User Reviews

Let me clear something up first off; When it comes to reviewing Godfrey Ho's movies, the lower the score means the better the movie. I am starting to become a Godfrey Ho collectionist just for the sake of how bad these movies actually are. They are my favorite productions ever made. Ever.

The first Ho film I ever watched was "Thunder Ninja Kids: Wonderful Mission." My dad found it in some bargain bin and thought it sounded funny. I could never get past the 10 minutes, it was so awful and my body wasn't accustomed to the painful magic of Godfrey Ho. But months later, at 4 o clock in the morning (thanks to caffeine pills) my friend and I had nothing more to do than watch this terrible movie. And from that day forth, we were hooked. I bought every other Thunder Ninja Kid movie off Ebay, and it was even funnier to see that none of them had anything to do with each other. They became my favorite movie series, and a few months later (bringing us to the present), I find myself with Golden Ninja Warrior from ebay in my hands.

I rated all of the thunder ninja kids films with my friend, on a bad scale, and "Golden Adventure" ended up ultimately being the worst/funniest film out of the 4, (and the funniest film I have ever seen). But no, nothing can compare to Golden Ninja Warrior.

Pretty much, this movie makes no sense at all. Watch your children because it also has random, unexpected scenes of softcore porn everywhere, some are just hilarious how they come out of nowhere and how they have no point in telling the story (one scene "Eric" is doing his wife when the phone rings, or another when Sherry is petting her cat and then decides to get changed to leave for something. They could've just had Eric sitting in a room when the phone rang, and the scene with Sherry and the cat was just weird, and the nudity was so unnecessary. Those made the film that much funnier, as It is just something you'd expect Godfrey Ho to do. Yet, the film also had some really, really, really, really bad scenes. I mean REALLY bad. I read on Wikipedia that some of Godfrey Ho's movies involve woman abuse for no reason, and I thought it was the occasional slap here or there, but no... There is a prostitution scene in the beginning for absolutely no reason that is very graphic, and the lead heroine ninja gets raped near the end... in like a 10 minute scene. It was disturbing and uncalled for.

The ninja scenes were the most random in any Ho film I've seen before. Example: Woman is walking through garden, man pulls up in car, walks into garden, kicks her in the face, they both turn into ninjas, fight, the woman disappears, the man turns back into normal, gets back into his car, and drives away. It made NO sense at all. The plot was the most confusing thing I've ever witnessed. At one moment, the golden ninja warrior is a statue that everyone is after (which we never get to see, and is only talked about once) yet the other moment, the golden ninja is Sherry, and then another moment the golden ninja are all the black ninja.

This beats out all of the thunder ninja kids films, and you have to give credit for the pointless 1 minute Richard Harrison footage in the beginning that is obviously the same footage from Ninja Dragon, Ninja Terminator and Ninja Squad. If you are a fan of Godfrey ho films and if you have somehow missed out on this one, buy it immediately. However, be warned for the random sexual scenes.

This film is just so... weird. Ever since accidentally buying "Ninja Terminator", I've become somewhat of a fan of Godfrey Ho, because his movies are just so mind blowingly terrible and disjointed they cause hilarity, albeit unintentionally.

According to a short little recap at the start of this film, Gold Ninja Warrior is either the sequel or prequel to "Ninja Terminator" (or maybe a retelling of the same story or anything, it's kinda hard to tell). However, the tale of the titular statue is completely lost in the tale of a sex slave, drug dealing, gun trading ring of gangsters being taken down by a ninja.

Unfortunately, unlike Ninja Terminator, the fight scenes in this film are just terrible. Not only that, but I'm fairly sure that there is actually more time dedicated on screen to watching helpless women being beaten up and raped than there is ninjas fighting. I might be wrong on that, but this film has the only graphic sex scene which I actually felt *wrong* after seeing.

Speaking of the rape scene (and you'll know it immediately), it doesn't even make sense. So a fat business man can rape a ninja? The woman had previously killed about 50 bajillion armed gangsters single handedly, and now she has a small length of rope around her wrists (her legs are fine), she can't fight off an overweight, middle aged, unarmed business man? No. Doesn't make sense.

