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How sad is this?

Best movie of this year hands down!

Great movie! If you want to be entertained and have a few good laughs, see this movie. The music is also very good,

Easily the biggest piece of Right wing non sense propaganda I ever saw.

"American Ninja" is a simple-minded little Kung-Fu action flick that is here simply for entertainment, no more no less. And let me start off by saying that American Ninja is by no means a film to be taken to heart, it's cheesy and hokey and is pumped full of the most annoying sword sound effects since "The Street Fighter", but, "American Ninja" can be a fun little 80's flick that will keep you on the edge of your couch cushion for an hour and a half if you view it with all your logic in suspension.What I love most of this film is..... It gives me what I expect. Ninjas, ninja training, ninja action, and the icing on the cake the epic battle between Joe and the leader of the ninjas.... The Black Star Ninja! Tadashi Yamashita as black star tears up the screen and in one scene, some other ninjas in a fight not equaled by Bruce Lee or Jackie Chan-fast and ferocious! This movie singlehandedly made me want to be a ninja throughout my childhood! Overall rating: 8 out of 10.

The title of my review aside, I adore this film.When American Ninja was released on VHS back in 1986 Ninja fever was rampant. Even in the sleepy little village where I lived in England, every single boy of my age dreamed of being a ninja. The school playground was rampant with us wannabe assassins in duffel coats!In the aforementioned little village we only had one video shop, I spent weeks and weeks in a state of despair on Saturday afternoons, as we would go there only to see the dreaded "Film on loan" tab attached to the box. Eventually we finally turned up one afternoon and it was there...With no "Film on loan" tab on it! my life was finally complete and we took it home. My parents were never really into the whole "film ratings exist for a reason" thing. Incidentally, neither were the parents of pretty much all my friends, ahhh...The 80's, these young un's today don't know what they missed. Saturday evening finally came and American Ninja was inserted into the top-loader...As I sat eating my Vesta curry, My life literally changed in the following 90 minutes, I learned more than any teacher could ever show me at school, Joe was literally a god! This guy could do anything...Beat anyone! Most of my friends had already seen it and we were all finally on the same Ninja wavelength! We practiced Joe's moves, disappeared in a "cloud of smoke" (England gets a lot of fog in Autumn/ Winter) behind the school canteen, jumped over the tyres in the playground as part of our "ninja training school".Watching it back a couple of weeks ago (now I am 38) It is total crap, but total crap of the highest order. I thought ninja's were actually, you know, supposed to be elite assassins. Here they seem to get away with being pretty mediocre to be fair, they miss the easiest targets, and are usually knocked out by a punch or kick that does not seem to really connect (or even come close in some cases). Joe comes across like he has something stuck up his backside most of the film (maybe constipation?)and the whole thing is just laughable.But laughable in the best possible way.Thank you Golan Globus and Cannon films, thank you Michael Dudikoff and Steve James, thank you the guy who did the music.I am indebted to you all for this slice of my childhood that I can also enjoy now I am a grown-up, albeit in a different but still entirely satisfying way!

Superficially, we have a made-in-the-Phillipines B movie with the Golan-Globus imprint. Just to be clear, in case you are new to the chronicles of B movies, Golan-Globus was a came-from-nowhere production team which tried (with some success) to emulate the feats of similar come-from-nowhere studios which, in the 50s especially, in the teen sub-genre, were astonishingly capable at stealing Hollywood's lunch. This review is not the place to review the oddball list of their productions, except perhaps to note that it included some films LIKE THIS ONE which enjoyed a financial and critical notoriety far beyond what the production values would have suggested. The story is worthy of note. An American is "trained" by a master in the ancient Japanese art of Ninjitsu. Not necessarily new as such (something similar was on the table in Bloodsport for example) but at the time, when western audiences were just beginning to understand that their notion of a "fight" was vastly inferior to what eastern audiences had been watching for decades, it was, in its own strange way, noteworthy. Two more points. The film, warts and all, had its moments. Not talking Spielberg, of course, but parts of it were fun. And even more interesting was how the theme would not die. Run an IMDb search for "american ninja" and you will be deluged with all finds of later iterations on the same theme. In other words -- and this was a peculiar talent of Golan-Globus -- they connected with the audience on a scale beyond the actual offering. For this reason, I gave this film a higher rating than most, and suggest it is worth a watch, especially for students of the genre.

Just when you thought director Sam Firstenberg could not take ninja films any further, we were treated to this spectacularly brilliant cheese fest in 1985. Michael Dudikoff, fresh off his stint in Bachelor Party, was cast as "Joe".... The American Ninja!!! Did it matter that Mr. Dudikoff had absolutely no martial arts training before this film? Certainly not. They only wanted a guy who looked like James Dean, didn't have to say much, and could act like he had a chip on his shoulder. Dudikoff more than fits those criteria. You have to feel for Steve James, though. He actually was a great martial artist, but had to play the sidekick role. At least in the two installments of this series I've seen.The story centers around our hero the mysterious "Joe" who is a newly arrived private at a U.S. Army base in the Phillipines. At least that's where they filmed this. Most movies about the military refer to their characters by their last name. Not here. I don't recall us ever learning what Joe's last name is. But nobody knows much about the young man. He was found on some Pacific Island as a young boy with no family or memories of one. Raised in reform schools until he "almost killed a man at age 16", Joe clearly needed some discipline, and the army is where he ended up. Curious however that the army has no knowledge of Joe's date of birth, yet they know how old he was when he almost killed a man! The film is filled with goofs like that! Anyway, Joe was apparently trained as a ninja while still a boy! And could you believe the guy who trained him actually works as a gardener on a plantation near Joe's army base??? As Elaine would say on Seinfeld.... GET OUT!!! Turns out the owner of this plantation is also stealing arms from Joe's base and selling them to the highest dirty bidder, too. And this plantation is also the training ground for an army of evil ninjas, too!!! Sounds like we have a Golan/Globus production here! Can Joe stop the sale of these arms and defeat the ninja army and their leader??? Honestly, you get what you pay for with this movie. There is a lot of action, and some of it is compelling. Despite Dudikoff's lack of training, he almost pulls it off. At least we get to see Steve James flex his muscles between stealing every scene. Judie Aaronson of Friday the 13th IV and Weird Science fame is here to provide a plucky love interest. She does fine with her character and comes off kind of like Jane in a Tarzan movie. The musical score is made from old Missing In Action pieces, and some outrageously over the top horn playing. Some of it sounds like Chuck Mangione's Feels So Good on crack. The film even has jeeps that will explode after slightly tapping a palm tree. Trust me. It's an hour and a half of your life that you probably didn't need, anyway! 5 of 10 stars.The Hound.