9 1/2 Ninjas

9 1/2 Ninjas

United States - 1990

Director - Aaron Barsky

Republic Pictures Home Video, 1990, VHS

Run Time - 1 hour, 28 minutes

This low budget ninja parody film neatly secures a place among the most irritating films of all time with a spectacularly grating performance from, everyone in the film. Granted, there are a number of brilliant double entendres and visual puns sprinkled throughout, the script is actually quite good, it's just the execution that's lacking. Not in the enthusiasm category mind you, but the subtlety category. I realize that subtlety is not the stock in trade of physical comedy, quite the opposite, but when all is said and done with a film like this, one almost feels emotionally abused rather than entertained. I'm not stupid, you don't need to punch me in the face with ham, just humiliate yourself and everything will be fine. Perhaps that's the problem. When the characters are so annoying that you can't empathize or identify with 'em, even when you're laughing, it's no longer funny.

# 600 - Breathing Fire

Yes it's true folks, this is officially our six-hundredth post on Lost Video Archive.

To commemorate I'm dropping a review that I've been sitting on for almost a year, something both representative -it is random and generally "low quality" (by normative standards, not mine)- but also atypical -it's on DVD and martial artsy. I love you all so much I give you this gift.

So please, raise a glass to Lost Video Archive and peruse my babblings on the nugget of 90's that is:

Breathing Fire

United States – 1991

Director – Lou Kennedy, Brandon Pender, Brandon De-Wilde

Echo Bridge Home Entertainment, 2004, DVD

Run Time - 1 hour, 26 minutes

Lesh do shome training....

When Uncle David comes to their father’s home in search of sanctuary, two brothers, Tony and Charlie (Jonathan Ke Quan) discover that the washed-up drunk is another in the long and vaunted cinematic tradition of expert martial-artist Vietnam veterans. Uncle David has taken custody of a young woman, the daughter of a war buddy who was killed by a ruthless criminal gang of (other) martial artists. When the thugs, including the ever-bulging Bolo Yeung come looking for the girl, the brothers want to help, but find that Uncle David is reticent to get them involved. When the thugs prove to be too much for David to handle, (even with the help of a pint of whiskey,) he reluctantly takes Tony and Charlie under his tutelage. In an inspiring and epic montage of choreographed grimaces, sincere grunts and underage shirtless-boy backslapping, Tony and Charlie become a hypothetically formidable low-rent recreation of Double Dragon.

Fortunately for the plot up to this point, the helpless female token has completely failed to recognize that her own host, Tony and Charlie’s father Mike is the leader of the very gang that smashed down her door and murdered her parents. Of course it helps that everyone else has also remained happily oblivious to Mike’s glaring sleaziness and casual indifference toward the pugnacious goons who keep dropping by to smash things and snatch the girl away. But that was before Charlie and Tony were green berets. Once they have tested their mad skills against some bartender-karate-midgets they have a revelation just in time for the big showdown with dad. Of course, as we’ve known all along thanks to some extremely convincing flashbacks, Mike is also the sociopathic, racist kung-fu ‘Nam vet who murdered Charlie’s Vietnamese mother during the war. Guilt-tripped by his brother into adopting the orphan, Mike got his revenge with the kid's name. The child will always be an enemy.  Nevertheless, this revelation comes just in time to unburden our spectatorial minds for the unambiguous third act climax.

With all of this historical mayhem revealed, the multigenerational camaraderie that has sustained tension until now predictably falters. Mike and Tony go their own ways and David and Charlie bitterly follow suit. But this premature bifurcation is not to last, for there remains a final reunification, a coming to terms which in the presence of anything “’Nam” must symbolically, if only superficially, represent the healing of the American nation itself. In a scene typical of the heartwarming coming of-age watered-down karate film that was so popular at the time, Charlie and Tony spar out their differences at the California State Tae Kwon Do Championships and all returns to normalcy in a moving fraternal-love-conquers-all freeze-frame embrace as the credits roll up and the salty eyeball liquid of joy rolls down.

