by The Matt
No.5 Revenge Of The Ninja (1983)
What? You thought we were done with ninjas? FOOLS! Ninjas attack when you least expect it.
Revenge Of The Ninja, starring an actual Japanese guy for a change, was martial-artist Sho Kosugi’s first major starring role in an American movie. Two years earlier, he’d acted as the bad guy in yet another ninja flick, 1981’s Enter The Ninja, playing second fiddle to Franco Nero. (The Italian Ninja? Not very catchy.) Kosugi’s performance, combined with his vast knowledge of the martial arts, so impressed producers Golan&Globus, of the aforementioned Cannon Group, that they decided to cast him as the main character in Revenge.
If you’ve never seen a Sho Kosugi movie, I humbly suggest you rip up your membership card to the Fraternal Order Of Movie Geeks. With a Bruce Lee-like zen cool charisma, mixed with some lightning fast moves, Kosugi was the real deal. Unlike American Ninja Michael Dudikoff, who had no formal training whatsoever, Kosugi had received martial arts training since the age of 5, attained the rank of All Japan Karate Champion by 18, and went on to compete in hundreds of tournaments in his badass lifetime.
Revenge Of The Ninja was his first really big break in the world of movie making. Directed by Sam Firstenberg, thus cementing his place as the ultimate director of movies with ninja in the title, Revenge is lightly budgeted but heavy on the action. Kosugi is Cho Osaki, a man fleeing his home in Japan following his family’s brutal murder by an evil band of, what else, ninjas. In tow is his son, played by Kosugi’s very own offspring Kane Kosugi, who followed in his father’s footsteps with a movie career of his own. Unable to escape his past, Osaki must confront the Ultimate Evil Ninja (with Kung-Fu grip!) in a 10-minute-long rooftop fight scene that is required viewing for all fans of B-movie cheese.
Kosugi is a legend and Revenge Of The Ninja is the best showcase for his abilities you could ever hope to find.
There are two ninjas hidden in this picture. Can you find them all?
No.4 Robot Jox (1990)
It takes a special kind of testicular fortitude to shoot a movie about gigantic fighting robots on a budget that wouldn’t even cover the cost of keeping Megan Fox in tube tops on the set of Transformers. Luckily, director Stuart Gordon (the classic Re-Animator, the Lovecraftian From Beyond, Fortress with Christopher Lambert) is an expert on stretching his budgets taffy thin.
Starring Gary Graham, who’s guest-starred on pretty much every TV show of the past 20 years you’d care to name, Robot Jox takes place on an Earth post World War III. In order to avoid nuking the whole planet and letting the roaches rule the world, nations now settle land disputes by staging battles between two towering robots. Graham is Achilles, the champion for the Americans, who must fight one final match to keep Alaska out of the hands of those damn, dirty commies!
Shot for a minuscule $10 million, Robot Jox uses its FX sparingly but to great effect. The matches between these massive engines of destruction are convincingly shot, with a great variety of weapons and gadgets on display to give each pilot an edge over the other. Graham keeps his dignity intact by giving a serious, intelligent performance for the genre. Less serious is his rival, the Russian pilot Alexander, played by the German Paul Koslo, who chews so much scenery he might as well have been playing a woodchuck. Also, watch for a quick cameo by Stuart Gordon’s muse, Re-Animator actor Jeffrey Combs. Robot Jox is an Albert Band production, here sharing a co-producer credit with his son, Charles.
Jox is a very safe rental movie. It’s not too dumb, not too smart, well-acted and the robot fights are terribly entertaining. There was a pseudo sequel made several years later, 1993’s Robot Wars, but I recommend you avoid it, no Robot Jox actors returned, plus the special effects and directing were several steps down from the original.
Whoah whoah whoah! Nobody said there would be tickling!
No.3 The Beastmaster (1982)
Ah, now here’s an old childhood favorite. I remember playing as the titular Beastmaster in the backyard as a kid, pretending I could speak to animals and such. Before you ask, no, I didn’t wear a loincloth. The neighbors would have complained. What do you mean you weren’t going to ask? Doesn’t everybody have any interest in my loins?
