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I become a man by watching Ninja III: The Domination (1984)

Posted in 80s, movies, ninjas, pop culture, reviews with tags movies, Ninja Day, ninjas, pop culture, reviews on December 8, 2010 by Paxton

Okay, Sunday was Ninja Day, and I’m extending that into Ninja Week here on the blog. On Monday I discussed in detail the reality rendering awesomeness that is 1983’s Revenge of the Ninja starring Sho Kosugi. Today, I want to discuss that movie’s followup, Ninja III: The Domination.

I want to say I saw this in the theater, but there’s no way my father would have let me see the R rated Ninja III when I was 10 years old. I must have rented it a few years later when I was renting Revenge of the Ninja over and over again from the local video store. How could I not? It was a ninja movie with Sho Kosugi and that hot chick from Breakin’ and Breakin’ 2. Also, this movie’s director, Sam Firstenberg, also directed Revenge of the Ninja. As a matter of fact, from 1983 to 1985 Firstenberg directed Revenge of the Ninja, Ninja III: The Domination, Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo and American Ninja. I don’t know about you but that alone deserves some kind of lifetime achievement award or something. I have to ask why this guy isn’t a household name. Well, he followed up his Hall of Fame line up of 80s action movies with American Ninja 2: The Confrontation and Delta Force 3: The Killing Game which probably ended his career as quickly as a katana to the neck. But no one can take way those 4 awesome 80s movies. No one.

Anyway, this movie is completely fun, weird and absurd. So let’s take a look. I’m going to delve into the best aspects of this movie like I did Revenge of the Ninja because this movie deserves it. There’s a lot of zany 80s awesomeness going on in this movie. And I’ll be sure to point out all the gratuitous shots of Lucinda Dickey in skimpy clothes while sweatily dancing (happens more often than you think). So grab a seat and let’s do this.

Ninja 3 titles
And so the awesome begins. The opening sequence is the best. A Japanese dude walks into this hidden cave, dons a ninja suit and heads to a nearby golf course to wreck complete havok. It’s never explained why he attacked the golf course. He just does it. And it’s awesome.

Here’s the ninja stopping a golf cart by lifting the back wheels off the ground. He couldn’t let the attractive couple get away because he really needed to kill them.

bodyguard with gun ninja blowgun blowdart into gun gun explodes
A group of bodyguards show up because I guess one of the golfers is famous (no explanation). One of the bodyguards pulls a gun, but before he can fire, the ninja whips out a blowgun and shoots a dart directly into the gun barrel causing the gun to explode awesomely in the bodyguards face. This movie is so ninja.

Outrun a car
The ninja then outruns a cop car.

ninja trapped ninja smoke ninja disappears ninja underground
The ninja is caught by like 5 cops and they open fire riddling him with bullets. In the midst of the gunfire the ninja ignites a smoke bomb and disappears. The cops have no idea where he went so they all just decide to leave. Then the ninja pops up out of the dirt. He had dug himself under the ground like a mole proving once again that, yes, he is a badass ninja.

Ninja possession
While filled with bullet holes, the ninja crawls away and finds Lucinda Dickey as Christie, the hottest telephone repair person EVER. The ninja grabs her and does some ninja voodoo to put his spirit inside her (he wants to be IN her).

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Ninja Day 2010: Revenge of the Ninja (1983) melts my brain with awesomeness

Posted in 80s, movies, ninjas, pop culture, reviews with tags movies, Ninja Day, ninjas, pop culture, reviews on December 6, 2010 by Paxton

I’m continuing my celebration of Ninja Day all this week with reviews of ninja movies. Today I look at one of the greatest ninja movies of all time, Revenge of the Ninja starring Sho Kosugi.

Revenge of the Ninja is the second in an unofficial “trilogy” of ninja movies by The Cannon Group in the mid-80s. The first movie in that trilogy was Enter the Ninja (1981) and the third movie was Ninja III: The Domination (1984). All of them starred Sho Kosugi. However neither of those movies were anywhere near as good as the middle movie, 1983’s Revenge of the Ninja. Let’s take a walk through this movie’s plot and see all the unbelievably awesome and ridiculous moments contained within.

So, the movie starts in Japan. Sho is there with his wife, young son and parents. Sho is off talking to his friend, Braden, an old white dude, when a group of like 6 ninjas show up and slaughter the family. I’m not sure why the family died, some old ninja master must be jealous of Sho’s bad ass awesomeness and sent his army to kill them all. The movie doesn’t really do a good job of explaining it.
ineffective ninjas Sho teeth
So this group of ninjas come in and kill everyone and then lay in wait for Sho to show up. When he does arrive, they pop out of the bushes and try to kill him by shooting arrows at him. However, these are the worst ninjas ever and they underestimated his grim determination to kick ass and Sho catches two of the arrows in his hand and then catches the third arrow IN HIS MOUTH. Surprisingly, watching Sho catch a ninja arrow in his teeth didn’t cause the ninjas to crap their gi’s and run. However, they must have been out of arrows after this display because they stop shooting and jump out of the bushes to surround Sho instead of just shooting him with his hands and mouth full (like I said, WORST NINJAS EVER). All the better for him to ninja kick some ass.

