So my sister intentionally bought a crapload of horrendously bad Hong-Kong ninja movies on DVD from the 80's.
Among the worst was
the Ninja Squad
I'll just let these screencaps and a user comment do the talking.
Note the hilarious "ninja" headbands.
Unfortunately, I couldn't find any screencaps of the bad drug-trafficing plotline that has absolutely nothing to do with the other plot and where everyone shoots each other with the same blank-loaded assaultrifles (I think they could only afford two M16's and a Sterling SMG, leading to the "clever" disguising of the fact by having no-more than two combatants on the screen at a time).
Indeed. The soundtrack is half-crappy 80's synth-pop, and then it rips tracks out of Raiders of the Lost Ark (the spooky ark theme), and Das Boot
Another we've watched was
Leopard Fist Ninja (yes, they all latch Ninja to the end of the title, eventhough this one never mentions the word ninja, and is Kung-fu dominated)
I'll let my sister's screencaps do the talking:
![http://www.parnanen.net/~annmi/elftown/leopard%20fist%20ninja/thebigbadguy.jpg [http://www.parnanen.net/~annmi/elftown/leopard%20fist%20ninja/thebigbadguy.jpg]](http://www.parnanen.net/~annmi/elftown/leopard%20fist%20ninja/thebigbadguy.jpg)
Big bad-guy. Japanese, of course (all the villains in these types of movies come in flavours of evil-caucasian and oppressive-japanese-manchurian).
Notice how everyone always gets cut out of frame. The cinematographer should shoot himself. They also either frequently forgot to edit out the camera rolling up sequence or forgot to pre-roll the camera (leaving the frames of the first second of every new scene fuzzy, blurry and phosphorous as the film gets over-exposed and doesn't roll at 24fps yet).
The fight-scenes were better than those of the Ninja Squad. However, these were just bland and seemed to occur every 10 minutes in an attempt to break up the monotony.
The compulsory whiskery ancient-master chap.
It doesn't help that the production values are so poor that for a scene where a house was supposed to be burned down, it was hilariously obvious that it was a concrete shell with hay wrapped across the roof and a cardboard-board wonkily spray-painted in an attempt to look like rice-paper windows. These movies all have the same "Swish-swish-thump-thump" sound-boards too. eesh.
The good thing about these movies is that you can stay up late and pull your own MST3K commentary and you gain a LOT of respect for mediocre hollywood movies. The bad part is, you waste 90 minutes of your life, that YOU'LL NEVER GET BACK, and those 90 minutes feel longer than Magnolia or the interminable ending of ROTK.
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Worth a million in prizes, baby.
[This message has been edited by Daeron the Nerfherder (edited August 08, 2004).]
If it breaks, you get to keep both pieces.