Best movie of this year hands down!

Simply A Masterpiece

Absolutely brilliant

if their story seems completely bonkers, almost like a feverish work of fiction, you ain't heard nothing yet.

NINJA PHANTOM HEROES is one of the typical cut-and-paste ninja concoctions from director Godfrey Ho (hiding under his pseudonym of Bruce Lambert) and partner in crime producer Tomas Tang. As usual, there's some really goofy ninja material featuring the most wooden western actors they could find mixed in with an old Hong Kong or Taiwanese crime drama which is a real struggle to sit through. You'll be tempted to fast-forward the pasted-in movie segments just to enjoy the madness of the ninja action, complete with very basic camera FX and bizarre weaponry. I think if they took all of the various filmed ninja segments from Godfrey Ho flicks and put them into a film on their own then they'd have a masterpiece on their hands.

I've seen more and more cheap Asian martial arts movies as I have periodically worked through a Mill Creek box set. It has to be said that it didn't take very long for me to realise I had very little patience for them but I have to say that by now I actively dislike them! Ninja Empire is yet another. It's a late 80's Hong Kong ninja flick directed by Godfrey Ho; who incidentally, is a director responsible for one of my actual favourite martial arts movies, the Cynthia Rothrock vehicle Undefeatable (1993) which aside from being laugh-a-minute and thoroughly entertaining, also happens to have the greatest climatic fight scene ever committed to celluloid – watch it and you'll understand.Anyway, back to Ninja Empire. Its chock full of the usual ingredients of these things, i.e. terrible dubbing, bargain basement production values, a sleep inducing plot-line and several martial arts fight scenes. It did seem to be distinguished a little by the fact that the ninjas – for reasons I could never fathom – appear and disappear in balls of flame. There was some unintentional hilarity with some of the dialogue and the ending was sudden even by the standards of chopsocky movies; so much so, I had to rewind it to see if I had missed something but no, it just…ends! Not that that was a bad thing ultimately because I was suffering watching this. For fans of this sub-genre I am guessing there are things to enjoy here but for me it just seemed like more interminable nonsense.

There are more outrageously entertaining Godfrey Ho movies than Ninja Phantom Heroes, but those who have come to appreciate the man's unique vision will find more of the same to enjoy here. Mostly cobbled from a Chinese gangster potboiler, the movie's actual ninja to non-ninja screen time ratio is pretty paltry. Even the somewhat dull segments have a usually unintentional charm, however, with more than enough silly dubbing and odd dialog to keep bad movie warriors watching.Among the highlights are a brief fight between a drunk white guy and three goofy Chinese guys; a guy throwing a cup of tea in his own face; any scene involving the characters "Baldy" and "Fatty"; gratuitous evil Chinese gangster chuckling; stick-wielding motorcyclists attacking a car; revenge accompanied by the line "You dirty rat"; and, of course, the obligatory disappear-and-go-poof ninja henchmen.Potential victims, I mean viewers, should be aware that the version of this movie available as part of Mill Creek's Ninja Assassins 10-pack, confusingly retitled Ninja Empire (also the title of a different Godfrey Ho movie), is only 78 minutes long, whereas another version apparently runs 90 minutes. Frankly, though, since most people will be glad when it's over, it probably doesn't even matter.

Yep, it's time for yet another completely nonsensical cut & paste abomination, produced by infamous hack maestro, Tomas Tang. This one also boasts the indignity of some of the most inappropriate music ever to grace an action scene; the sort of mundane arrangement one might very well expect to hear playing in a shopping centre in fact!To be entirely fair, even though the main body of the film is sadly, rather a chore to sit through, the last five or so minutes more than make up for it; Indeed, you'll hardly believe your eyes as our ninja pals battle it out with metal discs(!), a bullet firing parasol(!!) and last but not least a bizarre twirling thing which closely resembles the inner blade component of a food mixer!!! If this wasn't baffling enough, we are finally treated to a completely 'What the fu- I mean, hell?!!' ending which appears to have been tacked on for no apparent reason whatsoever! Deranged stuff indeed, but with Tang on the credits, what more could you possibly expect?