Diamond Ninja Force (1988) Poster

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3/10
Ninja Terminator 2: Return of the Garfield phone
Zeegrade28 April 2010
Basically a sequel to "Ninja Terminator" only Richard Harrison's character is now Ninja Master Gordon instead of Harry. Everything else is the same, from his wife (Maria Francesca) and the Golden Ninja/Goblin idol to the awkward scenes with the Garfield phone. This time however the Caucasian Ninja storyline is intermixed with an Asian knockoff of "Poltergeist". The Black Ninjas want a sacred piece of land that contains buried magic talismans that will restore their Clan's strength in an ongoing battle with the Diamond Ninjas that seem to be represented only by Master Gordon. The head badguy Kogan, who has the absolute WORST taste in clothing, enlists the aid of a Ghost Ninja who in actuality is the ghost woman that haunts the family in the separate movie to secure this plot which currently a family of three resides on. The family consists of George, Fanny and their dopey son Bobo. Yes, his name is actually Bobo. Kogan also employs various pasty white guys who resemble more Sears employees than Ninjas though fans of Godfrey Ho movies know that this is the norm. The two story lines don't mesh well at all (no surprise) as the poltergeist movie isn't really interesting at all even with its occasional nudity and masturbating ghost. Can't say I would complain with being haunted by an Asian woman that wanted to screw my brains out but hey that's just me. The few fight scenes in the Master Gordon story are quick, stale, and utterly goofy. It seems all of these Black Ninjas like to fondle pistols in public places during the daytime. Not smart. This is pretty bad even for a typical Godfrey Ho movie as there is little to no momentum from beginning to end and nowhere near as fun as "Ninja Terminator". Many of the scenes shot at night are so horribly underexposed that I had no clue what was going on, not that I cared. Even Richard Harrison looks incredibly bored filming this garbage. So stagnant that it should have been called Cubic Zirconia Ninja Force.
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I don´t know what to say......
hippikill0125 April 2003
Another mix up from Godfrey Ho, and this time it´s an old Japanese (I recon..) ghost movie, or whats left of it, with new Richard Harrison scenes added afterwords, some 10-15 years later. Apparently Harrison quit the movie buisness because of all the trouble he got from Ho and his paste-up jobs.

Anyway, the movie (the old one) is about a family moving into an old haunted hose. There are a dozen ghosts (some of them horny as hell), some maggots and other haunted house thingies.

The new scenes with Harrison is about a wizard ghost ninja who is making up all these haunted house horrors, so he can scare the family away and get this magic ...object...so he can become the most powerful wizard ghost ninja in the world.

Pretty much like it sounds like....so bad it´s good. recomended, sort of, but could induce headache and minor brain damage.
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5/10
it made me laugh pretty hard once in a while
rottingcarrot22 February 2006
Sure this movie is terrible and drags a lot during the haunted house scenes but the sheer blatantly awful quality of the film is rather intriguing. The voice dubbing on the family who are living in the house is laughably awful. The film was obviously made with little effort or enthusiasm and the result is pathetic. I love the name of the family's son: Bobo. That's right Bobo. What the hell kind of name is Bobo? Have you ever heard of anyone ever being named Bobo? And when the people that provide the voice-overs deliver lines with the name Bobo as if it were a perfectly valid name I couldn't help but laugh uncontrollably! My favorite line: "Bobo! Don't tell lies!"

Anyway who cares about the worthless sub plot! This Movie has the word ninja in the title and legendary film maker GODfrey Ho at the helm, so you can expect some pure adrenaline pumping ninja action to kick your ass!

This movie has a fantastic opening where we see Ninja Master Gordon and his woman walking along the waterfront. They are confronted by a group of thugs who look like accountants and one of them boldly proclaims: "someone tells me your a ninja!" Woman: What are they talking about Gordon? Gordon: Nothing dear. just an old fairy tale. Some guy: I know how to find out if your a ninjer or not!" Then Gordon kicks their asses

The fighting is just absurdly bad. Some of the ninja movies i've seen have some good fighting in them but this one is bad for the most part because they use these lame overweight accountants in a lot of the action scenes and they don't know any kung fu at all and pose little threat to the invincible ninja master but There are these two Asian actors in this movie who play as stunt doubles and ninjas in a a few of these movies. I don't know there names unfortunately but one is the Leader of the golden ninja clan in ninja terminator i think. They luckily add a bit of excitement but the rest of the fighting is just Gordon effortlessly slaughtering the accountants. with the use of suriken, smoke and other amazement.

