Poor old Richard Harrison has the ignominy to find himself yet again dressed head to foot in a luminous yellow ninja outfit (and in an even more eye bleedingly garish coloured Hawian shirt when not attired in his ninja togs!!!) whilst battling the evil ninja empire in this typically formulaic cut and splice ninja flick to emerge from Joseph Lai's IFD stable.
If you've ever had the joyous honour *ahem* of viewing one of these flicks before then you'll know exactly what to expect here. Yep, it's about the grand total of ten minutes of Harrison/ninja footage clumsily edited into an entirely non related and quite frankly usually none too engaging, long forgotten and/or unheard of (with good reason!) Asian movie (a gangster movie in this instance).
Although this may sound like a bad deal (a veritable cinematic scam in fact!) the finished products themselves are more often than not bizarrely, hugely entertaining affairs, usually on account of the sheer ineptitude, laziness and indeed, blatant shamelessness of the finished film and of course the perpetrators -erm, I mean film makers involved. Yes - these flicks represent in fact the absolute epitome of the so called 'So bad that it's good' movie.
So what highlights are on offer in this glorious entry? Well, we have a curiously obese head ninja villain who's backed up by a decidedly odd looking, mousy moustached second in command, some typically daft dialogue/bad voice over work and of course the obligatory, highly enjoyable but always far too brief ninja combat sequences that as always in these films end with the defeated ninja pulling a woefully overacted, pained expression before instantly slumping dead! In addition and a point that certainly provided me with some great chuckles throughout this is the hilarious (and hopelessly amateur) manner in which the protagonists (in the newer edited in segments) are seen exiting scenes in the movie. The camera merely shows them wandering off screen from a fixed sideways shot! (In fact even the exact same takes appear to be reused throughout the film!) Priceless! Truly craptastic even!
It has to be said that overall, despite some of the highlights listed above, this film is admittedly perhaps not one of the best of it's illustrious ilk *cough!!!*, but for fans of this all too little appreciated (with possible good reason!) genre, this is certainly still well worth checking out.
Lucky viewers here in the UK were 'treated' to this film under the title: Ninja Operation 4: Thunderbolt Angels; an interesting title I'm sure that you'll agree especially given the distinct absence of any thunderbolts or angels for that matter in the movie....hmmm intriguing indeed....
