Film Review: NINJA III: THE DOMINATION (1984, Sam Firstenberg)

Stars: 5 of 5.
Running Time: 92 minutes.

Tag-line: "He's the ultimate killer, she's the perfect weapon."

Notable Cast or Crew: Sho Kosugi (9 DEATHS OF THE NINJA, REVENGE OF THE NINJA, ENTER THE NINJA), Lucinda Dickey (BREAKIN', BREAKIN' 2: ELECTRIC BOOGALOO), James Hong (BLADE RUNNER, BIG TROUBLE IN LITTLE CHINA), David Chung (REPO MAN, MISSING IN ACTION 2: THE BEGINNING), Earl W. Smith (THE VILLAIN, DEATH VALLEY).  Produced by Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus.  Written by James R. Silke (KING SOLOMON'S MINES, REVENGE OF THE NINJA).  Directed by Sam Firstenberg (AMERICAN NINJA, AMERICAN NINJA 2: THE CONFRONTATION).

Best One-liner: "I don't use soft drinks!"

NINJA III: THE DOMINATION is many things to many people, but above all, I have concluded that NINJA III: THE DOMINATION is a panacea for the soul.  It is a thing to be ingested––a glowing, Cannon-logo-shaped pill.

This time around, the logo shimmers and then launches itself into the depths of space-time.  That's an actual star-field.  I can't remember that ever having happened before.

Ostensibly the third film in a series (whose previous offerings included ENTER THE NINJA and REVENGE OF THE NINJA), the only unifying element among the three is the aforementioned Cannon Films logo and the inimitable presence of martial arts hero Sho Kosugi (as a different character in each film).

The best way to describe NINJA III: THE DOMINATION is as an untamable amalgamation of REVENGE OF THE NINJA, THE EXORCIST, BREAKIN' 2: ELECTRIC BOOGALOO, JASON GOES TO HELL, POLTERGEIST, PERFECT, DEATH WISH 3, and a commercial for V8 Juice.

Already, I can sense you're having difficulty wrapping your head around this magical ninja elixir, so allow me to describe the premise in greater detail:

There is a secret ninja cave underneath an Arizona golf course.

"No smoking in the ninja cave."

An evil, eye-liner-wearing ninja uses this as his base of operations for golf course-ninja attacks.  He pops out on the sixteenth hole and crushes a golf ball with his bare hands, just to let everybody know he's not messing around.


This website has always been an authority on brutal ball squeezing.

He goes on a murderous rampage, killing the country club's security team and this sweater-luvin' preppy:

who is later referred to as "a prominent scientist."  Okay.  This leads to a massive police response

In these films, it's always generic "POLICE" forces who don't answer to any particular jurisdiction––they only show up when the crimes are ninja-related.

and a manhunt, so as a riposte the evil ninja sends a bunch of cops, DUKES OF HAZZARD-style, right into the water hazards.

Perhaps a missed opportunity for a "mulligan" related one-liner.

He takes out a helicopter with the cold-blooded deftness of Jaws the Shark:

and I daresay nearly succeeds in killing every cop in Arizona

before succumbing to his own injuries after an extended, slo-mo BONNIE AND CLYDE-style bloodbath.  So now the evil ninja is dead.  ...Or is he?

Cut to:  Lucinda Dickey––alluring, breakout star of BREAKIN' and BREAKIN' 2: ELECTRIC BOOGALOO.  She's listening to knock-off Pat Benatar and repairing a power line.   

She works full-time for the city as a line installer, but she also works part-time as an aerobics instructor:

Needless to say, she's an industrious young woman.  Anyway, she climbs down and finds herself face-to-face with a ninja.  Yes––the same wounded, evil ninja as before: the cops did not do their due diligence re: confirming the deadness of the evil ninja corpse.  After a supernatural eye-lock, the ninja imbues her with his consciousness––using the power of his magic ninja sword––before he dies "kind of for real this time."


Lucinda Dickey: now adding "part-time evil ninja" to the the resume.

If this feels like a lot of exposition,  I might remind you that we're only thirteen minutes into the film.

