Eye Candy #62 - "American Ninja"

American Ninja: What kind of world do we live when you can get “American Ninja” on DVD, but not “The African Queen”? With the all the production value of an episode of “The A-Team”, and chock full of absolutely dreadful fight choreography, this film is as mind-numbing as it is silly and looks every penny of its purported $50,000 budget. I know this came out in the “ninja” heyday of the mid-80’s, directed by Sam Firstenberg (who also gave us “Breakin’ 2 - Electric Boogaloo”) and from the fertile film minds of Menachem Golan and Yoram Globus, who are also responsible for that work of art “Invasion USA”…well, “American Ninja” makes that movie look GOOD. This movie spawned FOUR sequels. Michael Dudikoff, playing the part of his James Dean-esque glower, is Joe Armstrong, an American soldier in the Phillipines who, while escorting a convoy, is attacked by a group of Filipino rebels supported mighty incongruously by ninjas (the hooded, katana-wielding kind). But they don’t know that Joe has learned the ways of the ninja as well. After Joe saves the life of a general’s daughter, he draws down the wrath of the whole private ninja army, so he and his obligatory 1980’s Black sidekick (Steve James, who was Kung Fu Joe in “I‘m Gonna Git You Sucka“) fight back, with R-rated violence that is remarkably tame by today’s comparison. It is my fervent hope and wish that whoever wrote this crapola didn’t ever make it into the Screenwriters Guild. At least they had some throwing stars. Woodchuck sez, “Absolutely dreadful.”