• Directed by Bruce Lambert
• Written by Duncean Bauer
• Starring
  • Joff Houston
  • John Wilford
  • Christine Wells
  • Glen Carson
  • George Dickson
  • Allen Leung
• Produced by Tomas Tang

I first acquired a copy of this movie many many moons ago — in fact, it came out of the same previously-viewed bin as Star Crystal. I even tried to watch the two of them in quick succession, but after struggling through the pain of Star Crystal, I only withstood about twenty minutes of Ninja Phantom Heroes until I found myself muttering, “No. No. In the name of all that’s holy, I can’t take it.” Watching two utterly unwatcheable movies in a row threatened even my calloused sanity. I turned it off and buried it far down in my pile of to-watch movies.

Since that time, I’ve become familiar second-hand with the movies of certain Hong Kong entrepeneurs, including director Godfrey Ho and the producer of this movie, Thomas (or Tomas) Tang. Mr. Tang (who went by a number of other pseudonyms) was a Hong Kong entrepeneur who would buy unfinished, abandoned film projects, shoot surrounding scenes involving ninjas, and release the finished product on the unsuspecting ninja-crazed viewing audience of the eighties.

I should also note that, like Star Crystal, I bought this movie without the benefit of a cover sleeve. That proved to be a fatal mistake, as even the most incomprehensible flicks have something halfway rational on the back of the cover. It may not bear more than a passing resemblance to the contents, but at times that’s a plus. After all, the back of the box is the bait, and therefore must present the illusion of a compelling and entertaining story to be had within. One might even go so far as to claim that the ability to write good box copy is more important than the ability to write a fair screenplay; after all, by the time you find out the movie is complete twaddle, you’ve already plunked down your buck to rent it.

Anyway. I’m stalling. Can you tell? The prospect of trying to translate Ninja Phantom Heroes to a readable review is one of the more daunting tasks I’ve set myself this week. Maybe I should just write box copy for it: “Martial arts mayhem meets organized crime in a super ninja action spectacular!”

We open in a military prison yard of some sort. Guards in camo watch over prisoners in numbered jumpsuits as they load rocks into baskets and take them to, you know, other places to dump. Prisoner 715, a youngish fellow with a moustache, is called to see the commander, who is accompanied by a Sgt. Glen. This prompts the tense voice-over thought in prisoner 715’s mind: “Oh my God, it’s Glen.” (I’d love to tell you who all the actors are for these roles, but the video wasn’t kind enough to include closing credits.)

We’re then given a flashback — 715 (and, for the sake of simplicity, I’ll refer to him hereafter by his given name, even though we don’t hear it for another thirty minutes, and then only incidentally: it’s “Ford”) and a bleached-blond man, both in camo uniforms, run across the hills, chased by other men in camo uniforms. Now, I don’t know military strategy, but assuming that the pursuers are the for-real military, they seem to have no idea how to search an open area without any hiding places bigger than a bush. Despite their strategic handicap, they capture Ford (leaving his companion out in the bushes) and take him back to… Dear Heavens, it appears to be a junkyard surrounded by a four-foot chain link fence. The sign reads “U.S. ARMY MUNITIONS DEPOT” — and the sign is hand-lettered on a white sheet that is hanging over the fence.

I gotta tell you, folks, I could no longer ignore that sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach. Ninja Phantom Heroes was gearing up to be an über-stinker.

Finally, they let us out of the flashback as Ford talks to Glen. Thanks to Glen’s “plan of leniency,” Ford was spared a court-martial, and now Glen wants him back with “the agency” (excuse me, “The Agency”) to help track down Morris (whom we presume is the blond guy), who is now dealing arms in Hong Kong. When Ford protests that he’s never been to Hong Kong, he doesn’t know how to track Morris, and he just plain can’t get it done, Glen reassures him by telling him that he’ll be working with another of their people there, Christine — aka “Yellow Bird.” (And for the duration of the mission, Ford’s codename will be “Condor.”) Oh thanks, now it’s two of us to stop an arms dealer; I feel much better.