Now that you're done with that, go read my friend Karl Brezdin's review of this fucker at his wonderful blog Fist of B-List. He's got better screen caps than me! Go!

Ninja Fantasy

Alas, my tape has no box and so, I borrowed this from the ether.

Ninja Fantasy

Hong Kong/Thailand - 198?

Director - Godfrey Ho

Trans World Entertainment, 1988, VHS

Run Time: 1 hour and thirty-five whole minutes

Here we have yet another hodgepodge honky-ninja misadventure from frankenfilm auteur Godfrey Ho. Ninja Fantasy is hands-down the best Weak-Chinned-Euro-Ninja-Drug-Kingpin-in-China film to ever be set in a Thai strip mine. Even though the overall plot, if you can say that the plot is really over “all” of the film, isn’t so clever that it requires serious effort at attention paying, it takes on a whole new energy in this particular patchwork context. So, an Euro-ninja in a brightly colored outfit is running a drug smuggling operation, and another Euro-ninja is the Drug Enforcement Agent sent to take him down; In Thailand the other half of the film would have us believe. Or maybe not. Thanks to local signage in several scenes, it was obviously Thailand, but I don’t remember anybody actually saying “Thailand.” It hardly matters where when you’re buying cheap foreign films in bulk for repurposing. It’s all going to be chopped to bits and dubbed over with some occidental-ninjas in a cheerful palate of identical outfits anyway.

However easily disparaged his work may be, one has to give Mr. Ho some credit for highly creative ninja antics on a half-shoestring-budget. Not since Robert Tai’s 1986 water-spider riding ninja masterpiece Ninja the Final Duel have ninjas performed so many chuckle-inducingly miraculous feats of mid-attack lunacy as we are blessed with in Ninja Fantasy. (And that was a whole film.) Of course, these are all too brief, and once the temporary surge of endorphins wears off the weary viewer, one is left speculating that lest he run out, Mr. Ho only allotted himself a single clever idea per film.

The longstanding rivalry between our two main characters comes to a head when the sidekick Agent is mercilessly kidnapped by the sidekick Smuggler ninjas. In the interim some conflict over mining-rights, inheritance and related profits comes to a head in the remaining scenes. The plodding, mind-numbing progress of the plot, and incomprehensible implied connection between the two constituent films notwithstanding, Ninja Fantasy is among Godfrey’s finest barely-watchable cinematic abortions. As much as one attempts to enjoy watching -and the joy is in the attempting, not the watching- these films would be far better served as a series of action packed ninja-shorts. Just leave out the “second unit” footage culled from abroad and reassemble the white guys into a half hour action-ninja-episode, say two or three to a volume. Should any poor bastard with the inclination to deconstruct these patchwork films read this poorly written essay, and decide to pursue just such an ill-advised business plan, get in touch- I’d be willing to invest.

 A full box from, you guessed it, Rare Kung Fu Movies.com

David Carradine's Tai Chi Workout

 David Carradine's Tai Chi Workout

United States - 1993

Director - David Nakaharaa

Goldhil Video, 1993, VHS

Run Time - 58 minutes

Not long ago a friend of mine came over with a new cache of VHS tapes he had recently acquired. Among them was something that I hadn’t seen before; David Carradine’s Tai Chi Workout. As my friend and I were watching the tape I began wondering what Carradine’s uniformly leotarded extras were thinking. They seemed unenthusiastic, distracted and uncharacteristically deadpan for an exercise video (I’ve seen more than I wish to admit.) Were they silently lamenting the hideous color scheme of their outfits, or irritated by the tinny fake “Asian” music in the background? Perhaps they were trying to keep from laughing at Carradine’s thinning bowlcut and twig-like arms. Frankly, they looked storied, unstimulated, as if they’ve seen it all before. Just like any other job, I can picture them bitching about work and talking behind the boss’s back. Were they just going through the motions to collect a check, did they exchange war stories, sabotage each-other’s work?

