Wow! Does Godfrey Ho have an ear for dialog or what, with such golden lines such as:
"Master, Charles is here. / Charles? You mean the new leader of the red ninjas? / Yes, I saw him in the woods, practicing the supreme power of the golden ninja warrior".
"Take this letter to my brother at once... I need his help. I GOTTA HAVE THE GOLDEN NINJA WARRIOR! To establish my-supreme-ninja-power! GO! / Yes Master".
or perhaps best of all,
"Sh-- how dare you beat me up! I'm the tough guy here! / You started it. It wasn't my fault. / My brother here and me don't like your attitude.... if you're gonna stick around here, we're gonna kick your ass and blow YOU right out of town. / Come on let's go Steve. (This movie has a little bit of everything, including a Chinaman named Steve.)
The Ultimate Ninja..... what we have here is just another of grand-schlockmeister Ho's many nonsensical and ridiculous ninja outings from the 80's; incompetent yes, but more cliché then anything else, however it's not without it's moments. Godfrey Ho really cranked out these movies in the 80's and having seen many a ninja flick I can confidently conclude that no one made more of them then the Ho-Man; whose outlook on film-making always seemed to be: make em' fast, make em' cheap, make em' often and lastly, make em' pure crap. Out of all the ninja flicks I've seen over the years none of them have featured any acting that's worthy of mention and the plots behind them are usually even less compelling, but if it's action you're looking for, well then these briskly-paced and typically ridiculous films (which heavily rely on shock-value and routinely scoff at the laws of physics) often deliver the goods, in the form of exciting cinematic excursions of high-flying nin-jastic grandiosity! Just don't expect ANYTHING resembling realism. But sadly with (and regardless of it's title) "The Ultimate Ninja" it has very few positives to speak of.
As is typical of his ninja-flicks, Godfrey Ho's movies are among the most amateurish and haphazard to be found in the genre, they are often little more than derivative cut n' paste jobs, loaded with jerky incoherent editing, insufficient lighting, questionable cinematography, harsh/shrill sound quality, laughably bad voice-dubbing, insanely corny dialog, excessively loud and ridiculous sound-effects (even for the standards of martial films!) as well as numerous examples of blatant musical plagiarism, etc. However, as harsh as all that may sound, his movies still manage to be quite entertaining, but in the most single-digit and low-brow way possible. To be even more blunt on the matter when watching a Godfrey Ho ninja mash-up, one should fully expect nothing other then ridiculous, poorly-acted dreck, in which the filming-editing is often nearly as violent and chaotic as the fight scenes themselves are. The Ultimate Ninja, the movie in review, was made in his mid-80's heyday and it's every frame possesses Godfrey Ho's unmistakable touch, who by then, had a developed a distinctive (not to be confused with good) style of film-making.
As mentioned above with Ultimate Ninja there are really two -completely unrelated- movies happening and they proceed to cut back and forth until the end. Why director Ho thought this was a good idea.... well you'll just have to ask him. The films fight choreography has it's moments, however I find it to fall well short in that respect compared to most of his movies and martial arts films in general. But watch out for the fight scene involving the Kung-Fu instructor "Egle" and the three knife-wielding baddies, that guy utterly moves like greased lightning and it's thrilling to watch him in action, truly a great martial artist - but was the fake mustache really necessary. That's another part of Godfrey Ho's formula, for his movies he typically cast guys of anglo-saxon descent (aka white guys), usually with mustaches, in the role of the "good ninja". In the case of The Ultimate Ninja some mustachioed white guy named Charles (yep, "Charles the ninja") takes over as the leader of the "red ninjas" when his master dies, whose last words to him were "Be a good ninja, Charles." which sadly, isn't even close to being the movies worst dialog.
Ultimately what you get with this witless and amateurish action flick, is a pointless and poorly-acted/over-dubbed, convoluted martial arts mash-up of unrelated characters, settings and events; and the more you watch this lame little flick, the more it weaves it's web of lame and unconnected plots, that which have virtually no intrigue or originality. Like so many bad movies it's mostly due to the incompetence of it all, that this movie registers any semblance of entertainment - save for a few all too brief moments of inspired fight choreography.
Lastly, I find the acting of Staurt Smith (leader of the bad ninjas) to be incredibly intense and highly entertaining he also has most of the movies worst (ie best) lines and in light of his awesome performance I think that he deserved some kind of an award for his "smouldering" intensity. Rock-On Stuart! And keep muggin' for the camera, pure gold.
PS - And a big thanks goes out to "bzerk" for helping track down a copy of this obscure offering of 80's ninja-schlock cinema.