Cut to Hong Kong, where a ninja in white is practicing in his private playground, and yes, it’s Morris. His trusted assistant (hereafter Trusted Assistant) tells him that a local syndicate is trying to horn in on his arms deal. Well, I’ll tell you what we’ll do about that! We’ll cut to completely unrelated footage!

To wit, a cocktail party. Three of the main gun runners of Hong Kong have come together for a little soiree: Messrs. Chan, Kwan, and Wong. In Wong’s retinue is Alan, Wong’s godson, destined to be our “hero.” After the three spend some time talking about getting old and being in business together so many years ago, a martial arts type (distinctly not a ninja) leaps over a fence into the garden and kills… somebody. It wasn’t one of the three biggies, it wasn’t Alan, and quite frankly, in the dark, all these black-haired seventies-style haircuts looks alike.

After getting his godfather out of there, Alan meets with three of his old friends: Baldy (he’s balding), Fatty (he’s portly — are you getting this yet?), and a third one whose name/nickname is never mentioned and who has no really distinguishing physical characteristic. Call him Ugly; I did. These three are more “working class criminals,” pulling small jobs because they can’t get real work, and they’re a bit miffed at Alan because he’s running with a high-falootin’ crowd now. We interrupt such ruminations because, on the ground floor, Baldy’s hooker girlfriend is having trouble with an abusive Caucasian client, and it takes the four men to throw him out. (And this is a reeeeeally excessive amount of time spent to fill in the backgrounds of characters who will have little bearing on the plot. Of course, they could have had much larger roles in the original movie from which this was Frankensteined.)

Okay. Finally, Ford reaches Hong Kong, and meets up with his contact, Christine. You remember the codenames, of course, and these lead to the preciously-secretive dialogue:
Christine: “Is the Condor hungry?”
Ford: “The Condor wants to hear the Yellow Bird sing.”

I tell you, things are just going from bad to worse. In this same conversation, Ford says, “All right, let’s go,” Christine says, “I’m ready when you are,” and then they stay where they are and continue their conversation. It almost verges on surrealism.

Let’s get back to the real movie, shall we? Alan goes over to Mr. Kwan’s house; he’s sweet on Kwan’s daughter Jane, though cool toward her brother Albert. Kwan goes in for a long spiel of exposition about how the three crimelords started their smuggling together.

Alas, the interlude lasts not nearly long enough, and then we go back to Ford and Morris. Thanks to Christine’s intelligence, Ford finds Morris, and tails him for a few city blocks by the brilliant technique of walking about three paces behind him, loitering just behind him at crosswalks, etc. His amazing surveillance is burst when Morris happens to glance back and see him right there. Curses! Morris breaks into a run, with Ford hot on his tail. (What, exactly, does Ford hope to accomplish him? He’s obviously not trying to apprehend him, so what good does giving chase do? Hmm…) Finally, Ford catches up, and they exchange a few martial-arts blows, then Morris does one of those ninja tricks: He makes some mystical hand motions (actually, it looks like he’s playing pattycake), and poof! He disappears in a puff of smoke. Not to be outdone, Ford does the same pattycake routine, the same puff of smoke –

– and suddenly both of them are on a hillside somewhere else near a highrise, Morris in his white ninja duds, Ford in a camo ninja suit, exchanging chop-socky blows!

And I completely lost it. I started guffawing like I was on laughing gas. Tears streamed from my eyes. I rewound and called my wife in to watch the scene, and laughed just as hard the second time. (My wife just looked at me and went back to what she was doing. It must be a gender thing.)

The fight itself ends abruptly, without a winner or loser or anything; we simply cut from a flurry of blows to Mr. Chow diving into a pool. When he dries off, he meets with a mysterious gentleman from the Middle East who’s in the market for illegal arms. Seems that Chow is stealing the contract out from under Chan. Naturally, this gets under Chan’s collar, and he sends out Alan to exact vengeance.

But wait — let’s go back to Ford and Christine, shall we? After lamenting how Morris “got away” in their last encounter, he explains how he got involved with Morris in the first place (cue the second flashback to explain the first flashback): Seems that Morris got Ford involved in smuggling guns from the Army in Viet Nam. (Viet Nam? This is the eighties, for crying out loud! There’s no way any of this is taking place during the Viet Nam era!) The footage shown here shows some miscellaneous rebels being led into the aforementioned “Munitions Depot” by Trusted Assistant, who gives them a crate of what looks like random weapons thrown together. (Yup, cream of the crop from the U.S. Army here.)

