NINJA TERMINATOR (1986) ***

Richard Harrison and his two Ninja buddies steal “The Golden Ninja Warrior” (it looks like a fucking paperweight) from their power-hungry master.  They split the golden knickknack into three parts and go their separate ways.  The master then sends out a bunch of Ninjas to get the trinkets back. 

Since this is a Godfrey Ho mix ‘n match movie, there’s another plot from an entirely different film going on.  In this part of the flick, a guy named Jaguar Wong (Jack Lam) goes around Kung Fuing the crap out of anyone who gets in his way.  Eventually, he is also tasked to retrieve the piece of Ninja bric-a-brac.  

Because this is a Ho film, the plot is really secondary, and rarely makes sense.  Ho does deliver on the Ninja action though.  There are scads of scenes of Ninjas hopping around via jump cuts, tossing out Ninja stars, and getting into swordfights.  There’s even a nutty bit where one Ninja shoots flames out of his hands while his rival combats the blast by shooting freezing spray from his fist (it looks like someone stuck a fire extinguisher up his sleeve).    

Lam has plenty of opportunities to kick ass throughout the picture.  He’s always running into guys in parking lots or on top of parking garages who want to kill him for some reason or another and he more than gladly takes them down a peg.  Among Lam’s highlights are the scene where he uses a baseball to beat some thugs up and a part where he fights a guy while keeping his hands in his pockets.

It’s Harrison though who makes the movie.  Whether he’s fighting guys in his camouflage Ninja outfit or saving his girlfriend from a random crab attack, he’s always a blast to watch.  His best scene is when he delivers a stern message while talking on his Garfield phone!  Nothing to me says “deadly Ninja” more than a guy who uses a Garfield phone.  (This scene was so iconic that Ho had Harrison use the phone again in Diamond Ninja Force.) 

God, and I haven’t even mentioned the hilarious sex scene that’s framed so poorly that you can’t tell whose body is whose.  Or that when the woman climaxes, the camera cuts to a blooming flower!  I didn’t even bring up the jaw-dropping scene where a kid’s windup toy robot enters a room under a cloud of ominous smoke to deliver a message from the evil Ninja empire.  Or the villain who wears a hilarious blonde He-Man wig.  

On top of all that, there are even more gratuitous sex scenes, unrelated action, and random fights.  Other subplots that involve drug dealing and torture are also tossed in there, although by that point, the movie has started to feel overcrowded.  I don’t presume to understand what was going on half the time.  Then again, it didn’t really matter when you’re getting three movies for price of one.  Sure, it doesn’t make a lot of sense, but let’s face it, you’d be disappointed in a Ho flick if it did.  

Ninja Terminator just may be proof you can have too much of a good thing.  Just when you think it’s over, it keeps going.  Ho pitches the movie at such a frantic rate that it quickly becomes numbing.  Still, with so much awesomeness packed in one place, it’s virtually critic-proof.  You’re either the kind of person who wants to see Ninjas that use Garfield phones, or you aren’t.