Read more of my analysis and breakdown of the exercise home video boom, including a handy diagramatic family tree at Paracinema.net.

Ninja Vengeance

Ninja Vengeance

United States – 1988

Director/Writer/Producer – Karl Armstrong

Columbia Tristar Home Video – 1993

Run Time – 1 hour, 27 minutes

A young man passing through a small Southern town accidentally finds himself at the wrong end of the law. He was just looking for the worldly knowledge and experience that his ninja master (Stephen K. Hayes) babbles incoherently about in numerous homoerotic flashbacks, but cest la vie.

Instead, what he finds is a wealth of white guilt from which he must absolve both himself, and white audience members. A Black kid is killed by racist cops/Klan members who realize that a drifter is the perfect scapegoat. Fortunately our Magnificent Singular Amigo Samurai just happens to have brought his Ninja motorcycle and ninja instructional manuals along for the big fight.

Despite all onscreen visual evidence he does indeed transform into the titular Ninja and take vengeance. However as I mentioned before, the purpose for this is not to bring racist murderers to justice, but to absolve himself of guilt! I presume the yin-yang is used here as a metaphor for separate but equal. For shame!

Watch Ninja Vengeance right now, streaming at NitFlex!

Also read this article on "combat reality training" by Ninja Vengeance co-star and real life ninja Stephen K. Hayes in this spring 1986 special issue of Ninja Magazine

That's Hayes on the right.

Ninja Operation: Licensed to Terminate

Ninja Operation: Licensed to Terminate

Hong Kong - 1987

Director - Joseph Lai/Godfrey Ho

Imperial Entertainment Corp., 1989, VHS

Run Time - 1 hour, 29 minutes

Fists of Dragons/Ninja Terminator via Ninja Theater & Sho Kosugi

There is only one thing worse than a mutilated box. No box at all, but still.

Fists of Dragons (Hao xiao zi)
a.k.a. Little Rascals of Kung Fu
China - 1980
Director - Yeh Yung Chu
Trans World Entertainment, 1986, VHS
Run Time - 1 hour, 32 minutes

The uncut box claims that the film was directed by Yeh Yung Chu, and the opening credits on the tape confirm this. The actors listed at IMDB are exactly the same, but the director is listed as Wing-Cho Yip. Furthermore IMDB gives one of the alternate titles as Cunning Kids, which was confirmed by an image search that turned up the artwork below at Rare Kung Fu Movies under bothFists of Dragons and Cunning Kids. And in fact, after re watching the film, I can confirm that they are the same, except for the dubbing of course.

I picked up this film not because of Sho Kosugi, but because it was recomended at some point as a potential film for Kung Fu Grindhouse. As I recall it was not worthy, though it's been years since I watched it. The interesting thing to me now is of course the presence of Kosugi who merely presents the film. Really it's more of an introduction, and let me tell you, at bit of a sad one at that. The series name should give you some clue to the depths to which the video marketing industry had already sunk by 1986. Last time I checked, Ninja's didn't really have much to do with China, so why is this wu-shu movie under the title "Ninja Theater?" Because the American public were slaves to the very word ninja.
Kosugi himself offers only a brief demonstration of the use of the ninjitsu katana, noting that it is straight and shorter than the typical Japanese sword. Then he fights some guys for a minute or two before introducing the film as a "demonstration of some excellent Chinese Boxing."
There's something more than a little disheartening about lumping all of these distinct elements under the concept of martial arts.
Ninja, kung-fu, ehhhhhhhh, it's all oriental, right?

