Ninja Phantom Heroes

I've seen more and more cheap Asian martial arts movies as I have periodically worked through a Mill Creek box set. It has to be said that it didn't take very long for me to realise I had very little patience for them but I have to say that by now I actively dislike them! Ninja Empire is yet another. It's a late 80's Hong Kong ninja flick directed by Godfrey Ho; who incidentally, is a director responsible for one of my actual favourite martial arts movies, the Cynthia Rothrock vehicle Undefeatable (1993) which aside from being laugh-a-minute and thoroughly entertaining, also happens to have the greatest climatic fight scene ever committed to celluloid – watch it and you'll understand.

Anyway, back to Ninja Empire. Its chock full of the usual ingredients of these things, i.e. terrible dubbing, bargain basement production values, a sleep inducing plot-line and several martial arts fight scenes. It did seem to be distinguished a little by the fact that the ninjas – for reasons I could never fathom – appear and disappear in balls of flame. There was some unintentional hilarity with some of the dialogue and the ending was sudden even by the standards of chopsocky movies; so much so, I had to rewind it to see if I had missed something but no, it just…ends! Not that that was a bad thing ultimately because I was suffering watching this. For fans of this sub-genre I am guessing there are things to enjoy here but for me it just seemed like more interminable nonsense.

I don't know what the guy was watching or smoking who commented on this before, but that isn't what this is about.

Some random publishing company got the rights to old Asain movies and decided it would be a good idea if he went to the Dollar store and bought ninja outfits to Americanize it a bit. Take half of a movie that made sense, then add in as many parts that make no sense, but have people with a strange habit of changing in and out of character.

This is possibly one of the worst things to do to your friends when they are drunk, yet one of the funniest things to make fun of. If MST3K was still going they would have a blast with this.

The movie makes no sense, you can't get any type of plot out of it, and it has random nudity. It is rather important that you not watch this movie unless you are trashed.

Yep, it's time for yet another completely nonsensical cut & paste abomination, produced by infamous hack maestro, Tomas Tang. This one also boasts the indignity of some of the most inappropriate music ever to grace an action scene; the sort of mundane arrangement one might very well expect to hear playing in a shopping centre in fact!

To be entirely fair, even though the main body of the film is sadly, rather a chore to sit through, the last five or so minutes more than make up for it; Indeed, you'll hardly believe your eyes as our ninja pals battle it out with metal discs(!), a bullet firing parasol(!!) and last but not least a bizarre twirling thing which closely resembles the inner blade component of a food mixer!!! If this wasn't baffling enough, we are finally treated to a completely 'What the fu- I mean, hell?!!' ending which appears to have been tacked on for no apparent reason whatsoever! Deranged stuff indeed, but with Tang on the credits, what more could you possibly expect?

My package for Ninja Empire listed the same credits as IMDb but the names that rolled by and the story line were completely different. Maybe there are two 'Ninja Empires'? Here is who I saw: Directed by Bruce Lambert, Staring; Joff Houston, John Wilford, Christine Wells, Glen Carson, George Dickson, Allen Leung, Dennis Shek, Dinny Yip, & Bob Cheng. The Ninja, paramilitary, gangster plot is very fragmented and the fights are even more unbelievable than usual. I didn't find myself rooting for a hero because there wasn't one and I couldn't hate the villain because there were so many, and they were kind of likable in that "nice guy playing a villain in a really bad movie" sort of way.

My version also called "Ninja Empire" features the same cast and crew as rhobotdog's version. I believe this version is actually "Ninja Phantom Heroes." This film matches the cast and crew given in the credits. So if you get a movie called "Ninja Empire" and the credits say a Bruce Lambert(Another name Godfrey Ho goes by)film and stars Joff Houston, John Wilford, Christine Wells, Glen Carson, George Dickson, Allen Leung, Dennis Shek, Dinny Yip, and Bob Cheng. Then your actually watching "Ninja Phantom Heroes." Also the comment for "Ninja Phantom Heroes" talks about a US Ammunition Dump and a white and cameo ninja which appeared in the version I got.

Anyway, it doesn't matter much because Godfrey Ho's ninja films are all the same. Some cheesy ninja action edited into footage from canceled and terrible movies that have no relation to anything else in the move with a terrible script dubbed over it to try and make it coherent, but it ultimately fails.