Black Tight Killers (Review)
Black Tight Killers
aka 俺にさわると危ないぜ aka Ore ni Sawaru to Abunaize aka If You Touch Me Danger
1966
Screenplay by Ryuzo Nakanishi and Michio Tsuzuki
Based on the novel by Michio Tsuzuki
Directed by Yasuharu Hasebe
Black Tight Killers is an essential film. In a just universe, it would be a well-known classic instead of a fairly known cult movie. It assaults the senses with a full force blast of 1960s gogo excess from the opening credits, and just puts the pedal to the metal. The awesomeness is of such force that even viewers who shy away from the 1950s and 60s Japanese action cinema will be pulled along. The film is a visual feast, with nearly every scene so full of glorified excess of ocular excitement that your eyes will be in danger of going all ADHD on you.
Black Tight Killers starts with Akira Kobayashi as dashing war photographer Daisuke Honda doing daring deeds during a pitched battle that wouldn’t look out of place in any cheap 1960s Italian war movie that was also shot on a small set. But soon he’s flying back to Japan and we’re blasted by dancing gogo girls in black tights stomping through the opening credits. The film features a gang of fighting femmes (the titular Black Tight Killers) who use their ninja skills on a quest to recover stolen treasure before the villains can. They cross paths with Daisuke Honda, whose recent girlfriend Yuriko Sawanouchi (Chieko Matsubara) is kidnapped due to her family connections to the looted treasure. While the ninja ladies are at first adversarial with Honda and were attempting to kill Yuriko, eventually they become a team to go after the real villains. Honda’s lady killer charms combined with the actual ladies who are killers using ninja seduction skills (the Octopus Pot move traps you know which part of Honda’s body inside you know where of the ninja lass!) means we have plenty of sex to go with violence and music.
Of particular note is a technicolor jazz dream sequence of Daisuke Honda’s, as we follow dream Yuriko as she’s chased through long hallways by stalking menaces while a different-hued black tight killer lady prances in every direction. She frantically bursts through the paper walls of different colored rooms, the ladies chasing her all the while. It’s a literal technicolor fever dream! In the awake world, whenever characters are driving around in vehicles, the projected background is rendered in primary colors, recalling the dream sequence but also forcing focus on the characters in the car just through blasting out any distractions.
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Categories: Bad, Movie Reviews Tags: Akemi Kita, Akira Kobayashi, Chieko Matsubara, Japan, Keisuke Noro, Kozue Kamo, Michio Tsuzuki, Mieko Nishio, ninjas, Ryuzo Nakanishi, Satoko Hamagawa, Shuntaro Tamamura, Spies, Yasuharu Hasebe
Challenge of the Lady Ninja (Review)
Challenge of the Lady Ninja
aka Nu ren zhe
1983
Directed by Lee Tso-Nam
The movie takes place in sort of a weird universe where it is World War 2 between Japan and China, but everyone wears 1970s fashion and there are 1970s Cadillacs. Due to the weirdness, I postulate that Challenge of the Lady Ninja takes place in the same alternate universe as Fantasy Mission Force. If you are familiar with both flicks, you will see that makes perfect sense, even if Challenge of the Lady Ninja doesn’t jump genres at the drop of a hat.
Thanks to crafty distributors, the film goes by several names. The version watched for this review is supposedly the uncut version dubbed into English on a widescreen VHS release. Whether there is a superior Chinese language version with subtitles I do not know. What I do know is this film is cool and has a chick kicking lots of butt, so it gains points from that alone!
Challenge of the Lady Ninja has been released under a bunch of names, see if you can find the name you saw it under!: Chinese Super Ninja 2, Never Kiss a Ninja, or Nu ren zhe.
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Categories: Movie Reviews, Ugly Tags: Chen Kuan-Tai, Elsa Yeung Wai San, Kam Yin-Fei, Lee Tso-Nam, ninjas, Peng Kong, Robert Tai Chi-Hsien, Skeletor, Sun Jung-Chi, Taiwan, Women who kick butt, Yeung Hung, Yin Su-Li
Ninja Cheerleaders (Review)
Ninja Cheerleaders
2008
Directed and written by David Presley
Ninjas and cheerleaders go together like peanut butter and scotch tape, except now I need a new awkward comparison because Ninja Cheerleaders isn’t that bad of a film. There are a few problems, such as pacing, padding, and pointless stuff; but besides the three P’s, it holds together pretty well. It also has George Takei, who is awesome, but fails to give us cheerleader ninja nudity, instead it is just random strippers who look as fake as a Sorny TV. Writer and director David Presley did an okay job for a low-budget picture like this. So pay attention to this film, because it is filled with hot chicks. And stuff happens. But mostly hot chicks with swords and butt being kicked. Because that is what makes movies great.