The Chinese VHS box art for Cunning Kids from Rare Kung Fu Movies

But there is more...
Over at The Scandy Factory, the Scandy Man has posted this nice image of the Ninja Theater version of Ninja Terminator. (right) His awesome post includes the intro sequence with Sho Kosugi's demo, a must watch to be sure, and some ephemera from the Sho Kosugi ninja fan club. This is one of my all time favorite movies of all fucking ever, comparable perhaps only to Challenge of the Tiger. Both of these are highly contingent on the fact that they star Richard "God Among Men" Harrison. Ninja Terminator was given a fantastic DVD release from Video Asia as part of the Silver Fox collection, and Challenge of the Tiger was double-featured by Mondo Macabro b-sided with For Your Height Only.

A Swedish VHS box insert courtesy Rolfens DVD.

German insert box courtesy Critical Condition.

From my own meager shelves.

Not to be confused with this Ninja Terminator, part of an Anchor Bay double VHS box from 1995. I haven't watched this specific film, but Ninja Wars, the A-film is a chopped version of "Black Magic Wars" (?) or Iga Ninpocho, a graphicaly violent but ultimately slooooow Japanese samurai gorror film. Aren't they all?

This started as a post about one movie and evolved into a morass of ninja insanity. Thanks for your dedication.

Gymkata

Gymkata
United States - 1985
Director - Robert Clouse
MGM/UA Home Video, 1985, VHS
Run Time - 1 hour, 30 min.

This film is well known amongst martial arts fans as one of the most laughably inane American attempts to dip into the pool of Eastern mystique. Ninjers and a white guy on the cover and you've got a winner. Whomever came up with the idea that a second rate gymnast from the American Heartland could be sold as a ninja secret agent in Eastern Europe needs to give me a call, I have a bridge to sell 'em.

As awesome as that premise sounds right before each and every time I watch Gymkata, nothing beats its sincerity of execution. Sheer rapturous optimism infuses every moment and lends a sortof ethereal Valhalaesque quality to the subsequent, whatever it is. It was the 80's and anything was possible if you believed it hard enough. As long as it feels, reeks and literally sweats genuine commitment, it will end up a good movie. (See also anything by Sho Kosugi)

If only I could believe that municipal stone monuments were equipped with standard pommel horse handles. But to name all the ridiculousity would tarnish Gymkata's veneer of, well, mystique. Thakfully, Gymkata came out on DVD a couple years back and can still be found.

Forest Warrior

Forest Warrior

United States – 1996

Director – Aaron Norris

Turner Home Entertainment, 1996, VHS

Run time – 1 hour, 38 min.

This has got to be the most offensive Chuck Norris movie out there, and I don’t mean un-PC offensive (though there is a bellyful of that too). I just mean generally offensive to the senses. This is the last feature film Aaron Norris directed, and by leaps and bounds the most atrocious. Tired and ill-conceived but slick as a spoonful of ipecac, Chuck Norris doesn’t belong in a family movie, and the end results made me ill.

A withered old Loretta Swit (better known as Hot Lips Houlihan in the M.A.S.H. TV show) plays the single mother of an ugly as sin little kid, Logan. He’s the youngest of a group of grade-school friends who live in Oregon and carefully recite lines written by adults who never considered actual children’s grammar. Abused good naturedley by his pals, Logan joins them on his first trip “to the mountain”. Based on Swit’s terrified sobbing, I'd guess this is going to be an epic coming of age tale. At another friend's home, an alcoholic single father is verbally abused and given the full harpy woman guilt trip by his daughter Austene, the 11 year old “hot chick” of the movie. And since she’s the only girl in the group, brace yourself, there’s gonna be some sparkly fairy shit somewhere.


As the children ride away toward the ominous mount Hood moms weep, giving the impression that perhaps their children are going to butcher and eat one of the gang in some kind of savage rite. Wait why the hell is there banjo music? The legend of the mountain, as told by the friendly older token black character, is that the mountain is protected by the spirit of a guy named um, McKenna, a (Scottish?) Indian who takes the form of various disheveled and domesticated “wild” animals. Before ascending the mountain, all children must pray to the spirit of McKenna. (sadly no speaking in tongues) Their destination is a fancy tree-house fort located in a well-used patch of campground. There they meet a pitiful looking bear, obviously fed on twinkies and hotdogs, which they name “Rags”. There are also sounds emanating from the trees, spirits no doubt, of the poor suffering forest.

