Ninja the Protector (1986)

 

Director: Godfrey Ho

Screenplay: AAV Creative Unit and Godfrey Ho

Cast: Richard Harrison as Ninja Master Gordon Anderson; David Bowles as Bruce

An Abstract Candidate

 

Only a ninja can defeat a ninja.

What's a ninja?

Continuing with Godfrey Ho and producer Joseph Lai's infamous cut-and-paste ninja films, this even among the more traditional ones I know of (i.e. the ones with American actor Richard Harrison within them) has the more curious aspects as a production among them. It has the traditional set-up - Richard Harris versus an evil ninja leader in red, a costume like an onesie with a beard and a hangdog look from the black mascara. Queen Elizabeth II's picture in the back of one shot with Richard Harris does however remind you even these films have a historical connection, films made in Hong Kong who would go from a British colony to the 1997 handover to mainland China. This is purely a tangent before we get to the meat of this review, but it provides the added strangeness you can see Queen Elizabeth II, whose coronation was filmed as a documentary in A Queen is Crowned (1953) can go from fifties Hollywood to this to 2020s Marvel comic book films.

Never mind that ninjas, even in this inaccurate form, are Japanese by origin but in a Hong Kong film like this are taken as is, the Japanese art of ninjutsu continually breaking out among picnic benches, as with the other Godfrey Ho films of this type. This tries a lot to connect its source film to the ninja footage it is spliced with, with photo recognition for the evil ninja lair establishing a connecting tissue, through stills, of the characters from the source film who are the baddies.

What is weirder here even next to the other Ho ninja films however is the source film, reinterpreting it as being a ninja clan involved with counterfeiting, Richard Harris effectively playing ninja cop against them, shruikening and handcuffing criminals, effectively playing the same character regardless of name or job as with the other films. With the source film, it becomes one of the oddest experiments to get a British DVD release from these set of films, because it is drama about a male model that is pulled into a downward spiral. Starting with being seduced by his young female boss, it begins with a softcore one-upping of From Here to Eternity (1953) and its famous beach romantic scene, only to get into betraying his girlfriend with more than one woman, a sleazy male business man and his younger wife, and murder, a soap opera with a lot of nudity now turned into a counterfeit action film with ninjas.

The source film even has fight scenes choreographed like low budget martial art fights, especially in the punching and kicking sound effects that sound like a potato being fired out of a homemade cannon, and this even for a Ho cut-and-paste ninja film now is weird. Warren the model, dubbed a spy for Harris' Interpol team, is clearly within a drama of a man sleeping his way up in modelling, his girlfriend Judy and brother David becoming suspicious, all in a world where even older women are eyeing him up with the chance he can be seduced for money. It is strange, as this is reconceptualised to suit Ho and producer Joseph Lai's goal, seeing conversations altered to mention a member named Tiger being killed, but in context of a scene where two people in an office are having a casual work conversation. Knowing this is meant to tie to Richard Harris the ninja cop stopping people, not even killing them, in black ninja costumes and secretly leaving them for his bumbling assistants to find handcuffed in broad daylight, tipping them off, is peculiar.

Ninja in Hong Kong is, yes, a curious thing no one bats an eye about, neither that throughout his films, Harris rocked a camouflage ninja costume in an urban centre. Nor that here, ninjas are not meant to exist, as he keeps telling his assistants before they get suspicious, only to let them in on the truth matter-of-factly when, challenged to a ninja duel, it is frankly impossible to hide the fact. It feels more cognisant, however, than when Ninja the Protector's source material, in comparison to its light hearted action tone, becomes suddenly bleaker. Ho, even as a huge fan of his, never has had a deft touch in tone, and the source film turns on a hairpin to aspects that should be warned about for some viewers, feeling itself tonally lopsided even when the attempt to turn it into a ninja film itself makes no sense. With a trigger warning, this will have moments such as Judy trying to commit suicide, lurid even in the source film without any new additions, with a nasty blood splatter cut to shooting onto a wall from off-screen.  The paradox of a film that already an erotic melodrama, where a lot of the female cast, even really minor ones, have a prolonged nude scene with awkward faked sex, and also these bleaker aspects does make this different from other titles in this run of cute-and-paste ninja films. The idiosyncratic aspects of Godfrey Ho's film are amplified by a grubbier drama as its internal organs, good and bad. It is a genre, erotic drama, which is not commonly imported out of Hong Kong cinema for cult audiences, even in mind to their Category 3 films of this era. Whilst it is not as extreme as some of those films, its ideas, such as just deciding to end with a murder, brutally committed, which is meant to implicate someone falsely makes this feel like a soap opera if allowed to get filthier than merely implied.

Again, the warning is of concern, as this does lead unfortunately to a tonal dissonance, even as someone who liked this. It is a film which can be difficult unintentionally such as a woman being brutalised with a belt for sleeping with other men, which for obvious reasons will be off-putting for some viewers. Thankfully most of this film is contrary to this, cheesier and ultimately one of the more idiosyncratic of these wave of Ho-Lai films in hindsight because of what it is, a mash-up of melodrama with an at-odds genre combination, leading to the requisite ninja battle finale. This particular one feels even more ridiculous to other ninja battle endings for this duo, as this starts with ninjas jousting with chained blades on motorbikes. Moments like that, in contrast to the bad taste here that does come up in other Godfrey Ho films, and cannot be denied, is why I came to his films, messy productions but with scenes and moments you never seen anywhere else.

Abstract Spectrum: Atonal/Eccentric/Lurid/Weird

Abstract Rating (High/Medium/Low/None): Low