While filing her statement at the police station, she meets flirtatious, candy-snackin' cop Billy Second  (Jordan Bennett):

He offers her lukewarm, half-drank Coke as a come-on, to which she responds with the classic line: "I don't use soft drinks."

This is the sort of Cannon greatness we've been led to expect from  Mssrs. Golan and Globus, and it's beautifully rendered.  On the whole, this might be the most "Cannon" Cannon Film ever made.  It truly has it all.  Speaking of which––

"Make it burn!"

Aerobicise nearly turns to aerobicide when Lucinda Dickey is jumped in the alley during her post-workout cooldown by a gang of DEATH WISH 3-style, racially integrated rapists

who, inexplicably, decide to make their move in front of a crowd of forty people, including the off-duty cop Billy Second who does not interfere.  Luckily, Lucinda Dickey kicks them in the dick (and does her own stunts) using jazzercise and gymnastic moves. 

Eventually, among the halls of history and in the annals of English language, "Lucinda Dickey kicks them in the dick" will receive its proper due as a quintessential turn of phrase.

One of the miscreants ends up sailing through the air into a dumpster; others are comically knocked out by an oversized metal pole.  NINJA III, ladies and gentlemen.

For some reason, she still ends up going out on a date with Billy the Cop, despite the fact that he didn't help defend her against the rapists, and he furthermore insinuates that she might get charged with assault for kicking their asses.

One thing leads to another, as they do, and she ends up seducing him at her apartment by pouring V8 Juice all over her body in perhaps the least sexy seduction since the "Beguiling Corn Maneuver" from TROLL 2:


I can't decide whether this is:
A. The worst advertisement for V8 Juice ever committed to film
B. An ill-advised homage to the FLASHDANCE "bucket of water" scene, or
C. An earnest attempt to merge food and lovemaking that's a little more IN THE REALM OF THE SENSES than 9 1/2 WEEKS.

In any event, it is humorous and macabre in equal measure, and indeed demonstrates the veracity of her previous statement: "I don't use soft drinks."

Shortly thereafter, she wanders into her ninja-haunted closet and has an encounter with the floating magic ninja sword


in a sequence designed to remind us about the ninja possession plotline.  Apparently, she is not yet "fully possessed," however, as soon enough she has an experience that defies worldly explanation.  In her apartment, Lucinda has a full, arcade-sized machine for "BOUNCER," a rarely-seen TAPPER-style bar game.

In the witching hour, the BOUNCER machine comes alive with supernatural chittering
and blasts fog-machine fog.

It proceeds to shoot a Pink Floyd laser-lite-show directly at her face

and therefore completes the ninja possession.  I don't fully understand this, and I don't think we're meant to.  It marks the only time (as far as I know) in film history that an undead ninja has completed the demonic possession of an aerobics instructor by commandeering the prototype of an unreleased arcade game and using it to shoot fog and lasers at her face.  If you don't believe me, you can see it all here for yourself:

Now she is "full ninja" and no longer in control of her actions.  It took three possessions (the eye-lock, the floating sword, and the arcade lasers) for it to "take," I suppose.  She begins killing the evil ninja's enemies, and in case there was any doubt, she squeezes a billiard ball to death with her hands.

A missed opportunity for a one-liner like, "I'm calling it––your face in the corner pocket!"

She has no memory of these episodes but Billy becomes convinced that something weird is going on, insisting (no joke) that they might be about to enlist the help of "an officer from the Asiatic division." There's a wonderful moment when a medical professional says, via stilted line delivery:

"Dr. Bowen, the psychiatrist you saw, says there's nothing out of the ordinary aside from your excellent extra-sensory perception and your preoccupation with Japanese culture." 

Er...whaat?!  Though it explains a lot that, in the NINJA III universe, ESP is a standard, naturally-occurring phenomenon.

Also, Sho Kosugi shows up–– he has a score to settle with the evil ninja.  He wears an eyepatch with a suspicious hole in it.