The flashback ends, and again the dialogue verges on surrealism:
Ford: “I know I did wrong in the war.”
Christine: “It’s all over now.”
Ford: “Thank God.”
Christine: “See ya.”
They walk rapidly away from each other.

It seems scarcely two minutes until we’re back with these two, walking through another park, discussing what they know. Suddenly two back-clad ninja attack. Naturally, Ford does his Ninja Macarena again, and poof! Presto! He’s Camo Ninja! Unfortunately, he’s Camo Ninja Without Weapons, so he’s forced to fight barehanded. Naturally, he prevails, and one ninja succumbs to his own blade while the other disappears in a fireball.

Okay. Real plot. Alan arranges the abduction of the Middle Eastern fella, holding him in a warehouse overnight so that Chow’s deal will go sour.

[A note: it was at this point that I looked at the clock and realized that only forty minutes had gone by. Dear heavens, could I survive to the end without multiple aneurysms?!]

While his henchmen hold the Arab, Alan goes over to Kwan’s house, only to be attacked by Albert with a fencing foil. They duel a bit, and Albert’s animosity is revealed: He thinks Alan only loves Jane for her money. Jane apparently thinks so, because she storms off, shouting, “You don’t love me!”

You know, I’m starting to realize that the salvaged-footage movie is not appreciably better than the ninja inserts. Less silly, certainly, but no more engaging. And reliving the experience for this review is not exactly doing wonders for my mental state.

Let me sketch in the rest. There’s a hit put out on Alan, but it turns out to be his old friend Burt called in for the job, and he refuses to fulfill the contract, which means that Chow’s people go after him, and he dies in Alan’s arms. Then Alan and Jane get married, but there’s a hit at their wedding, and a handful of people die, including Kwan. Then Albert gets in bed with Chow and helps kill Chan, so then Alan goes on a one-man rampage at Chow’s mansion, and somehow manages to kill whole bunches of henchmen, and even Albert, before he needs help — but then, who should run in? That’s right, Baldy, Fatty, and Ugly. Alan and Baldy make it out alive, but as they and Jane try to find a boat to leave Hong Kong, Chow and a henchman run Alan down in a car and kill him. Then the police get Chow, so all the bad guys are taken care of.

Except, naturally, Morris. (You know, that whole other plotline.) As Christine meets with Trusted Assistant, who’s defecting, but then they’re captured by Morris’ ninjas, who take them back to Morris’ place, but then Camo Ninja appears — complete with weapons this time! — and there’s a big ninja fight, until it’s down to Ford and Morris, a fight with tons of poofs, and which ends with Ford using a firework-spitting umbrella as a weapon and Morris relying on a flying guillotine. (Upon my honor, I wish I were kidding.)

Aren’t you glad that I fast-forwarded the second half of the movie for you?

The best that you can say about this movie is that it’s filler — specifically, it fills a video tape, which fills a box, which a video rental store can then charge for. If there was any redeeming value at all in this movie, it was the belly laugh I had at the first poofing ninja exhibition; other than that, it’s such a complete exercise in mediocrity — first in the original production, and then doubly so in the ninja inserts — that one must wonder how the filmmakers, specifically Messrs. Lambert and Tang, manage to sleep through the night.

But here’s the scariest part of it all: while the rest of the credits were superimposed over footage of the military prisoners toting their baskets’o'rocks, the title itself was imposed on a freeze-frame. Experienced bad movie watchers know what this means: It means that Ninja Phantom Heroes is not the original title of this feature (the original title having been excised to make way for the freeze-frame title), which in turn means that somewhere out there, this movie may very well lurk on a video store shelf under a separate title, waiting to lure in the unwary and cruelly steal ninety minutes of their life.

Great. Now I’m not going to sleep through the night.

Some Notable Totables:

• body count: 36
• breasts: 0
• explosions: 18
• ominous thunderstorms: 0
• actors who’ve appeared on Star Trek: don’t make me laugh