in short-shorts uniforms whose leader’s name is Honey Hump. You get ‘80s low-budget action staples Brent Huff and Blackie Dammett in supporting roles, pint-sized Kane and Shane Kosugi playing kicking butt and setting a thug’s underwear on fire, a little person hit squad, and henchmen who spend 90% of their screen time laughing evilly. Plus, tons and tons of ninja action, with Shô dispatching enemies with his full arsenal of ninja tools—usually with a sucker hanging out of his mouth like Kojak and dressed in a camo outfit with matching shuriken cufflinks and belt buckle. It’s the exact sort of movie I would have written as a ninja-obsessed 13-year-old, and I mean that in the best possible way. 9 Deaths of the Ninja has everything . . . except, well, deaths of the ninja, I guess.
Ridiculousness aside—and there is a lot of ridiculousness—9 Deaths of the Ninja is a pretty awesome showcase for Shô Kosugi’s action prowess. So much runtime is dedicated to Shô being a martial arts badass, while utilizing just about every ninja weapon you could have ordered from the back pages of Inside Kung-Fu magazine in the early 1980s. Shô’s given multiple enemy base infiltrations, an underwater assault of a floating brothel (!), and even a lengthy training montage complete with watermelon sword slicing.
Also worth mentioning is that 9 Deaths was Shô’s best opportunity to show off his comedic skills. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that some of the most athletically gifted action stars also have incredible comic timing. (Here’s looking at you, Jackie and Jean-Claude.) Shô’s no different, and there’s a scene in 9 Deaths where he fights a gang of goons while disguised as an old man—the way he quickly switches back and forth between hobbling around on his cane and busting skulls never fails to make me laugh. (His almost slicing a kitten in half with a skull gets me every time, as well.) It’s a shame we didn’t get a whole series of action-comedies from him.
Chris the Brain: Shô Kosugi started the 80s as a hired assassin for Mr. Venarius in Enter the Ninja and Shô Kosugi ended the 80s as a hired assassin for Mr. MacCready in Blind Fury. The two movies serve as perfect bookends for everything that happened in between.
Kosugi’s screen time may have been limited in Blind Fury but he definitely maximized his minutes. Kosugi tangles with the Zatoichi like, Nick Parker (Rutger Hauer), in MacCready’s swanky penthouse as part of the movie’s action packed (and electrifying) finale! It is surprising that Kosugi didn’t get more work as a heavy in action movies following Blind Fury. He may not have been Hollywood’s idea of a leading man, but he proved here he could be an effective villainous henchman.
Chad Cruise: After Shô Kosugi Revenged in Revenge of the Ninja and forced people to Pray in Pray for Death, he returned to the leading role as a James Bond-ian superspy in Black Eagle. The major difference between Kosugi’s Ken Tani and Bond being that he’s Japanese and kicks fast and hard enough to make a man’s jaw break while simultaneously shitting his pants. It’s a skill not often shown in these films. Kosugi, however, also brings with him something that no Bond film has ever been able to replicate; the joys and dangers of fatherhood.
Any fan of Kosugi’s has seen his children in nearly all of his films and probably has even watched a couple of Kane Kosugi’s movies out of sheer loyalty, but it’s clear that having kids makes being a super ninja badass extremely difficult. I’ve noticed over the past decade of parenthood that my children have taken up a fair amount of my time and I’m not even a superspy under the employment of the U.S. Government. Just imagine if I was! I would never have time to write articles about Jean Claude Van Damme’s hair. Speaking of Van Damme, he’s young and a bad guy here. He’s also Russian and does the splits at least 3 times. Pretty standard splitting from the man but early JCVD villainy is wonderful to see and he and Kosugi get to show off their kicks against each other multiple times. It’s not the best movie of 1988, but it might be the best action movie that takes place on the island of Malta released in 1988!
Matt Spector: Some might find it sacrilegious but a ninja with guns is too much fun for me. Rage of Honor sees Shô Kosugi play Shiro Tanaka as not necessarily a ninja but he sure uses lots of ninja skills and all types of weapons in his role as a federal drug agent. When Shiro’s partner is murdered he goes all vigilante, not because of revenge, but because of honor. Rage of Honor starts off really strong with a action set piece that not only has Shiro use shuriken to stop a bad guy, but he also sticks a gun where the sun don’t shine of a bad guy. Camo wearing ninjas with guns and flamethrowers are never a bad thing and I love a crossbow in my action movie. The major down side (or positive if you prefer) of Rage of Honor is that neither Kane nor Shane show up making this just a Shô Kosugi movie and not a Kosugi movie.
