Ninja III: The Domination (1984).

“I don’t use soft drinks.”

Directed by Sam Firstenberg

Written by James R. Silke

Starring Lucinda Dickey, Jordan Bennett, and Sho Kosugi

The Stage.

A young telephone company employee is infused with the spirit of an elite ninja warrior. Now she’s killing the cops responsible for the ninja’s death and she doesn’t even know it. It’s up to another ninja and a bonehead cop to get rid of the spirit so that she can get back to aerobics class.

The Review.

This is the third film in a trilogy of Cannon ninja films from the early 80’s, none having anything to do with the others aside from featuring ninjas, and to be honest, this one feels like the script started as a simple exorcism script and was then modified to include a ninja…a choice that probably made it better.

The film starts off with a fucking salvo as this dude in a business suit walks into a cave, dusts off some hidden ninja gear, and then carries out an assassination on a golf course. Now I’ve always associated ninjas with being silent assassins, killing from a distance but if up close and personal deaths are necessary, they’re able to do so with nary a trace…but not this ninja. This ninja gives no fucks. He scampers across the golf course, crushes the ball with his bare hands, and instead of just chucking a few ninja stars from the brush, he comes out swords swinging, killing a whole golf party of this important scientist that we never hear about again. This, of course, leads to the cops coming out in droves. Then we get to see him slice up almost all of these cops, and I mean it is a massacre. Cops on foot, cops on motorcycles, cops in cars. At one point he cleverly shimmies up a palm tree and is completely hidden, it was actually a great hiding spot, and I thought to myself, “I guess he’s just going to chill up there until they give up and leave.” NOPE. He jumps from the palm tree to a helicopter to murder those cops too! In the end, the police are too much for the ninja, and they circle him and blast him to death three times because he’s some kind of supernatural force who simply cannot be stopped…but just when you think he’s dead, he drops a smoke bomb and disappears into the Phoenix desert. He probably could have just used that trick from the start, but who really cares?

We then see his shambling, bullet-ventilated corpse stumble into the path of Christie, a telephone repair agent and fitness nut who doesn’t, in her words, ‘use soft drinks’. She’s drawn the short end of the stick and has to repair a phone line in the middle of the fucking desert. I hope she brought a lot of water. Anyway, he gives her his ninja sword and dies. Then we get to meet Officer Billy Secord, one of those responsible for blowing away the ninja. He’s just…the worst, continuously trying to pick up on Christie as she sits at the station for questioning, going so far as to try to bribe her with a pocketful of loose, lint-ridden candy, like he takes his hand out of his pocket and candy just goes pouring onto the floor. Never trust a police officer who walks around with a pocket full of Runts. Anyway, you’d think he’d be the first to die, but he actually ends up being her love interest in the film and it’s the one major criticism I have here. Christie seems like a pretty well put together, strong woman and to introduce this chode as her savior seemed really stupid. He doesn’t have a redeeming quality about him.

The rest of the film sees one cocaine fueled encounter after the next. Christie is harassed by some thugs outside of her Jazzercise class as fifteen people just stand back and watch. What an embarrassing group of onlookers, not moving a finger when four bodybuilders are harassing and physically assaulting someone. Luckily, Christie’s new ninja spirit takes over and she beats the shit out of them. We get a lot more of Christie going full ninja, but also get a scene in her apartment that sees an arcade machine shooting lasers into her eyes and talking to her and an exorcism scene gone wrong inside of a Japanese massage parlor. We also get this other ninja who sports an eyepatch and inserts himself into the hijinks later on in the film.

And I’d be remiss if I didn’t talk about the “sex” scene between Christie and Officer Chud. After he drives her home one night, she says, “I don’t have coffee because it’s bad for you, but I’ve got V8 if you want to come inside.” and I know Secord’s thinking, “Cool, I’m definitely down to come inside, but I will absolutely decline that stupid vegetable juice.” Then when they start getting freaky, she legit pops open a can while on top of him and pours it all over her chest like it’s hot…and it kind of is.

The End.

Ninja III: The Domination is a stupid, nonsensical blast from start to finish. In terms of action and sheer ridiculousness, it never really tops its opening scene, but that banger opening will have you on a high well into the film anyway. It’s got ideas that outweigh its budget and awful production value - to the point that in the background of one scene, a gaffer drops his sunglasses into frame and they just left the shot in and there are continuity issues left and right - but in terms of pure “how did this get made?” entertainment value, it doesn’t get much better than this.

I’m thirsty, I think I’m going to grab a V8.