It's almost as if Sho Kosugi didn't want to film an entire ninja movie with compromised depth perception.  (So why didn't they just lose the eyepatch?)

Also, just like in Sho Kosugi movies REVENGE OF THE NINJA and BLIND FURY, there is a ninja attack in a hot tub.  Three films officially makes it a ninja film "trope."
So Lucinda traipses into the jacuzzi and murders some guy and two Miller High Life-swilling floozies with a poisoned pearl ring.


Not really a reason for this.  Ninja hot tub, everybody.

Several events occur after the ninja hot tub, including but not limited to:

BIG TROUBLE IN LITTLE CHINA's James Hong, wearing a repulsive fake wart and performing a ninja exorcism:


"This beats the ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW."  ––an actual line of dialogue

A glowing, possessed ninja closet blowing unearthly winds and spouting hell-fog, just as in the denouement of POLTERGEIST:



Sho Kosugi spouting the classic line, "Only a ninja can kill a ninja" and kickin' butt while wearing a futuristic sweater that looks like the PAC MAN screen––only without Pac Man, the ghosts, or the pellets:

The reveal that there exists a Ninja Academy, in the middle of nowhere, somewhere outside of Phoenix:

Now accepting applications

The evil ninja's soul escaping Lucinda Dickey and becoming a spirit of pure evil-ninja-energy:

In case you ever needed a visual reference for "pure evil-ninja-energy."

And the evil ninja becoming a full-on zombie ninja and battling Sho Kosugi.  This leads directly to the conclusion of the film which is ridiculous even by Cannon Film's lofty standards. The defeated zombie ninja spins like a top, faster and faster and faster,





drilling himself into the mantle of the earth, where he, quite literally, transforms into an earthquake.


I'm speechless, too, Sho.

In conclusion, I can now say I have witnessed a ninja exorcism.  Pass the V8.  Five stars.

"Winners of the Yoknapatawpha County Spelling Bee" in McSweeney's Internet Tendency

I have a new literary humor piece up at McSweeney's Internet Tendency called "Winners of the Yoknapatawpha County Spelling Bee, 1929-1940," and it's a riff on William Faulkner's imaginative compound words.
Longtime readers of this site may recall that I once gave homage to Faulkner when reviewing Michael Jackson's MOONWALKER in his style––as a massive, stream-of-consciousness run-on sentence.  (It was quite a highbrow affair.)

Film Review: JAWS 3-D (1983, Joe Alves)

Stars: 2.5 of 5.
Running Time: 99 minutes.
Tag-line: "ALL NEW!  The third dimension is terror.  ALL NEW!"

Notable Cast or Crew: Dennis Quaid (THE RIGHT STUFF, THE BIG EASY, ENEMY MINE), Bess Armstrong (MY SO-CALLED LIFE, HIGH ROAD TO CHINA), Lou Gossett Jr. (AN OFFICER AND A GENTLEMAN, ENEMY MINE, IRON EAGLE), Lea Thompson (BACK TO THE FUTURE, CAROLINE IN THE CITY), John Putch (THE SURE THING, MEN AT WORK), Simon MacCorkindale (THE SWORD AND THE SORCERER, FALCON CREST).  Written by Carl Gottlieb (JAWS, THE JERK) and Richard Matheson (many episodes of THE TWILIGHT ZONE, THE INCREDIBLE SHRINKING MAN), Guerdon Trueblood (THE SAVAGE BEES, TARANTULAS: THE DEADLY CARGO), and Michael Kane (SMOKEY AND THE BANDIT II, SOUTHERN COMFORT).  Music by Alan Parker (WHAT'S EATING GILBERT GRAPE, AMERICAN GOTHIC) with "Shark Theme" by John Williams.

Best One-liner: "You're talkin' about some damn shark's MOTHER?!"

JAWS 3-D does not bode well from the outset.  Our first three-dimensional image, about one minute into the proceedings, is that of a decapitated, rotating, and still-jabbering fish head.  So this is how it's going to be, eh?