Soon their playground prancing is disturbed by evil machine music and big hardware chewing up logs. Eager slavering loggers lurk around the machines repeatedly telling each other how much they “Wanna cut down some trees.” In flagrant defiance of the intended message, I actually liked these guys better than the damn kids because they were straightforward, and even danced around playing air guitar with their chainsaws.

There is some heavy and tearful young adult drama here, clearly intended to create tension in a simple absorbent 5th grade mind. Instead I felt like I was watching a propaganda film for the Republican Party geared toward creating young believers in the policy of carefully “regulated exploitation”, a petting zoo image of nature and continued glorification of violence used to solve ones problems.

Although a few awkward and clunky scenes of Norris kicking logger ass are crudely jammed in, Chuck’s been pushed onto the back burner to let the kids tug off the real “heroics”. He looks ragged and tired, like he’s recovering from a full decade of chemotherapy. And that outfit, 100% Grade-A authentic truckstop “Injun”.

The Octagon

The Octagon
United States – 1980
Director – Eric Karson
Media Home Entertainment, 1983, VHS

Chuck Norris is called Scott James in this one, and you know what they say about people with two first names. This is possibly the most overt plotline parallel of Norris’ life I’ve seen so far. It’s also the most emasculated I’ve ever seen him.

Head firmly ensconced in its turgid, golden helmet of hair, Scott does little else but change from one nasty, over-tight jean/collared shirt combo to another, and bicker with his buddy AJ (Canadian TV actor Art Hindle, Porky’s). Supposedly a semi-professional fighter, AJ’s revolting, floofy coiffure rivals his grating personality, and in tandem they disgorge the sort of cheesy, dumbass ladies man schtick one might expect from say, a Three’s Company or a Love Boat episode. During his excellent delivery of this brilliant dialogue, his mouth even begins to resemble a puckered purging, waste-crusted blowhole.

Begin with a bunch of runaways and rednecks dropped off together on a dirt road: together, they walk into a training compound, where they have apparently paid to undergo the world's most rigorous martial arts training. The guy in charge of the camp? Scott’s brother Seikura, (Tadashi Yamashita, Gymkata) a sore loser turned evil. The camp itself seems to be a vocational college for underprivileged aspiring terrorists, revolutionaries, and mercenaries, staffed by an army of pushover stocking-cap ninjas, and a big guy who I think is probably a leper.

But back in swinging LA, Scott hooks up with a doe-eyed airhead chick who is immediately killed by Seikura’s ninja. Lee Van Cleef, no stranger to such ridiculous and poorly conceptualized plot motivators, and with a fire that belies his withering face and career, tries to warn Scott away. Spooky. Scott hooks up with Justine, a rich European chick with a rigid dome of hair perched atop her bony, makeup-slathered head like a giant dried elephant poo. She tries to get him drunk and help her go after Seikura. Scott refuses because he's sworn off professional fighting, but since AJ’s about as smart as a turd, he storms off to take care of Seikura himself, essentially calling Scott and his golden mane a pussy.



Finally, though I wouldn’t say the 3rd time is the charm, Aura, a whimpering terrorist camp alumnus (class of Last Week), teams up with Scott’s “repetitive-bitch-slapping” technique, offering such useful tactical skills as the “stand-aside-and-watch”, and “topless-hog-immolation” fighting styles.

When AJ arrives at the training camp, he comes face to face with Seikura’s glimmering black cascade of evil hair, and quickly looses all his body and shine, finally lying limp and bloody on the wooden floor of a tiny cage. Scott and Aura show up just in time to get AJ killed. Like in Gymkata; a film which shares many of the cheap production values, secondary actors, and overtly laughable story concepts - the golden-haired boy kicks everyone's ass, but it’s too dark to see most of it, and this time Norris’ unintelligibly-reverb-laden, whispered narration is suddenly and enigmatically silent.