As the one line summary above suggests, I believe that this film is actually a look into the minds of the creators of this film more than anything else. There is an unnecessarily large amount of time dedicated to seeing nude women being hit, which considering the summary on the back of my DVD box says "...the Red Ninjas intend to steal the statue and send their best Ninja heroine to draw out the Golden Ninjas leader, Max." seems just wrong. Also, none of that blurb actually happens. The only time the statue appears is in the recap of events in "Ninja Terminator" right at the start.

This film just plain sucks, even for a Godfrey Ho film (and he is involved, albeit uncredited, and I'm not 100% convinced that Joseph Lai isn't another pseudonym of him anyway). The fight scenes are just plain boring. The only guy in the film who looks like he has any training only appears for about 2 minutes and then gets lamely knocked over by the lead character. The plot makes no sense and randomly jumps about. The editing is terrible (people will jump off a wall dressed as a ninja and land dressed regularly, then 4 seconds later be a ninja again, and so on).

Go buy Ninja Terminator instead. That is an amusingly bad film with surprisingly good fight scenes (even if Jaguar One is a complete and utter dick for no reason), and doesn't feel you leaving dirty like this film does.

****Plot spoilers ahead! Beware!****

Okay now I like old ninja movies. The fights are usually pretty well choreographed, the storylines are unbelievable and the dubbing is hilarious. While Golden Ninja Warriors has all these things there are a few points that I didn't totally enjoy.

The good side of Golden Ninja Warriors is that it is bad. The Golden Ninjas (who don't wear gold, only black by the way) and the Red Ninjas have fought for centuries over a butt-ugly statue that gives the owner ultimate power or something else stupid. I wasn't paying a whole load of attention to the narrative at the start. There is another storyline involving the female golden ninja and hunting down the killer of the father. It turns out that the evil ninja (okay I'm not using the characters' names but I really gave up caring about names about fifteen minutes into it.They will be known as good ninja, girl ninja, evil ninja etc. It's easier) works for the girl ninja's father's killer. What a coincidence! Now the fighting in this movie is pretty good. The only thing is that they have sped up the film speed so it comes across as more Keystone Cops than Ninja Action! Hilarious!

Another excellent thing about this movie is the ninja magic. Now when I first remember hearing these words in American Ninja I laughed. A lot. However this movie makes American Ninja look like oscar winning stuff! Badly done stop motion camera action stinks this movie up seriously. The editing jumps around all over the place. Don't get me started on the Wonder Woman costume changes. Man it's really bad. But good. You know what I mean.

Now for the bad points. Like I stated above I have a problem with this movie. It's the attitude towards women that this women has. I know that it is an early Asian movie but it made the movie unappealing. Within the first ten or fifteen minutes we get to see a girl being viciously whipped for a prolonged period of time. This is followed by the beginnings of a sexual assault. Now there is plenty of nudity and sex in this movie and, usually, I'm all for it but this movie just makes it look as unappealing as possible. Women seemed to be continually beaten in this movie and not just in the fight scenes. The part that really got was the rape scene near the end. The good female ninja is captured by the evil ninja and given to her father's killer. When we next see her she has been bound and proceeds to be beaten for about five minutes in pretty bad way. She is then raped. Now this is the part I didn't get. She is a highly skilled ninja assassin. Now I was expecting some amazing escape before this happened. I sat there thinking any second now she will break this guys neck and get away. Any second now. Any second. Okay this isn't a good thing at all. Now I have watched a lot of movies, good and bad. I've seen movies that slightly glamourize it and I've seen movies that portray it as the brutal act it is. This movie just makes it seem a bit bland really. It just seemed a bit pointless.

All in all there were large parts of this movie I could have done without. The action was comedically good but it could have done without most of the sex and nudity (am I really saying that?).

Where's Michael Dudikoff when you need him....