And Sho does kick their ass rather handily. Afterwards, Sho decides to follow his friend Braden back to America and start over with his young son (who wasn’t killed) and his mother (also survived).

Braden Evil Ninja 1
By the way, this is Braden. The old white guy who is also, apparently, a ninja. I guess he lived with Sho’s family for 20 years in Japan and learned their ninjitsu. However, Sho doesn’t realize that Braden is evil and is using Sho to smuggle drugs into the country. Notice Braden’s ninja outfit. It looks like it’s made of silk and he wears a mask underneath his ninja mask. Awesome. And evil.

Braden is working with these also ridiculous gangsters to smuggle heroin into the country through Sho’s Japanese art museum. Obviously, they try to double cross Braden and steal the heroin themselves. What kind of gangster doesn’t use a scantily clad or topless woman as a masseuse? The gay kind.

Kane vs Bullies Kane vs Bullies 2
Anyway, it’s six years after the ninja attack in Japan. Sho’s son, Kane (actual real son Kane Kosugi) is in elementary school. There is a ridiculous but awesome scene in which adorable little Kane in his pink Izod sweater kicks a bunch of older bullies’ asses. I don’t know why it’s in there, but I love that it is.

Sho vs Blondie
This is Kathy. She’s the typical 80s blonde. She works at Sho’s museum. And she’s also working for Braden to smuggle the heroin. In her first scene, she shows up in Sho’s family dojo without pants and tries to seduce him. This is the first of many times we see Kathy in skimpy outfits. However Sho turns it into a lesson and begins to spar with her and pretty easily kicks her ass. Of course she holds her own for a bit because everyone in this movie knows some form of martial art.

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AWESOME-tober-fest 2010: Review of Teen Wolf and Teen Wolf Too

Posted in 80s, Halloween, holiday, monsters, movies, pop culture, reviews, werewolf, werewolves with tags AWESOME-tober-fest, AWESOME-tober-fest 2010, Halloween, holiday, monsters, movies, pop culture, reviews, werewolf, werewolves on October 29, 2010 by Paxton

This is it. The final day of AWESOME-tober-fest 2010. It surely has been a blast. Don’t mind me as I get all weepy and shed a tear for the end of this year’s festivities. Hope everyone has had as much fun as I’ve had. And for me, it all begins again in a few months when I plan for AWESOME-tober-fest 2011.

Anyway, last Friday for werewolf TV week, I reviewed The Cartoon Adventures of Teen Wolf which was based on one of my favorite 80s movies, Teen Wolf. So, to cap off this year’s AWESOME-tober-fest, I’m going to review Teen Wolf as well as the sequel, Teen Wolf Too, which I think has a clever title (suck it, haters). Here we go.

Teen Wolf (1985) – Michael J Fox actually filmed this movie before he filmed Back to the Future, but Teen Wolf was released a month and a half later in August 1985 (Back to the Future was released on July 3). I sat down with my wife to watch this movie for the first time in probably 10-15 years (she had never watched it all the way through). And yes, I still enjoy it. It’s a bit cheesy. A bit goofy. Michael J Fox is wonderful as usual. Jerry Levine is great as the scheming Stiles. And it’s just a fun and funny 80s comedy about a teen werewolf. I will admit though, some of the music is an odd fit for this movie. In one basketball montage they have what sounds like a Randy Newman song that was rejected from Toy Story. And the final basketball game has a more typical 80s song over it, but it’s also weird. However I love the “Big Bad Wolf” song during the school dance scene (along with the horribly cheesy “Teen Wolf Dance”). The chick that plays Pamela is pretty hot (and reminds me of the hot blond chick from Sixteen Candles) and her neanderthal boyfriend is appropriately douchey. It’s a good movie. Not great, but good. I think, though, people may remember it as being better than it actually was. But I still enjoyed it, as did my wife. I don’t think this movie was intended to be anything other than a solid B-comedy. FYI…the next night after watching this we went to see the Back to the Future 25th Anniversary Re-release. Great double header.

