November 24, 2009 02:00 PM | by 
In Ninja Assassin, the Ninja’s could toss a shuriken (throwing star) to your chest faster than a speeding bullet. If you were the enemy, frankly, you wouldn’t be able to unsheathe your gun before they have wiped out your entire force. Before Ninja Assassin, the early 80s and 90s came the explosion of Ninja everything. This explosion led to numerous TV shows, thousands of films, merchandise and students haphazardly enrolling in martial arts courses. Amongst the many old films, a few of them were actually pretty cool. Below I’ll talk about a few movies that I’ve seen, not in any particular ranked order.
The first of Ninja films in the US, and besides his time with Bruce Lee, this pretty much helped Chuck become a legend here. If you ever wondered why people say Chuck can beat any Ninja with his eyes closed and hands and legs tied behind his back, this pretty much the movie to watch.
Ninja III: the domination
Ah yes, the TRIFECTA. Ghosts, Ninjas and big cleavage hotties, Hollywood knew how to make the cash flow back then too.They only have this in VHS, its so old. Going along with the popular trend of Poltergeist films, the main enemy was a possessed Kunoichi (female Ninja) who in the start of the film took out an entire army, tanks, soldiers with M-16’s, all with just her regular Ninja weapons. Of course the only person who could take her down was the one and only SHO KOSUGI! Oh man it was great. There’s some funny scenes in this, due to the poor work in B movies back then, its recommendable for that alone.
There was a period of time in the early 90’s when the American media was obsessed with making white guys do things that were more common to other cultures. You had white rappers like Vanilla Ice, Snow, then you had Jean Claude Van Damme in Bloodsport, and of course the next progression would be American Ninja. And actually, I thought it was pretty cool and tried to stay true to the Ninja history and folklore. They picked a decent actor who was well mastered in the martial arts, was brooding and aloof. I wouldn’t be surprised if it influenced Final Fantasy characters in the making.
If you want to see a lot of cheesy dialogue involving YMCA-like group of fighters, with all the stuff that makes Ninja’s classic, this is it. Although its old, it still got a pretty high score of 4.5 stars from the point of die hard fans.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles I/II
The whole TMNT series, movies, shows, merchandise was a kids absolute dream. The Turtles were quite a funny bunch, adding much slapstick comedy to their battles, while their enemies had no sense of humor at all. This type of hero gave kids and everyone else to feel good about kicking bad guy’s butts. These guys had to actually wear super-hot suits that dehydrated the stars, causing them heat stroke. Hey I just read they’re working a sequel this 2012.
Final slice:
There are many newer films like Azumi, Blade and of course Ninja Assassin that may have borrowed from the above films. Watch one or two of these and get back to me and tell what they borrowed! Some of these films are so old that you may have use your imagination to actually get them. Who still owns a working VCR? Now some of these movies are actually remastered to Blu-Ray, so I highly recommend you get if you can find them on Amazon. Old films are dirt cheap, even if remastered on Blu-ray.
Bonus poster (Shows you the quality of 80s posters before photoshop)