It was directed by first-and-last-time director Joe Alves, a former Spielberg production designer (JAWS, CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND) who rather conspicuously never returned to the Spielberg fold post JAWS 3-D.

Loosely inspired by 1955's REVENGE OF THE CREATURE (whereupon the Creature from the Black Lagoon escapes and wreaks havoc on an aquarium), JAWS 3-D sees a baby Great White Shark wander into a Sea World and die in captivity, drawing the ire of its monstrously-sized mother who proceeds to wreak havoc on Sea World.  Obviously, Roy Scheider is not involved (he later said, "Mephistopheles... couldn't talk me into JAWS 3"), though Dennis Quaid and John Putch play his grown-up sons, the Brody boys.

I sorta think Putch (on the left) should've been Crispin Glover.

Amity (the Massachusetts locale of the first two films) gets a brief shout-out,

and occasionally Alan Parker weaves John Williams' iconic theme into his score,

but for the most part, this is a generic "shark attack" movie with as much to do with the first JAWS as ersatz Italian rip-offs like THE LAST SHARK.  Though ostensibly penned in collaboration by JAWS' original screenwriter Carl Gottlieb (who, it must be said, also wrote DOCTOR DETROIT) and Richard Matheson (mastermind novelist and screenwriter who brought us everything from the finest TWILIGHT ZONE episodes to books like I AM LEGEND, SOMEWHERE IN TIME, and WHAT DREAMS MAY COME), the original draft was supposedly butchered by uncredited script doctors and meddling studio execs.  Though many an author has made this claim after discovering a stinker on their hands, in this instance I'm inclined to believe them.

I also am somewhat puzzled by Sea World's wholehearted involvement, as they allow their park to host monster mayhem and severed limbs and assorted jaws-chompin'.  I suppose the Sea World employees are depicted as heroically selfless, and technically no patrons are eaten, but from my experience, it seems like some corporate lawyer would have tried to shut this down even if management okayed it.  There's plenty of shameless, promotional Sea World kitsch to go around, though:


We'll always have BLACKFISH, though.  (Seriously, you should watch BLACKFISH.)

I went into JAWS 3-D imagining that it would be tawdry, brutal, and nonstop shark-attackery, and on several occasions it lives up to this idea––for instance, when a formation of water skiers are victimized by Jaws, mid-show:





And this.  It can't all be this:
and while portions of the film (like the above) are pretty spectacular, much of it is comparatively lifeless, especially when it turns into a low-rent POSEIDON ADVENTURE mid-way through with a handful of patrons trapped in an underwater tunnel.

Without Shelly Winters and Gene Hackman, this is pretty pointless.  (Or without Rutger Hauer and Steve Guttenberg!)

That about sums it up.  But I don't want to leave you on a down note––on to my seven favorite things about JAWS 3-DEEEEEEE!

#7.  This man's t-shirt:

It says "LET A GARGOYLE SIT ON YOUR FACE."  While this probably refers to Gargoyle™ brand sunglasses (if true, what an ill-considered corporate slogan), I'm going to take it to mean something vaguely and frighteningly sexual, involving the 'ole "satanic sculpture salad-toss." 

#6.  This glorious and film-concluding freeze frame:

The celebratory dolphins have been clumsily matted in, so as to affect a third dimension.  It is plainly ridiculous, and I wholeheartedly approve.

#5.  This New Wave barmaid:

She's appears in more than one scene, but only once does she wear this wonderfully 1983 pink headbandin' ensemble.  If it weren't for the little things like this, the whole affair would feel very 70s.

#4.  Lea Thompson's sexy-crazy-eye.

In this, her feature film debut, she plays a character named "Bukowski" and is intended as a love interest for the younger Brody brother.  She appears in your typical 'bikini babe' scenes and she punctuates her performance with pervasive crazy-eye.  I applaud this acting choice as it lends a oddly dangerous tension to otherwise banal scenes of romance, though longed for a twist ending where there was in fact no shark at all, but Lea Thompson murdering everyone while wearing a shark costume.  This could have been the FRIDAY THE 13TH, PART 5: A NEW BEGINNING of the JAWS series.  Alas.