Fabulous film! I hope someone is transferring these movies to DVD just so they can be purchased or rented. they're not that easy to find.
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1/10
One of the worst films ever
dbborroughs1 February 2006
(For the record this film is based upon a story by AAV Creative Unit)

Bad 1980's ninja film. Its so bad its funny-but not in a good way. The basic plot has a white ninja battling a dark ninja group because the bad ninjas want to take the land where they think their secret wealth was hidden after it was stolen many years earlier (this doesn't take into account the fact the bad ninjas kill the good ninja's wife because she can't tell them where he is). There's black magic and zombies...and the white guy ninja wears heavy eye make-up.

Oh,its awful. Bad fighting (you haven't lived until you see the ninja moves behind the candles), bad plot, worse acting, frighting music...and lets not talk about the dub. Its all horrible. And yes, its funny, oh how its funny, but for all the wrong reasons. Unfortunately,after twenty minutes the laughter begins to wane because the movie is just so bad it over whelms any unintentional humor.

Words fail me. This is just an awful movie. Funny or no, avoid this movie.
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8/10
A hilariously horrendous high camp hoot
Woodyanders30 July 2008
Warning: Spoilers
Virtuous white ninja Gordon (the ever suave Richard Harrison) vows revenge on the evil Kogan (outrageously overplayed with eye-rolling hammy brio by Tao Chiang) and his no-count squad of nasty black ninjas after they murder his sweet girlfriend Lori (the lovely Maria Francesca in a too brief cameo). Meanwhile, Kogan enlists the aid of a wicked witch to conjure up spirits in order to get a family out of a house on a patch of land with a secret treasure hidden on it. Writer/director Godfrey Ho delivers an undeniably clumsy, incoherent and nonsensical, yet often sidesplitting and hence hugely entertaining blend of martial arts and supernatural elements into a gloriously ludicrous cinematic hodgepodge that comes complete with lousy dubbing, plain cinematography by Raymond Chang, a frantic nonstop pace, hysterically inept fight scenes, some tasty gratuitous female nudity, a smidgen of soft-core sex (a hot amorous ghost lady seduces a guy while he's sleeping in bed with his wife!), campy bad guys, cheesy (not so) special effects, a funky, syncopated discoid score, and an annoying little boy named Bobo. Moreover, we also get such choice gut-busting moments as a severed head in a basket and the ghost girl masturbating as she watches the guy make love to his wife. Yeah, this flick is by no means a refined work of subtle and sophisticated celluloid art, but it does possess a certain loopy charm and wiggy energy which makes it a lot of fun to watch. A deliciously crummy schlock riot.
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6/10
The Grudge meets Ninja 3: The Domination (and confuses the hell out of me!)
HaemovoreRex6 June 2005
Warning: Spoilers
Well, with Godfrey Ho in the directors chair and the word 'Ninja' in the film title, you already know before viewing this that it isn't exactly going to exude much in the way of cinematic quality.

Yep - this is another of those seemingly limitless cut and splice ninja movies starring a rather embarrassed looking Richard Harrison in the lead role (although he only actually appears in about ten or so minutes of the film!)

What can I say? This really is one hell of a mess! In fact where do I even begin with this one?

Compendiously, an evil ninja from the black ninja empire decides to utilise some form of dark magic to raise various 'ghost ninja' (who appear courtesy of a completely different film!) in an attempt to force a family out of a property that they are refusing to sell to him. Luckily for them however, they are friends with Ninja master Gordon (Richard Harrison) who possesses the Golden Ninja Warrior statue which is the only thing that can stand against the evil ninjas power (don't ask me how though....even having just watched this film, I'm still completely baffled as to what the hell was going on!)

Gordon realises that he must defeat the evil ninja to finally put an end to all this, but first he must kill off his loyal (and somewhat gormless looking) henchmen one by one.

Additionally Gordon's thirst for justice is made even stronger when his wife is brutally murdered early on in the movie in a scene that must surely set new standards in bad acting.

Yes this film is in fact dreadful on pretty much every conceivable level......in other words.......it's great fun!

This film is SO BAD that you just can't help but admire it. This really took some staggering ineptitude to make.

It's completely and utterly bonkers!
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7/10
DiamondNinjaForce
gavcrimson29 September 2020
...the film for you if you're the person who walked out of 'Poltergeist' thinking that film would have been much better had the house been built on an ancient ninja burial ground rather than an Indian one...included a sub-plot about ninjas feuding over a statue of the golden ninja warrior...featured characters called Fanny and Bobo...stolen Jimmy Page music from the Death Wish 2 soundtrack...and starred Richard Harrison as Gordon, striking fear into the hearts of his enemies with his ninja skills, excessive use of eye liner and Garfield telephone. Fear not, what Hollywood got wrong, Godfrey Ho put right with Diamond Ninja Force. "there are no ghosts...only ghost ninjas!!!!"

