Regular visitors here will notice a sudden new look and title. That's because this is now a complimentary blog to our new larger web project Vintage Ninja.



Stay tuned for more...

Well, I'll start with a question: WHY DO YOU WATCH A LOW BUDGET NINJA MOVIE?

Potential answers:

-- Bad writing and acting, but at least the fights are cool

-- Bad fights, but at least there are hotties in ninja costumes

-- Soooo bad it's good, great for a party

-- Ninja costumes and exotic weaponry at least look cool on screen

-- Maybe they'll overcome the low budget with some legit espionage and tactical martial arts...

MASK OF THE NINJA has NONE of the above. NONE!!! Shitty fights, poorly directed and shot martial arts sequences (on which the movie is leaning on like a crutch), and the cheapest possible swapmeet/eBay swords. The costuming is a fucking joke, sub KILLER ELITE, way worse than the snowboarder gear in the SHINOBI series.

Honestly, what the fuck?

Why make a ninja movie if you're not going to bother with any effort in ninja costuming or gear. Don't get me wrong, I'm not expecting CASTLE OF OWLS-wear here, but a littke paint on even the cheapest foam rubber MORTAL COMBAT halloween stuff out there puts the Army/Navy store look of this piece of shit to shame.

Why make a ninja movie if you don't have a decent martial artist within earshot?

Legendary shinobi shadow skills are the only martial art you can put on screen where if you do it right, you don't even need another martial artist for a fight scene. Look at the prolonged building invasion sequences from the low-budget 80's - Sho Kosugi's the only martial artist there, everyone else is a nameless heavy waiting to become a chalk outline. He kills them off one by one with an exotic weapon or cleaver commando technique, each outdoing the last in terms of grisly gore or outre shock value.

That the huge advantage ninja flicks have over other martial arts flicks. It's impossible to pull off a liquid sword fight, a tae-kwon-do kicking rally or a karate bone-crushing session without the properly trained people taking all the hits. And they're skills not always natural to just any movie stuntman.

Sonny Chiba trained dozens of specialized stunt fighters (the Japan Action club) to take his stiff shit and make it look even more brutal on screen. Chuck Norris had his guys, Jackie and Samo and Yuen Bao worked more together than the 3 Stooges, etc. and so forth.

But if you're in a jam, and have only one guy with any sort of rub, a properly designed ninja movie is perfect. This is especially true for this contemporary-set flicks that American specialized in during the 80's craze. The whole "ancient skills unleashed on a modern world" gimmick, or the "traditionally trained Japanese master let loose on the streets of America" notion goes hand in hand. You get great shuriken vs. sub-machine gun scenes, every killing of a heavily armed guard via a 500 year old weapon reinforces hero. And you get an audience sitting on the edge of their seats wondering what goofy bladed doohickey is going to be unsheathed next, and where will this dude bury it on the next overconfident sap who challenges him.

BUT, if you have none of that, you get a pretty damn useless piece of unenjoyable exploitation. It's the modern low-budget curse.

There was a day when, if a guy lived in the Pacific Northwest, he could throw together a cheap Sasquatch costume and film a down and dirty fun-as-hell Bigfoot movie in his backyard. Nowadays, the same movie is shot DV in an Arizona parking lot with both the monster and the woods being added in from digital stock footage and composited on the level of a school project. Shit, I've seen scarecrow slasher films that didn't have a farm location to shoot in, so they put it in digitally. If you don't have a damn farm, don't make a scarecrow movie!!!

So good friends, skip this one. Although Kristy Wu is absolutely scrumptious...