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Super Ninja Doll (Review)
Super Ninja Doll
aka Super Ninja Bikini Babes
2007
Directed by Fred Olen Ray (as Nicholas Medina)
Super Ninja Doll premiered on cable TV under the title Super Ninja Bikini Babes, but we will be calling it Super Ninja Doll because that is the title that we first were introduced to it as on the Retromedia message board. Director Fred Olen Ray has crafted a mix of cult movie/Japanese comics with softcore elements, resulting in a great film that is both entertaining and memorable. Fred Olen Ray shoots these films several at a time, oftentimes reusing the same sets and actors. (Tarzeena: Jiggle in the Jungle is one of the others shot with this one.) The problem with a lot of softcore fare is it blends together an becomes unmemorable. Stuff you catch late at night on Skinimax or Showtime, then forget about as the next night something completely different is on. These types of softcore movies have been given the name Erotic Parodies, which fits as they have names like The Girl from B.I.K.I.N.I., The Erotic Dreams of Jeannie, and Girl with the Sex-Ray Eyes. As Super Ninja Doll is not yet on DVD (as of when I wrote this), the screen captures are taken from a TV broadcast (thus the alternate title screen), but they look better than our previous TV captures because the screenshots weren’t taken off of a VHS tape of the movie.
The artwork for the Super Ninja Doll comic was done by Noel Anderson. There is an actual Retromedia Comics Group, which is making a Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers comic book!
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Death Warrior (Review)
Death Warrior
aka Ölüm savasçisi
1984
Starring
Cüneyt Arkin as Inspector Kemal
??? as Evil Turkish Chuck Norris
??? as Turkish Oliver Hardy
??? as Exploding Iguana Woman
Cuneyt Arkin fights a gang of ninjas in this classic movie direct from Turkey! Cuneyt Arkin proves once again he is the king of Turkish cinema, in this non-stop Turkeywood marathon of action! When ninjas attack America, who do you call? That’s right, Turkey! What Turkey lacks on budget they try to make up for with pumping the film full of gratuitous blood and murder, with lots of fighting action. This film is part of the fine Turkish tradition of being ridiculously over the top and yet, oh, so appealing. Subtitles are not needed to enjoy this masterpiece, which is part of the fun. Knowing the little details would just distract us from the “wow” factor. Cuneyt Arkin is just as action star spectacular in Death Warrior as he was in Turkish Star Wars. Over the top is rarely this fun!
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Categories: Movie Reviews, Ugly Tags: Cuneyt Arkin, flaming guy on a stick, killer mummies, ninjas, random bike scenes, Turkey, We don't need no stinking subtitles
Ninja Academy (Review)
Ninja Academy
1990
Starring
Will Egan as Josh
Gerald Okamura as Chiba
Kelly Randall as Gail
Seth Foster as Addleman!!!!!
Jeff Robinson as The Damned Mime
Directed by Nico Mastorakis!
Nico Mastorakis is back, this time with a new horror: Police Academy meets Enter the Ninja. The concept is just as bad as it sounds, in fact it’s even worse, as Nico Mastorakis is at the helm. Our previous encounters with Mr. Mastorakis include Glitch! and .com for Murder, though this is the first film I ever saw of his. This film also has one other aspect that earned Nico my ire for the rest of my days. Seth Foster plays a character named Addleman. As an Addleman, I was at first thrilled to see that there was a character somewhere in a movie with my name and spelled my way for once. That was before I saw the horror that is Seth Foster. Addleman is an overweight, cuss talking, sweaty oaf who backstabs, cheats, murders, and comes off as a second rate Joe Don Baker. Not that this is that inaccurate, but Nico Mastorakis made a fatal error, as I consider this a direct shot at me. This film was the first Mastorakis film I saw, and it laid the groundwork for the skyscraper of hate that has since been constructed against that man, ninety stories tall and climbing.
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Categories: Movie Reviews, Ugly Tags: Gerald Okamura, Jeff Robinson, Kelly Randall, Mimes are the devil, Nico Mastorakis, ninjas, Police Academy ripoffs, Seth Foster, Will Egan