Will Gordon be able to help rid the family of their ninja ghosts? propably not since the Richard Harrison footage was- as per usual- added to a film made a few years earlier ('Demon's Apartment' from 1985). Thanks to the wonders of editing though, he does regularly call them up on his Garfield phone to see how they are getting on.

Diamond Ninja Force is 'sort of' a sequel to Ho's Ninja Terminator, with Harrison defending the same ninja statue, living in the same apartment, using the same phone and with Harrison's real life wife Maria Francesca once again playing his onscreen spouse. The only spanner in the works that prevents this from being an official sequel is that Harrison's Ninja Terminator character was called Harry whereas here he is Gordon, but then again continuity was never a Godfrey Ho strong point.
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6/10
Another ridiculous ride from Godfrey!
tarbosh220009 December 2013
Warning: Spoilers
Ninja Master Gordon (Harrison) is a cool dude who just wants to go around Hong Kong taking pictures of his girlfriend Lori (Francesca). But oh no. When an excavation on a building site reveals some bones and human remains, naturally a sinister gang of evil ninjas called the Black Ninja Clan see this as an opening to reassert their dominance, which they believe has only been impeded by good ninjas, called the Diamond Ninja Force. When members of the Black Ninja Clan murder Lori, Gordon dons his red ninja outfit and starts getting revenge one by one. Meanwhile, a family consisting of a father named George, a mother named Fanny and a son named Bobo move into a house. Because the house's original owner had some connection to the site where the bones were discovered, all manner of scary trickery is employed to frighten the family. Will the Black Ninja Clan end up ruling the world as they so desperately want? Will Bobo and his family ever move out of the haunted house? Will Gordon get revenge? All questions should be answered by the DIAMOND NINJA FORCE...

It's another work of genius (????) by the master of nonsensical entertainment, Godfrey Ho. We keep going back to Ho's work because his movies, if nothing else, are original. No one else in the world makes movies like him. He provides a unique form of entertainment that only he seems to understand. Once you get used to his filmmaking style, you want more. Much like how, with Pringles potato chips, once you pop, you can't stop, here it's once you Ho, you can't...go? Well anyway you get the idea. Diamond Ninja Force is more silly fun, with all the loud, crazy dubbing, and nutty goings-on that we've all come to know and love. Do the people reading the dubbed dialogue think it makes sense? Or do they know it's crazy? Do lines like "There are no such things as ghosts. Only ghost ninjas" seem at all normal to anyone? Regardless, we should be happy no one raised any objections, because if it's zany entertainment you seek, look no further.

Much like how Ninja Brothers of Blood (1988) was one-half ninja outing and one-half romantic drama, here we half a half-and-half combo of ninja-based revenge and Poltergeist (1982) or Amityville Horror (1979)-inspired supernatural haunted house hoo-hah. Harrison's enemies during his plot line are great. There's nothing more intimidating than a tubby Caucasian "ninja" prancing about on roller skates. Every single time Harrison dispatches one of the baddies, he pulls down the piece of cloth on his mask that covers the lower half of his nose and his mouth. Every time. Even after he has killed many people. Are we supposed to still be surprised it was him? Or maybe he's just trying to show that his mustache has, and always will have, dominance over theirs. Also you know Harrison is going into "ninja revenge mode" when he puts on guy-liner. So we can see his eyes are all done up anyway.

Other people out there have mentioned Harrison's Garfield phone, but it's so cool: when the receiver is off the hook, his eyes open, and when the receiver is put back, they close again! Though it is somewhat incongruous when Harrison says angry threats using part of Garfield to relay the message. When he says, using the Garfield phone, "you're on my death list", does that mean he's going to kick them off the table like Garfield did to Odie? On the soundtrack front, there are more wonderfully blatant steals from popular songs - this time around musical cues are stolen from The Who's "Who Are You" and Kraftwerk's "Trans Europe Express". When the opening bars to what you think are these songs start playing either while Harrison is ninja-ing it up or a family is dealing with a haunted house, you know you're dealing with something special.

While some prints are said to have an unrelated Sho Kosugi opening, many don't. The version titled Ghost Ninja certainly doesn't. Even though he was top billed on the artwork, we can safely say he was a no-Sho. We were disappointed, so avoid the version by that title. But even without the Sho intro, the movie does get off to a pumped-up opening, and takes you on another ridiculous ride as only Godfrey Ho can. Whether that's your cup of tea, only you can judge. But if you're anti-Ho, you're missing out, as far as we're concerned.
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