Eye Candy #374 - "American Ninja 2 - The Confrontation"

American Ninja 2 - The Confrontation:  Since no one could reasonably ignore the pageantry and soul-churning pathos of the original, we get more ninja goodness in this film, the first of four sequels, not all of which starred Michael Dudikoff.  Backed an all-synthesizer, all-the-time, all-annoying soundtrack, Dudikoff returns as Joe Armstrong, the American ninja, with Steve James back as his Black sidekick.  This time around, they’ve been flown in to some exotic warm locale (which was apartheid South Africa, hence the accents on many of the cast) to investigate the disappearance of American marines by various and sundry nefarious parties.  It doesn’t help that the commanding Colonel “Wild Bill” has gone native and his men run around in Hawaiian shirts, all of them apparently behaving as if they were permanently on shore leave.  In no time flat, Armstrong finds himself against more ninjas, mixed with a thoroughly ridiculous gene-splicing subplot (GROWING ninjas, so to speak), as he fights the evil businessman Leo…”the Lion“.  Yes, that‘s his criminal nickname.  Some people say this film was better than the first.  I disagree.  In fact, I disagree completely.  I would argue that if such a thing is possible, it is indeed worse than the original, with some truly terrible acting (it’s hard to believe that Dudikoff could get worse but they actually let him speak more this time around), some of the fakest looking “martial arts” ever committed to film, not to mention the sheer sloppiness of the production - there are at least two shots in the film where Dudikoff‘s stand-in is filmed FROM THE FRONT, as if we weren‘t supposed to see that he has a DIFFERENT FACE.  And that’s just in the first 15 minutes.  Woodchuck sez, “Crapola Part 2.”