Weird Wednesdays: Ninja Terminator

This screening was part of the Alamo Drafthouse’s Weird Wednesday series. For upcoming shows, click here.

Richard Harrison's eyes narrow in suspense. His head snaps toward the entryway of his apartment as the open doorway fills with a thick air of mystery. The score steadily ramps up a screeching electronic twinkle through the speaker system of the Alamo Drafthouse. With each passing second, the audience, myself included, are called to lean into the suspense, but I look around and no one is heeding the call. We’re all melted into a mass of perplexed silence. The “music” crescendos to a blaring discomfort as a small toy robot hobbles into frame. Cheap plastic gears whirring, dim battery powered lights flashing—the tiny mechanized friend walks in place incessantly as a voice booms over the poorly dubbed monaural track, "Traitor! You have betrayed the Ninja Empire. Now you will pay." This cacophony of cinema is Ninja Terminator (1987); it epitomizes a great portion of Hong Kong director Godfrey Ho’s filmography; and I would argue it embodies his philosophy on entertainment and personal craft.

Ninja Terminator tells the story of three ninjas, led by Ninja Master Harry (Richard Harrison), who pull off a heist against an all-powerful, entirely-evil, oddly-omnipresent crime empire run by ninjas. The score? A three-piece golden bust that grants invincibility, but only to specific parts of the upper body. After acquiring the mystical treasure, our ninjas are incessantly hunted by Tiger Chen (Jeong-lee Hwang)—a fabulously gold-haired, white-suit-wearing, coke-dealing operative of the Ninja Empire. As Chen closes in, Ninja Harry calls in a favor from his suave, bad-boy detective friend Jaguar Wong (Jack Lam). Together, Jaguar and Harry orchestrate a series of unrelated fight scenes to thwart Tiger Chen and the Ninja Empire. All of this culminates in an onslaught of sound and fury signifying Godfrey Ho’s brain-melting filmmaking approach—one that prioritizes cost-effective ingenuity over artistic authenticity.

With 159 films under his belt, over 100 of them cataloged in the ‘80s, and of those 51 featuring “Ninja” in the title, Ho had perfected his recipe by the time he made Ninja Terminator. Start with a base ingredient of a low-budget Hong Kong or Korean movie that hasn’t been released in the United States. Stir in 10 minutes of authentic footage shot by Ho (preferably featuring Richard Harrison or an equivalent B-movie celeb). Sprinkle in a handful of bargain-bin plot threads to help cover up the seams. Add a dash of narrative-affirming conversations conducted by two dubbed actors. Bake in a plot-adjacent carousel of fights sparked by nameless goons. Let sit in the editing bay overnight, and voilà!

This is the secret of Ho’s Upcycled Cinema. Before he had the money to fund wholly original visions, Godfrey Ho maximized the presence of working actors like Richard Harrison while minimizing his overhead cost: shooting a feature-length set of scenes that could be stitched into any context with enough continuity to fill the remaining gaps with ADR and pad out his filmography. Ninja Terminator is no exception. The dialogue is redundantly peppered with proper nouns, to the point I was surprised the characters didn’t refer to themselves in 3rd person. When people aren’t saying each other’s names or motivations, there’s barely any time to dwell on drama or character dynamics because every scene just serves as an escalator to the next action scene. In one instance detective Jaguar Wong drives a woman off the road for no apparent reason, a minute later the woman scolds him for being scum, and mere minutes after that we cut to a love scene between the two. Without so much as a breath to settle in for a romance subplot –Look out! Ninja sword fight! As an even more absurd example, we join Ninja Harry on a quiet day at home polishing his swords, his wife leans in from the kitchen and says “I’m making your favorite dish for dinner,” to which Harry inquires, “Steamed crabs?” with a smile. At that exact moment, Harry’s wife shrieks as real crabs slip their confines and clumsily storm the kitchen floor. The scene concludes with Ninja Harry throwing a knife right into one of them as we watch it crawl in silent agony across the screen. This reincarnating plot propellant of “non-sequitor scenes to action sequences” is a byproduct of Ho’s attempt at seamless film cannibalism and it makes Ninja Terminator an exemplary sample of his filmography as it lays his film language unabashedly bare for the audience.

Movie watchers might feel a twinge of cynicism witnessing such obvious machinations in these splice factory films. After all, knowing the juice you’re drinking is only 10% real juice doesn’t let it sit the same in your stomach. But does it ruin any of the sweetness you taste? Does knowing the origin of sampled beats ruin the sound of a song? Does reading a chicken scratch scribbled “butt” in a MadLib feel less satisfying if the text is Lorum Ipsum? I think a patchwork film still has enlightening intentions. I’m not here to proclaim Ninja Terminator an underrated masterwork. It’s not a testament to storytelling or a mindblowing innovation of editing techniques, but I do think the effort is inspiring as a means to a relatable end: that of recreation.

As I sat in the theater riding the wave of disorienting pacing, I realized I was witnessing a filmmaker mastering his craft with raw exploitative purpose. It’s as if Ho said “I don’t give a shit if someone considers this a disingenuous vision, it’s helping me on my journey toward authentic storytelling.” When the epic finale of Ninja Terminator concluded and the house lights went up, I sighed in satisfaction knowing what I know of his other works. Eight years after Ninja Terminator’s release, Ho would release Undefeatable (1993), a wholly unique feature built upon the lessons learned making all of these Frankenfilms. While it’s easy to dismiss this ‘80s schlock as part of an ear riddled with cheap cash grab concoctions spurred by a shift from big-screen investments to at-home commodities –Godfrey Ho saw this as an opportunity to pave a path toward his vision by any means necessary, building a Ninja-sploitation launch pad so he could blast off into a world of his own works. If I took one thing away from Ninja Terminator, it’s a reaffirmation that recycled and upcycled creations can still pack a punch and a kick with authentic intent –even if they make absolutely no sense at all.

In the spirit of Godfrey Ho’s jarring editing and breakneck pacing, I like to leave you with what I’m calling a “Micro-Matinee” version of the film. If you find it an appetizing sample, consider checking out Ninja Terminator or one of the other 51 Ninja films and begin (or continue) your journey through his upcycled fever dream filmography.

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