See this guy? He answered the above classified advertisement and two years later became a genetically enhanced serial killer in Silent Rage the only other Norris film with overt nudity. (Don't worry, Chuck prayed to Jesus for forgiveness on the boob thing and it's all cleared up.)

Drug Traffikers (Thunder Warrior)

(cover scan courtesy The Scandy Factory)

Thunder Warrior

a.k.a. - Thunder, Drug Traffikers

Italy - 1987

Director – Fabrizzio De Angelis

Image Entertainment, 1988, DVD

I had nothing to go on with this film. It was a blind shot, a totally random acquisition circumstantially attached to a triple feature DVD set that I bought in order to see Caged Fury That’s alright though, I love getting random movies I’ve never heard of before, and I do so love surprises. I’m not surprised that the Italians weren’t trying to make a socially conscious film here, but they missed the boat by 8 years if you’re counting the far better but equally exploitive Johnny Firecloud.

Our intro is a wild westish theme, with the ubiquitous brown-hued sandstone plateaus, Juniper flecked hills and empty sky, forlorn harmonica music drives the point home. A long haired kid named Thunder hitches a ride home on a truck and hops off at a gas station where a skeezy sheriff proposes “hose tryout” and a private “pump session” to the girl pumping his gas. Ahem yeah. Speaking to an old “native”, our young lad babbles something incomprehensible with wildly flapping lips, oh, it’s Italian! With a sluggish cheap as dogshit-dub no less. I’m starting to think this is going to be, no, it is definitely going to be trashy Injunsploitation. I know this is not new, it is just so crude that it’s hard to track such overt grab-n-smash back to old John Wayne films.


Or not, thankfully, the Italians leave very little space for intellectual acrobatics. After yakking at the old creasy faced grandpa in dubbed out Italian, Thunder goes to the local Indian cemetery, replete with foam tombstones where he finds a burly construction jerk ready to pour the foundation of a strip mall. In the meantime, he steps out of his Cat to drain the lizard on the sacred ground. Patiently waiting for just such an affront is Thunder who issues a massive face beating a-la stray discarded 2-x-4 before running away when the construction worker cavalry arrives.

In town Thunder goes to the police station to ask the cops to stop construction of the strip mall. (I’m assuming it’s a strip mall because that’s the tackiest building I can think of) Sheriff Cole played by Bo Svenson blows him off and one of the deputies drives the kid out of town and dumps him. I hate to call Bo out, he seems like a decent actor, but damned if every movie I’ve seen him in isn’t total crap. Maybe he was making poor choices because he was all doped up.

On the long walk back, the construction workers show up and lasso Thunder to their jeep and drag him around before kicking hell out of him. The Italians know how to ratchet up an anti-native sentiment to howling crescendo of screaming headline quality racism. In town, Thunder goes to the bank that is funding the construction and when the deputies show up to wreck his day again he beats them senseless. I’m getting the impression that we’re supposed to make a jump in logic here. Either Thunder is a ‘Nam vet, or it’s just natural Indian proclivity to kick serious ass.

Pursuing Thunder, the deputies instigate a manhunt that lasts the rest of the movie, often without Thunder present on screen and during which the caliber of firearms increases exponentially. Frankly as far as guns are concerned this is like the entire Death Wish series concentrated into one big murky Injun Rambo played by a very white Mark Gregory. (Bronx Warriors series and this trilogy and that’s about it) So Basically, it’s a white guy playing a native, aping a white guy. (assuming the reality/cinema continuum is seamlessly joined) Unsurprisingly the cops set grandpa Eagle’s house on fire roasting him alive and later, nearly rape his sister, or anyway, that gas pump girl who hangs around with grandpa Eagle and doesn’t say much.

