SAKURA KILLERS (1987) ***

I’ve been having pretty good luck here lately watching any old movie that I randomly stumble upon on Tubi.  Sakura Killers kept the hot streak going.  The opening is great.  It features Ninjas attacking an office building, crawling up the wall like a Wacky Wall Walker, and stealing a vital videotape. (Beta, no less!)  Then, the action switches over to Chuck Connors practicing his golf game on his ranch.  The Ninjas try to sneak up on him, but little do they know he keeps a shotgun in his golf bag for occasions such as these, and he blows them away.   

What makes Connors’ character great in this is that he almost always is seen wearing a Brooklyn Dodgers hat and jacket.  If you’re a fan of the man, you’ll know that he really played for the team back in the day.  I’m not sure if we are supposed to believe he’s playing himself, but I’d like to think so.  He’s only referred to as “The Colonel”, so I guess anything is possible.  Then again, if that were true, he would’ve been packing a rifle in his golf bag instead of a shotgun, seeing as he is The Rifleman and all.   

Anyway, Chuck sends these two guys who look like the Sam’s Club version of Michael Dudikoff and Steve James from the American Ninja movies to recover the tape.  Whenever they hit a plot dead end, they call Chuck back at the ranch.  Basically, it’s all edited together like a Godfrey Ho cut-and-paste Ninja movie except it’s got Chuck Connors instead of Richard Harrison.  That is to say, it’s pretty awesome.  

Sakura Killers is packed with laugh-a-minute action for the first half-hour or so.  In that time, we get a homoerotic training montage. an ‘80s aerobicizing montage, and a Ninja training montage.  I must admit, the laughs get a bit sparser as the movie goes along.  The film especially lacks inspiration once Connors is sidelined from the action (although he does occasionally pop up to reiterate plot points and remind the audience who is top billed).  That said, there’s plenty of amusing bits along the way to make this a treat for fans of Ninja cinema.   

Such treats include a scene where our heroes inexplicably turn into Ninjas wearing gold and silver devil masks and defeat a henchman by slamming his balls into a tree trunk.  I think the best part though was the finale in which the villainous Ninja travels underground just like Bugs Bunny!  Then in the midst of battle, he uses Ninja Scarecrows (!!!) to confuse our heroes.  No matter what the film’s shortcomings may be, any picture that features a villain using Ninja Scarecrows is OK in my book.