#3.  The 3-D.  I watched this in 2-D, but it's extremely apparent each time a three-dimensional effect is offered to the viewer.  It is not quite as nutty as FRIDAY THE 13TH PART III, with its flying severed eyeballs and yo-yos in da face, but it has the aforementioned fish heads, floating severed arms:

hypodermic needles squirting yellow liquid in our eye:

The golden shower you didn't know you needed.

and the coup de grâce of, quite literally, JAWS 3-D:

More on this in a moment.


#2.  The sad, long journey of Oscar-winner Lou Gossett, Jr.

Poor Lou Gossett, Jr.  He just wanted to enjoy a nice beverage and bask in the glory of his Academy Award for AN OFFICER AND A GENTLEMAN.  But I can see the future, Lou.  I'm looking into my crystal glass.  I see that you have an outrageous amount of acting ability, and yet I see...  I see four IRON EAGLES.  I see a FIREWALKER.  I see a straight-to-video LEFT BEHIND sequel.  Get out!  Escape JAWS 3-D before it's too late!!  Aieee!!!

The first time we see Lou, he's looking at a pyramid of water skiers through a pair of binoculars.


He lowers them, and we are privy to the following expression:

He knows.  He knows.  And it's too late.

In any event, Gossett is permitted to voice his disdain at one point, and using words from the script:

Don't talk to Lou Gossett about some damn shark's mother. 

You kept your dignity, Lou.  Hold your head high!  (Also, this film begins what should have been one of the great partnerships––Gossett and Quaid––who would wow us in '85 with the often overlooked sci-fi masterpiece, ENEMY MINE.)

#1.  The Sublime and Glorious Death of Jaws 3 (D).

'Nuff said.  Two and a half stars.  This may be controversial, but I say it's slightly better than JAWS 2, though not quite as delightfully nonsensical and trainwreck-worthy as JAWS 4: THE REVENGE.  Obviously, none of these sequels should be uttered within the same breath as their progenitor.

–Sean Gill

Only now does it occur to me... THE FAST AND THE FURIOUS: TOKYO DRIFT

Only now does it occur to me...  a few things.  First, despite the absence of a "3" in the title (and to think it so easily could have been called "3 FAST 3 FURIOUS"), as the third film in the franchise this fits the bill of my "Good Things Come in Threes" series, though whether or not it qualifies as a "good thing" is open to debate.

THE FAST AND THE FURIOUS: TOKYO DRIFT is your typical "small-town American kid fucks up, gets sent to live in Tokyo" story, much maligned for its dearth of connective tissue with the previous two films (Paul Walker was deemed "too old" and Vin Diesel only shows up for a cameo at the very end).
 
Welcome to the Xander Zone?

The whole affair feels very "90s" despite being made in 2006, a notion that is in no way dispelled by the presence of Zachery Ty Bryan from HOME IMPROVEMENT.  I sort of approve of this.

Sadly, he does not use "it's tool time!" as a one-liner, despite it being contextually appropriate.

There's not a great deal to say:  L'il Bow Wow (née Shad Moss) was much more likable than I anticipated,

L'il Bow Wow... who knew?

and he shares this movie's MVP slot with the impressively nonchalant Sung Kang, in a performance so cool, they shoehorned his character into subsequent films.

Pictured here taking notes from...

...Alain Delon and Jean-Pierre Melville in LE SAMOURAÏ.

Unfortunately, these two play sidekicks to 'poor man's Paul Walker' Lucas Black, who was even more annoying than I anticipated (I kept waiting for the Yakuza to dismember him... alas),
 
and there's a late in the game appearance by Sonny Chiba (THE STREETFIGHTER himself!––and more recently notorious for playing 'Hattori Hanzo' in KILL BILL)

which means that dismemberment needn't have been removed from the table.  Anyway.  TOKYO DRIFT, ladies and gentlemen.