Teen Wolf Too (1987) – Yes, I saw this in the theater. I loved Teen Wolf so much that I just had to. I remember enjoying it, but thinking that it was nowhere near as good as the original. So, my wife and I sat down to watch this sequel the other night and…it’s exactly as I remember. Not great. The story is extremely similar to the original movie. Replace basketball with boxing and high school with college. It’s not Bateman’s fault this movie is bad, it’s the script and special effects. The movie looks extremely cheap, the werewolf makeup is terrible and there’s like three musical interludes, two of which are montages (TWO MONTAGES!). The third musical interlude is Bateman, as the wolf, singing ‘Do You Love Me’ Ferris Bueller-style at a college party. And I remember thinking back in 1987 that was a horrible choice of songs. I guess they were trying to go classic like Bueller did for ‘Twist and Shout’, but damn, they couldn’ t find (or, more truthfully, afford) a better song? Actually, Dirty Dancing came out a few months earlier, so I believe they may have been trying to capitalize on the success of that movie. Regardless, it was a terrible scene that brings the movie to a screeching halt. There are several lame attempts to connect this movie to the original. Jason Bateman’s Todd Howard is the cousin of Fox’s character from the original. They even bring back Scott’s dad, James Hampton, for two scenes. The character of Stiles awesomely played by Jerry Levine in the first movie is recast and played by someone that looks completely different and doesn’t have half the charisma of the original. They even bring back the character of Coach Finstock but, again, recast him with a goofier actor. They also bring back Chubby from the first movie. All of these feel more like the studio saying, “Hey, remember the original movie? It was good right? So you’ll remember these guys and like this movie even though it sucks”. I was really hoping to have been colored by my love of the original when I saw this in the theater, but it wasn’t that. The movie just blew. I was surprised to find out Todd’s faculty advisor is played by Kim Darby. I didn’t even remember it was her. She was the little girl in True Grit with John Wayne, as well as the mom in Better Off Dead. She’s not great either. So, yes, overall this is probably as bad as you remember. However, I still have a soft spot for it because it’s a Teen Wolf movie. And I’m looking forward to MTV’s take on it. I’ll probably hate it, because by all indications they are totally gaying it up like Twilight, but I’m going to watch it.

Also, check out the blog Countdown to Halloween for more Halloween-y, bloggy AWESOMEness.

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AWESOME-tober-fest 2010: Review of Universal’s The Wolfman (2010)

Posted in Halloween, holiday, monsters, movies, pop culture, reviews, werewolf, werewolves with tags AWESOME-tober-fest, AWESOME-tober-fest 2010, Halloween, holiday, monsters, movies, pop culture, reviews, werewolf, werewolves on October 28, 2010 by Paxton

After this, there is one more day of AWESOME-tober-fest 2010. It’s hard to believe we are almost all done. I’ve been planning this since January.

Anyway, Day 4 of werewolf movie week. Originally, today’s review was going to be of Hammer’s 1961 classic, Curse of the Werewolf starring Oliver Reed. However, obtaining a copy of that movie was harder than I expected, so I moved the below review from the end of yesterday’s Universal reviews over to here. What may happen is that I’ll post “Special Edition” reviews in the next few weeks for AWESOME-tober-fest 2010 that didn’t make the cut. Movies like Curse of the Werewolf and Full Moon High as well as TV Shows Big Wolf on Campus and Hilarious House of Frightenstein would be included. So, without further ado, let’s move on to my review of Universal’s 2010 remake, The Wolfman.

As I’ve mentioned before, I loved the original Universal Wolf Man movie. Werewolves have been my favorite monsters for years. So, yes, I was super excited to hear Universal was bringing back their monster movies. They started with The Mummy back in 1999. Then around 2006-2007 I first read about The Wolf Man remake starring Benicio Del Toro as Talbot. While I’m not a huge Del Toro fan, I could see him as Talbot. Universal also went and got Rick Baker to do the wolf makeup and filled out the cast with other great actors; Sir Anthony Hopkins as John Talbot, Emily Blunt as Gwen and Hugo Weaving as a police inspector. Universal picked Andrew Kevin Walker to write the screenplay which was a great choice as he wrote moody thrillers like Sleepy Hollow, 8MM and Se7en. And Mark Romaneck was selected as director in January 2007 and he was, to me, unproven but he had all this talent around him so I wasn’t too worried.

Then the production problems started. Romaneck quit in February 2008. Universal considered hiring Brett Ratner (NO!!) but came to their senses and hired Joe Johnston to deliver the finished film. The release date slipped. It was originally scheduled for Nov 12, 2008, but it slipped several times until it finally landed on Feb 12, 2010. An interesting choice to open this on Valentine’s Day weekend. Also interesting was that at no time was the movie slated to be released in October on Halloween. The closest they got was November 2009. Wonder what happened there. Danny Elfman was hired to score the picture, however Universal didn’t think it fit with the tone of the movie so they hired another person to score it, but that too was scrapped and the Elfman score was reinstated.