The final scene is effectively a 10 minute hyperviolent recap of the whole movie into one hugely incinerating awesomesplosion as Thunder drives a front-end-loader into the bank and inexplicably bazookas the vault door over and over. By the time the first deputy shows up, the cops are clearly so horrified at Thunders ability to magically generate bazooka ammo, and his carefree penchant to use it that they all suddenly let him go. This is confirmed by the small blond children wearing warpaint who warble in falsetto adult dubbed voices “Thunder will never die!”, making it white kids playing at being a white guy playing at being a native aping a white man. A premise which is so ridiculous in retrospect that nothing else can explain Cole’s sudden sympathetic turn, except that maybe Svenson really was high as a kite. For the record, whatever he's on would be the only drugs in this movie, I don't know why they retitled it that.

The DVD cover of the Drug Traffikers tripple feature.

Full Metal Ninja

Full Metal Ninja
Hong Kong – 1988
Godfrey Ho(as Charles Lee)
Imperial Entertainment Corp., 1989, VHS

Preceded by its own trailer, Full Metal Ninja wastes no time in attempting to inflate its own appearance beyond reasonable expectations by including the few good parts of the film in this misleading preview. If we've learned anything about Godfrey Ho at this point, this film is going to be a long uphill battle.
Leon, a honky ninja sporting a fabulous pink outfit, engages two black clad ninjas identified as henchmen working for Boris the evil yellow ninja. Leon kills one of them with the terrifying destructive might of a flintlock pistol and sends the other to tell Boris his time has come. Boris weaves a heartwrenching tale of intrigue and betrayal between ninjas to his sidekick (red ninja, Luther), to explain the bad blood between he and Leon.

In the Asian portion of the film a fighter named Eagle nearly duplicates the Leon-Boris epic as he winds his way through an absurd confused costume drama while looking for an evil General, who's holding his wife hostage and making sweet love to her. Despite a promising start this mismatched period piece rapidly degrades to wacky Flintstones outfits and clown makeup.

Nevertheless Eagle makes a point of punishing most of these over-the-top villains for having flashier costumes than his own. The fights involve much wacky jumping and samurai-like single sword-strikes, and even though there is almost no other weapon-on-body contact, Eagle inflicts enough body party detatchment and blood squirts to impress Leon who asks him for some sword lessons while standing in front of a blue sheet on some distant cheap set. Eagle grumbles and offers him a raincheck so he can continue his own blood-soaked campaign of terror against cloying couture. Unfortunately when Red Ninja Luther and lackeys attack, Leon goes all "full metal", blasting away wildly with his flintlock and killing most of them. This guy has yellow fever so bad you'd think that he would want to surround himself with as many ninjas as possible to give himself some credibility, but he can't restrain from firing off his saucy hardware. Lucky for Luther, the flintlock Leon has pointed at his chest is empty because bullets are "expensive and hard to come by", so Leon sends him back to Boris with yet another warning, wishing I'm sure that he hadn't blown his full metal wad on the small fry and had someone else to play ninja with.

Left with little screen time, and desperate to some smidgen of credibility before Eagle finishes his part of the movie, Leon enlists a Buddhist monk to quickly mutter over the remainder of the proceedings and convince Eagle that he is in the same movie and will join Leon to defeat evil. The only catch is that to make the prayer work, they each have to speak aloud the others name as often as possible even if the other is not present in the same shot. It takes the monk saving Eagle's grits from the General, and inviting Leon over to ply the gritty, restrained Eagle with drinks before he will join up with the effusive Leon (or rather, play along with the whole name uttering scheme).Eagle, perplexingly, restrains himself from dispatching the gaudily clad Leon, and finally teaches him some sword skills - skills Leon promptly ignores, preferring his tried and true tactic of bashing his fellow ninjas to death with his sword as if he were hammering nails.