Only now does it occur to me... FROM DUSK TILL DAWN 3: THE HANGMAN'S DAUGHTER

Only now does it occur to me... that FROM DUSK TILL DAWN 3: THE HANGMAN'S DAUGHTER is the finest Ambrose Bierce fan fiction ever made.

The second straight-to-video sequel to Tarantino and Rodriguez's hardboiled vampire flick FROM DUSK TILL DAWN, THE HANGMAN'S DAUGHTER is a period piece, set in in 1913.  Essentially, it follows the structure of the original: a Western/crime drama which makes a sudden turn into horror territory around the one hour mark.

FROM DUSK TILL DAWN 2: TEXAS BLOOD MONEY was not without its high points, but part three outdoes it on nearly every count––primarily, in concept. 

Ambrose Bierce (THE DEVIL'S DICTIONARY, AN OCCURRENCE AT OWL CREEK BRIDGE, THE DAMNED THING) was one of America's finest satirists, a witty, wayward, and delightfully bitter man whose attitude was somewhere between Jonathan Swift's and Robert Mitchum's.  "Nothing matters" was his motto, and, at seventy-one, rather than suffer the sins of geriatric boredom, traveled south into Mexico with the intention of joining the Revolution.  He was never seen again... 

"...Or was he?"  So supposes FROM DUSK TILL DAWN 3: THE HANGMAN'S DAUGHTER, which delivers the masterstroke of casting the inimitable Michael Parks (DEATH WISH 5, TWIN PEAKS, THE HITMAN, KILL BILL) as Mr. Bierce.


Parks delivers an understated performance that strives for poetry; he imbues the film with a haunting sense of élan vital.  And yes, I'm still talking about a straight-to-video vampire flick.  Remember, this is the actor who can make "waiting around and drinking coffee in a car" rife with pathos (in THE HITMAN).

Written by Robert Rodriguez's cousin Álvaro (and based on a story by the two cousins), THE HANGMAN'S DAUGHTER places a drunken and detached Bierce amid a sea of outlaws, missionaries, lawmen, revolutionaries, and Aztec vampires, where he can quote one-liners from THE DEVIL'S DICTIONARY and generally not care a damn.

This is about as brilliant as having Oscar Wilde become Paladin's sidekick in a particularly memorable episode of HAVE GUN, WILL TRAVEL.

Director P.J. Pesce, long imprisoned by television and straight-to-DVD sequels (THE LOST BOYS: THE TRIBE, SMOKIN' ACES 2: ASSASSIN'S BALL, SNIPER 3) brings a genuine style to the proceedings; you see the talent and joie de vivre of a young director excited to be playing with the medium––this is not a man phoning it in, and boy, that makes a difference.

True to the Tarantino/Rodriguez oeuvre, it's packed with loving homages to everything from THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE UGLY to FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE to TAXI DRIVER, and composer Nathan Barr even turns in a borderline brilliant score, heavily inspired by Ennio Morricone by-way-of John Zorn.

Also of note: Danny Trejo is still tendin' bar eighty years prior (he has about three minutes of screentime),

Though he says, "We don't need no stinking brushes!" in perhaps the saddest nod to THE TREASURE OF THE SIERRA MADRE ever made.

Sonia Braga (KISS OF THE SPIDER WOMAN) has a blast as the Elvira-ish innkeeper/madame (and mother of Salma Hayek's character from the first film),

and Temuera Morrison (ONCE WERE WARRIORS, Boba Fett's dad in the STAR WARS prequels), is the titular "Hangman" and he gives it his all in a sort of an "evil Yul Brynner" performance.

More "bizarro MAGNIFICENT SEVEN" than WESTWORLD.

Sure, there's plenty of bad CGI, and I would never call it a masterpiece, but the act of shoehorning a literary figure into a bargain bin horror flick and then hiring an actor capable of embodying said figure is something of an artistic coup, and it's why FROM DUSK TILL DAWN 3 ought to outlive its intended shelf-life.
 
Here's to you, Mr. Bierce... and Mr. Parks.

PS: And if you check it out, stay tuned after the end credits for a mildly amusing, meta scene involving the singular Mr. Parks.