Well. Where can one begin? This film is not a film in the conventional sense. By estimate anywhere up to 1/3 or a half of this film is made up of stock footage and sequences from other films. Okay so it was a cheap 1980's crappy action flick but even so! Ed Wood may have gotten away with that sort of thing, but I call shenanigans! The result is a "movie" (in as much as, yes, the pictures on the screen move, but you'll wish they wouldn't!) that seems to be the result of the director/editors throwing random sections of fight scene footage at the screen in much the same way a simian slings it's faeces at its cage wall. The good thing is it is just as amusing to watch as that! It is totally devoid of plot, lacks even vestigal artistic merit, and due to the confusing and totally random nature of how it skips from scene to scene I daresay there are some people out there who think it contains some sort of message or is doing something subtle and Lynch-ian. It isn't. It's a garbled, confusing mess that barely qualifies as a film. This doesn't stop it being utterly hilarious and perfect for watching with a few drinks and mates to rip it to pieces.

The above score is the rating for it as a film. It gets 2 stars because a) it didn't let me put in half marks and b) Nothing is as bad as "The Killing Edge". If you want a rating based on sheer (if unintentional) hilarity then go and tack another 3 stars on the end!

I've recently acquired a pile of these Godfrey Ho/Joseph Lai movies and for the curious I've got to state on little caveat: If you're sitting down to watch one of these films for the first time, get some beer.

This one may or may not be a sequel to Ninja Terminator, as it has that crazy statue and Richard Harrison in it...for about ten seconds. The usual ham-fisted narrative gibbers on about some Golden ninjas obtaining a statue from Red ninjas for supreme ninja power and to be honest with it doesn't really matter, because what we're all here for is non-sensical ninja madness, teleporting, POV flying knives, and Keystone cops speed ninja battles.

But what of the actual story? You know, the one these ninja fights are tacked on to? Well, it's sleaze city as a girl tries to infiltrate a hooker ring (I think) to get revenge for her dad being killed (possibly), which involves a disturbingly large amount of misogynistic violence. It's not totally offensive though, as the crazy dialogue, editing, and ninja battles just cuts through the grimness. In a nutshell, the end result is too stupid to be insulting.

If you're in the UK, you can pick these films up for pennies! I've watched scores and scores of bad movies, and these ninja films never ceased to make me laugh - enjoy!

What happened was that some primo Taiwanese trash featuring all the sexploitation and Kung fu kittens you could want somehow had a charm that avoided similarly numerous Santiago pictures, but barely made a splash outside South-east Asia.

Enter the Ho, as well as some random ninja footage to give the boost this film needed apparently to make it into European markets. The result, Golden Ninja Warrior.

DUBBING: Not as memorable as Ninja Dragon's. Definitely is packed with indistinguishable accents and deliciously blunt actionsploitation dialogue nevertheless.

NINJA: Can't remember much. I should mention i use these films to get to sleep. But all the Homarks are here, sped up footage, smoke transitions, those marvellous little jump cuts his editor does, showy acrobatics, pulpy stock sound effects. Great stuff. Tis a cinemagic all to Joseph Lai and co.

THE MOVIE BEFORE NINJA: Thunder Cat Woman seems to be some martial arts sexploitation which only means Ho's ninja footage finds itself in good company here. Some story about human traffickers and the black belt amazon who's gonna save her sister from the pimps i guess, or was it avenging her father's death? Who cares? Like anyone associated with James Bryan or Ed Wood Jr or had their film released through Something Weird back in the 90's, scene after scene of greatness just hits you in the face when you approach a 36% guaranteed Godfrey Ho film. Some scenes, as you would expect from Asian sexploitation, are astoundingly tasteless and add more of that WTF to proceedings. Especially when you pair it up with the artless voyeuristic titillation spread out across the running time. Not exactly bedtime watching, but i was charmed by Thunder Cat's resolve.

CEASE AND DIS SOUNDTRACK: oddly enough, i don't think there was any cheeky sampling going on here. Not as jaw-dropping as Ninja Terminator's at least. Shame, if this film had Tangerine Dream's score to The Keep, it would be tha bes film eva.

In conclusion, Golden Ninja Warrior is the most engaging experience i've had yet with any of Ho's infamous Ninja films. It has nudity, intrigue, passion, and post-production by the gods.