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AWESOME-tober-fest 2010: Watching Universal’s Wolf Man movies

Posted in monsters, movies, reviews, Universal Studios, werewolves, Wolf Man with tags AWESOME-tober-fest, AWESOME-tober-fest 2010, Halloween, holiday, monsters, movies, reviews, Universal Studios, werewolf, werewolves, Wolf Man on October 27, 2010 by Paxton

So here we are, Day 19 of AWESOME-tober-fest. We are in the middle of werewolf movie week. Yesterday I discussed The Howling and on Monday I talked about Silver Bullet. All of these were books I read and reviewed during werewolf novel week. Today, I go back to the beginning. The Universal Studios Wolf Man movies. This is where the current model for the modern werewolf was born. Universal made three werewolf centric movies. Although the Wolf Man would appear in several other “monster rally” movies, there were only three movies starring Wolf Man and included the Wolf Man in the title. Here are those three movies.

Werewolf of London (1935) – Contrary to what you might think, this was actually Universal Studio’s first “wolf man” movie (and widely considered the first mainstream werewolf movie). It was released a good 6 years before the now famous Lon Chaney Jr vehicle, The Wolf Man, and starred Henry Hull as the title monster. The legendary Jack Pierce created the wolf man makeup for use in this movie, however Henry Hull hated it and refused to wear the full wolf makeup (pansy). Pierce would create a “less hairy” version for Hull, but then go back to the “full hairy” version for use with Chaney (who was a badass).
In this movie, Hull plays Dr Glendon, a world renowned botanist who travels to Tibet to find the elusive Mariphasa plant which only blooms in moonlight. While there, Glendon is bitten by a creature that he leans later is a werewolf. Glendon returns to London with his Mariphasa sample and then we meet his wife who is WAY too hot for him. I mean, not only does Glendon look like he could be her father, but he’s also kind of a douche bag. He doesn’t pay any attention to her and keeps himself locked away in his lab. While sequestered in his lab Glendon keeps doing all these weird experiments to create artificial moonlight (how useful is artificial moonlight besides causing the Mariphasa plant to bloom?). Anyway, Glendon is visited by another creepy scientist, Dr Yogami, who knows all about the werewolf affliction he keeps calling Lycanthrophobia (which actually means “fear of werewolves” and not “is a werewolf”). Yogami says the Mariphasa plant can temporarily cure Lycanthrophobia (he keeps using that word) so Hull keeps trying to create his “artificial moonlight” when he finally (after about 45 minutes) turns into a damn werewolf (finally!). This happens a few more times until he finally attacks his hot wife and is killed by police officers. While dying, Glendon apologizes to his wife (you know, for trying to maul her) and thanks the police for killing him.
Not exactly the most “action packed” monster movie I’ve ever seen. Hull is a bit of an elitist a-hole as the main character, especially to his wife. And his obsession with creating “artificial moonlight” makes little sense. There is a good scene in the middle of the movie during a party at Glendon’s personal botanical gardens. Well, it’s good in that you see some ridiculously awesome plants including one that looks like a miniature version of the Sarlacc pit from Return of the Jedi. I read somewhere that this plant was supposed to eat a child during that scene but it was deemed too graphic (or too awesome, maybe). I say avoid this and start your werewolf journey with our next movie…

The Wolf Man (1941) – This is the movie everyone thinks of when you say “Wolf Man” or you are talking about the “original” Universal Monster movies. Lon Chaney Jr stars as Larry Talbot who returns home after his brother’s death. While fixing his dad’s telescope, Talbot happens to “peep” on the chick next door, Gwen. He goes over and puts some creepy stalker moves on Gwen, who at first denies his advances. Later on, for no reason whatsoever, she caves and agrees to go on a date. So Talbot escorts Gwen and her friend out to some old gypsy’s to have their fortunes read. Lo and behold, the gypsy turns out to be Dracula! Well, it’s Bela Lugosi playing the gypsy. Anyway, turns out Bela is a werewolf, attacks and kills one of the ladies and Talbot beats him to death with a cane, but not before getting bitten. This, of course, curses Talbot with werewolfism (and having the “werewolf poem” recited to him by every character in the movie every 5 minutes). Talbot’s Wolf Man goes on a rampage and is finally beaten to death by the same cane that beat the gypsy Bela to death earlier in the movie. Only Talbot gets beaten to death by his own father, The Invisible Man…or, Claude Rains, who played the Invisible Man.
Comparatively, this movie is much better than Werewolf of London. While Chaney’s Talbot does start off a bit lecherous when he puts the moves on Gwen, for the majority of the movie, he is a sympathetic character. You feel bad that he is cursed with this affliction (werewolfism). And the “full hairy” makeup by Jack Pierce is fantastic. Much better than the version used on Hull six years prior. The lady that plays Gwen, Evelyn Ankers, is really pretty. She makes a perfect scream queen and you like her character very much. It’s easy to see why this movie is still considered a classic and it also reaffirms why Wolf Man is my favorite Universal Monster.