The Beastmaster, starring Marc Singer (cousin to X-Men director Bryan Singer) was so heavily in rotation in the early days of HBO’s programming that many people started joking that the network’s acronym actually stood for “Hey, Beastmaster’s On!” You can easily see why the movie was so popular in its day. Take one Conan knock-off (Singer’s Dar), throw in a supernatural ability that won’t scare kids off (he can talk to animals!), throw in just enough violence and near-nudity (amply provided by erstwhile Bond girl Tanya Roberts) to avoid getting an R rating, and voila, a mostly family-friendly product that won’t have adults checking their watches every five minutes.
Beastmaster is your typical hero’s journey, with Dar, the only survivor of an attack that wiped out his clan, joining up with a panther, a pair of ferrets, a hawk, a black sidekick, and a love interest on his way to getting revenge on the bad guy responsible for his loss. While he’s no Schwarzenegger, Singer’s ample beefcake and athleticism make for a convincingly proficient barbarian and he’s quite adept at swinging a broadsword around. Villain Maax, played with relish by veteran actor Rip Torn of Men In Black fame, enjoys chucking helpless kids into pits of fire, so rooting against him isn’t exactly hard.
If you’re going to start going down the list of Conan The Barbarian rip-offs that flooded video store shelves in the ’80s, make sure you start with The Beastmaster. On a technical level, it floats several miles above trash like Hawk The Slayer or The Barbarians. Plus, if you have kids, they’ll just love those mischievous little ferrets.
He’s letting her touch his snake.
No.2 Night of the Creeps (1986)
Perhaps the only movie on this list that is deliberately B-movie like in execution, Fred Dekker’s (The Monster Squad) Night Of The Creeps is a delicious retro-chiller, complete with black and white sequences, awesome one-liners and an overall feel that approximates that of a ’70s drive-in picture. Here’s a movie that needs to be enjoyed while sitting in your car and plunging into the recesses of a giant tub of popcorn and/or your date’s cleavage.
Night Of The Creeps starts off in space, where a desperate alien creature jettisons a canister carrying brain parasites (apparently outer space doesn’t have very strict “no littering” laws.) Landing on Earth during the ’50s, the bugs infect an unlucky jock. Flashforward to the present day (well, 1986 at least), where two unlucky geeks stumble across the frozen, contaminated body and unknowingly unleash the parasites on their campus. What follows is a mixture of Evil Dead-like black humor with a sprinkle of Romero zombies. The cast is mostly filled with unknowns, but genre vet Tom Atkins ( Creepshow, Maniac Cop) is a hoot as the one-liner spouting, chain-smoking detective who has had some prior dealings with these types of shenanigans. Night Of The Creeps is a gloriously self aware B-movie more interested in making you laugh than freaking you out. If you loved Sam Raimi’s Evil Dead series, this one’s for you.
Flamethrowers and shotguns. This is gonna be a bitchin’ prom!
No.1 The King Of The Kickboxers (1990)
Starring Loren Avedon and Billy Blanks, in the days before he became a millionaire selling Tae Bo tapes, here is a superior direct-to-video action movie. Featuring a now legendary final battle inside a Thunderdome-style arena and very much shot like an Asian martial arts movie rather than an American one, The King Of The Kickboxers includes every single element viewers need in this kind of flick. You have your inexperienced Caucasian fighter training with a wise, old Muay Thai master in the jungle. You have a terribly over-the-top, insanely bug-eyed Billy Blanks playing a snuff-film making villain named Khan. (KHAAAAAANNNNNNNN!) Authentic and gorgeous Thailand vistas. And Muay Thay, a style of martial arts not often featured in movies.
There isn’t a single worthy performance to be found. But honestly, who cares? Avedon and Blanks are both superb fighters in terrific shape and their final bout is a thing to behold, Blank’s Khan even busts out a super-duper special move involving a series of three kicks that Avedon’s character must learn to counter if he hopes to survive. Throw in a towel-dropping steam bath featuring perpetually naked actress Sherrie Rose and, ding-ding-ding we have winnah!
Not sure what’s going on here but whatever happens in Thailand, stays in Thailand.
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