Jason McNeil: Perhaps surprisingly, my favorite Shô Kosugi movie of the 80s is, without a doubt, Ninja III: The Domination.
A bizarre, beautiful, action-packed bouillabaisse of a movie that, as Richard Kraft explains (in the excellent 2014 documentary, Electric Boogaloo: The Wild, Untold Story of Cannon Films), “managed to take The Exorcist, a ninja movie and combine it with Flashdance.” It stars Lucinda Dickey (who was Cannon’s “go-to girl that year”) as an aerobics instructor who becomes possessed by the ghost of a dead ninja, then sets about the task of murdering, shinobi-style, all the police officers who brought him down in a hail of gunfire on a golf course – including, ultimately, her new boyfriend. Lucinda the Aerobics Ninja sinks deeper and deeper into her “Linda Blair with a sword” nightmare, until (you guessed it!) Shô Kosugi shows up, wearing a tsuba (hand guard) from a samurai sword as the most badass eye patch since David Ogilvy sold a million men’s dress shirts. Kosugi pulls double duty as both Shinobi-Wan Kenobi and Shinto Father Karras, taking our possessed 80s hottie to a temple full of orange-robed martial arts monks for a good, old-fashioned ninja exorcism and, after fighting all the monks who somehow become possessed as well, Shô yanks the evil ninja spirit out of her and battles it to the death – again – one presumes for good this time, because it was killed by a ninja, and, as we are reminded, “Only a ninja can kill a ninja!
Matt Poirier: This is a fun Cannon actioner, but from a ninja movie standpoint, it’s like they’re all just getting the hang of how this whole ninja thing works. It’s not chock full of ninjas the way the American Ninja films are, and Kosugi is a better lead in Revenge of the Ninja than Franco Nero is here–though you gotta love Nero’s too sweet ‘stash! Further down the list of my Kosugi films because he’s not in it as much, but as an overall Cannon film, I always enjoy it.
Robb Antequera: No one repped the ninja subgenre of action movies better than Shô Kosugi. He practically defined it for generations past, present, and future with films such as Revenge of the Ninja and 9 Deaths of the Ninja. But with Pray for Death, I truly believe Kosugi gave the world a full on Ninja masterpiece. Think of a Ninja version of Rolling Thunder, and you have Pray for Death. Kosugi is at his all-time best here, delivering a performance that is confident, heartbreaking, and at times, down right terrifying. Once he hits the point of no return in the film, he’s 100% believable as a man who is about to become the personification of death, leading to a climax that is one of the greatest things I have ever seen. Just pure bliss for fans of not only Kosugi, but action as well. Coincidentally, this would be the last Ninja movie that Kosugi would make until his appearance in Ninja Assassin 24 years later. Well, when you make the most badass Ninja movie ever, there’s not much left to prove after that. And if you ask me… It’s still the best.
Chris DePetrillo: What can I say about Revenge of the Ninja that I haven’t already said countless times? This is a film that I have loved quite literally for the majority of my life; I even still have the VHS tape that my cousin made in the 80’s when he recorded it (along with The Terminator) off of HBO. It was the first R-rated movie I ever saw…hell, it was the first R-rated movie that my son ever saw!
The casting of Kosugi brought an air of legitimacy to Cannon’s ninja trilogy, but of the three (not to mention the other films on this list) this is not just a film I have a sentimental attachment to, it’s also the one that I consider to be THE perfect ninja film. Sure, there was more action in the opening moments alone of Revenge of the Ninja than some of the films that myself and my fellow reviewers have endured over the years, but let’s not forget that this is a film that hits an emotional chord as well. The scene where Kosugi’s Cho Osaki breaks his vow to leave the past behind and once again becomes the Black Ninja is one of my favorite scenes in movie history (that music!), and even though we had already seen fight after fight, that was the moment when you knew that the you-know-what was about to hit the fan. I’m happy to say that I own every single film on this list, but those other eight will always come a distant second to Revenge of the Ninja.
