Revenge of the Ninja (DVD)
I am talking about ninjas here without any shred of irony. I love ninjas. When I was a boy I would look in the backs of Martial Arts magazines at the corner store. There I would find little black and white ads selling everything from shuriken (Chinese Stars) to nunchucks. You could even buy those ninja boots and bear claw gloves. They sold this in the 80′s on the backs of a magazines! Crazy.
I really wanted to talk about Enter the Ninja here. Unfortunately it is out-of-print and I can’t really send you to a page that doesn’t exist. I did find a trailer on YouTube which you can enjoy below. You don’t actually have to watch this movie to understand the Revenge movie. There is no continuing story arc or anything like that. But IMHO Enter the Ninja is the better of the two. Watch the trailer and I’ll finish up below.
How was that? Awesome right? What is it that I love about these movies besides EVERYTHING? My parents are not bad people. They did allow me to watch these movies when I was young. And these were R rated movies of the worst (or best) kind. 80′s R rated violence. Blood spilling, slow knives. The thing is it all looked fake. Maybe that was OK then. 80′s R rated nudity. Movies made since simply cannot touch the high level of soft gloss nudity.
Sho Kosugi is a bad ass. I just have to say that right now. He was an Asian role model for me to look up to. Yes it is true that he was a ninja that would slit enemy throats. But at least he wasn’t Mickey Rooney in Breakfast with Tiffany’s. You know the typical rar rar rar Asian guy with circle glasses and bucked teeth. Sho Kosugi played a humble character. He was just trying to make a good life for his family. These damn criminals just pushed him to the limit.
I really hope one day Quentin Tarantino makes a better kung fu/karate/ninja/samurai movie. I thought parts of Kill Bill were just OK. If he made the Inglorious Basterds of ninja movies. Now that would be something I’d buy tickets for. Until then I can study the master, Sho, at work.
