Released: January 2021
Director: John Liu
Re-Directed By: Kurtis M. Spieler
Run Time: 93 Minutes
Not Rated
Distributor: Vinegar Syndrome
Genre: Action
Cast:
John Liu: John Liu/Don ‘The Dragon’ Wilson: John Liu(voice)
Michael Berryman: The Plutonium Killer(voice)
Linnea Quigley: Randi Rydell(voice)
Leon Isaac Kennedy: Det. Jimmy Williams(voice)
Cynthia Rothrock: Det. Janet Flores(voice)
Vince Murdocco: Jack ‘The Cameraman'(voice)
Matt Mitler: Freddie Cufflinks(voice)
Ginger Lyn: Nita Liu(voice)
“Art is never finished, only abandoned.” These words are often attributed to Leonardo da Vinci, perhaps due to the fact he was notorious for leaving paintings and inventions unfinished. Now, why would I bring up one of the founders of the High Renaissance in a movie about a cheesy 80s ninja action movie? Paintings and writings aren’t the only things that have been abandoned. Why would something be abandoned? Lack of resources, motivation, or some other reason. That can only be answered by the artist in question. In the film industry, I can’t even BEGIN to describe how many movies that have been forgotten or lost over the past century. I would imagine that the number is in the hundreds if not thousands. There are movies that we’ll never see because the film and negatives have either been destroyed by fires, or lost in some vault somewhere. There are a number of movies, usually the cult kind that have been re-discovered by companies such as Shout! Factory, Kino Lorber, MVD Rewind, Vestron Video, or Vinegar Syndrome. These companies specialize in the restoration and remastering of long-forgotten cult classics. That brings me to today’s review: New York Ninja.
New York Ninja tells the story of John Liu as he takes on the criminals of New York after his wife is murdered for witnessing an abduction. As far as we know, that seems to be the overall plot. Unfortunately, there’s no real way to be sure, because when the film canister for this film was discovered, there was nothing else to go with it. No script, nothing. Filming was never completely finished, and whatever post-production there may have been with this movie has long since vanished. The film’s plot-line is a pretty goofy set-up with John Liu playing a white-clad ninja in the heart of New York City in 1983. Honestly, the story surrounding New York Ninja is far more interesting than the film itself. What we have here is a very unique situation. Due to production issues, be it disagreements with the then-director John Liu, the film was ultimately abandoned and shelved. Liu himself ended up dropping off the radar entirely after this. So, for 35 years, the film sat in a canister collecting dust, until Vinegar Syndrome acquired it in 2018-2019. Because there was no real post-production on the film, it all had to be done from scratch. So, not only did Vinegar clean-up the footage, they had Mr. Spieler edit the film without the benefit of a script. In addition, there was no sound design whatsoever. What Mr. Spieler ended up with was essentially a silent movie. So, any sound design had to be done from scratch. As far as dialogue goes, it was a guessing game. Because there was no script to go off of, Spieler and his team had to read lips the best they could and improvise the rest. I can’t imagine how daunting a task that must have been.
The foundation for ANY movie is a script. Without it, you’re flying blind. I’ve seen movies where they were re-writing the script on the fly and you could absolutely tell. From what I’ve seen in New York Ninja, John Liu was constantly going off-script which led to a whole lot of problems with continuity. When it comes to the sound design, a lot had to be done. Vinegar Syndrome and Mr. Spieler had to record all new dialogue for the film, trying to go off what they could see while making other stuff up on the fly. So, they brought in voice actors to do ALL the dialogue. Famed kickboxer and b-movie action star Don ‘The Dragon’ Wilson did the voice for John Liu, while trailblazing female action star Cynthia Rothrock did the voice for Det. Janet Flores in a small role. Michael Berryman(The Hills Have Eyes, 1976) would voice the film’s villain, The Plutonium Killer. Going in without a script, the voice actors really had to go for it, often deliberately over-playing their roles. There really was no other option. Honestly, I really dug the fact that Wilson was the voice of the hero in this film. He was fantastic. But everything was clearly 80’s b-movie-style performances, so you really couldn’t take it seriously. As far as the on-screen acting goes, it’s completely over-the-top. There’s no real-world scenario in which this movie wouldn’t be made fun of. Yet, the folks at Vinegar Syndrome did the best they could with what they had, going even so far as to hire music group, Voyag3r to do the soundtrack for the entire movie. Considering that the music they produce is for movies that don’t exist, this was a solid choice. They did a real good job here.
Judging from the final product, I’m not entirely certain that this was the version of New York Ninja that John Liu and his team were intending. But when you don’t have the script to provide a blue-print for what’s going on, you have to make it up as you go along. As a result, there’s a lot of continuity errors in here, some intentional, some not. One of the most intentional continuity errors is with the ninja rolling around on roller-skates. Yes, a ninja on roller-skates. He does a flip over a car and he’s landed on his feet that don’t have the skates, but in the next cut, they’re back. That was done on purpose, because Mr. Spieler knew exactly what kind of movie this was. So, I have to give full credit to Kurtis M. Spieler for having the guts to take on the task of editing this movie into something that was somewhat coherent. As far as the action goes, the fight choreography was done by John Liu, who played the main character. Liu was known in the east-Asian action movie world as one of the best kickers in the industry. He clearly has talent here, but the way the fights were staged were incredibly ridiculous. The action was not good, no matter how the film was going to be edited. You can’t cover-up sloppy choreography with clever editing. Yet, the bad fight sequences are part of this film’s charm, because it’s so incredibly wacky.
I think New York Ninja is on its way to becoming a legitimate cult classic. The only reason why it isn’t right now, is because it doesn’t have much of an audience. It debuted at Beyond Fest last October, but it was only released earlier this week on the 25th. It’s definitely going to find an audience, especially those that love the cheesy b-movies of the 80s. I know, I’m one of them. The 80s was the decade of the ninja movie and to be honest, John Liu is no Sho Kosugi. Not even close. That said, the flavor of this film is incredibly unique. It’s well-paced, considering the lack of a script, which didn’t actually show up until they were putting the final touches on the film. This is the kind of a movie where you bring over your pals, buy some beer and order a pizza. This was made for a Riff-Trax-style commentary. I’ll be honest: The fact that this movie even exists is nothing short of a miracle. In an industry where everything’s going digital, finding fully filmed movies on film reels is extraordinary. New York Ninja takes the idea of the obscure film to a whole new level. They didn’t even have a list of actors that were originally attached to the movie, so nobody knows who those actors really are outside of John Liu. You have to know what kind of movie you’re getting into if you want to watch, nay, EXPERIENCE New York Ninja. Oh, I definitely think this movie’s going to find an audience pretty quickly. As of this writing, the movie has a 95% rating on Rotten Tomatoes based on 20 reviews so far. Not bad. Is it a good movie? No, and I think the good folks at Vinegar Syndrome AND the voice actors know that, but they jumped in with both feet and it’s a film unlike any other. This was the first movie that I ever pre-ordered on home video and I’m glad I did. It’s a unique little treasure and a grade-A slice of 1980s b-movie cheese.