Dis­cov­er the crazed cult charm of Cannon’s Nin­ja Trilogy

Some­times genus and species can be dif­fi­cult to pin down. Take the brand of cin­e­ma known broad­ly – very broad­ly, in fact – as ​‘psy­chotron­ic’, a term first appro­pri­at­ed by Michael Wel­don from the 1980 cult SF flick The Psy­chotron­ic Man to describe films ​“tra­di­tion­al­ly ignored or ridiculed by main­stream crit­ics at the time of their release: hor­ror, exploita­tion, action, sci­ence fic­tion, and movies that used to play in dri­ve-ins or inner city grindhouses.”

Psy­chotron­ic cin­e­ma is a hard and loose cat­e­go­ry of ter­mite art which, whether because too shame­less­ly genre-bound or just too wacky-backy niche, occu­pies the crit­i­cal mar­gins. Still, explor­ing is always best done at the out­er edges – and so this col­umn will be ded­i­cat­ed to direct-to-video dross, dis­in­terred B pic­tures and the odd (and we mean odd) films orphaned at the fes­ti­val fringes.

The so-called Nin­ja Tril­o­gy com­pris­es Mena­hem Golan’s Enter the Nin­ja from 1981, and Sam Firstenberg’s sequels in-name-only, Revenge of the Nin­ja (1983) and Nin­ja III: The Dom­i­na­tion (1984), all uni­fied by the appear­ance of actor and real-life prac­ti­tion­er of nin­jut­su Sho Kosu­gi (play­ing a dif­fer­ent char­ac­ter in each title), and all right­ly cel­e­brat­ed as show­cas­es for the most egre­gious, ​’80s-inflect­ed cash-in excess­es of Golan and Globus’ Can­non Films. Though the ground­work was laid by 1980’s The Octa­gon, it was these three films that began a ver­i­ta­ble explo­sion of nin­ja pres­ence in main­stream action flicks.

The very title of Enter the Nin­ja riffs on/​rips off the East-West mar­tial arts clash of Enter the Drag­on, and the open­ing cred­its boast a fetishi­sa­tion of Japan­ese weapons and tech­niques that would per­vade the tril­o­gy. Yet as recent­ly cer­ti­fied nin­ja Cole (played improb­a­bly by the orig­i­nal Djan­go, Fran­co Nero) inter­venes to defend an impo­tent ranch­er and his wife against a ruth­less land-grab­ber, Enter the Nin­ja proves to be as much oater as assassin’s action­er. Christo­pher George makes for a hilar­i­ous­ly camp vil­lain, ded­i­cat­ing his free time to chore­o­graph­ing female syn­chro­nised swim­mers in his office swim­ming pool. Who knows where the flash­backs to Cole’s Angolan Bush War expe­ri­ence fit into all this – but the any­thing-goes approach to genre is key to the whole trilogy’s charm.

Indeed, genre ran even freer in the sequels. Alto­geth­er gori­er, and fea­tur­ing a masked killer who takes out his oppo­nents one by one, Revenge of the Nin­ja appro­pri­ates part of its form from the then-vogu­ish slash­er (“What is this, Hal­loween?”, a char­ac­ter is heard to ask), and part from the gang­ster flick. One sequence shows Kosugi’s Japan­ese migrant fac­ing off against a hatch­et-wield­ing Native Amer­i­can, anoth­er sees him tak­ing on the Vil­lage Peo­ple in a children’s play­ground – and there are not one but three scenes of vio­lence set in and around that great sig­ni­fi­er of Eight­ies afflu­ence and eroti­cism, the hot tub – the last of these, some­how, in the mid­dle of the thrilling roof-top climax.

Cra­zi­est of all though is Nin­ja III: The Dom­i­na­tion, which some­how com­bines a now unstop­pable (and not remote­ly stealthy) nin­ja killing machine with an exor­cism motif lift­ed straight from the hor­ror genre, and gra­tu­itous aer­o­bics sequences (show­ing off the tal­ents of Lucin­da Dick­ey, flush from recent suc­cess in Cannon’s Breakin’).

Dickey’s pos­sessed Christie uses super­nat­u­ral­ly acquired ball-break­ing skills to take vengeance upon the police­men who had (sort-of) killed a Ter­mi­na­tor-like nin­ja, but baulks at harm­ing her hir­sute cop boyfriend Bil­ly Sec­ord (Jor­dan Ben­nett), espe­cial­ly dur­ing their V8 juice-drip­ping fore­play. And yes, there is even anoth­er gra­tu­itous jacuzzi scene in this entire­ly undis­ci­plined, over-the-top, tone-deaf ​’80s hot tub time machine, now dis­in­terred by Eure­ka! to prove that nin­ja – ever pop­ping up where you least expect them – can nev­er tru­ly die.

The Nin­ja Tril­o­gy is released in a new dual-for­mat spe­cial edi­tion col­lec­tion by Eure­ka! on 18 January.