The Octagon

It was one of those nights. I had slept till about...late that day, and thus, my brain was functioning at a very high level, higher than the average 2 in the morning brain at least. I turn to the television for comfort, as i usually do when my friends have all left me, and I'm alone and sad. Amazed I find there's nothing worth watching as I flip through the 4 non-cable-TV channels in my room. The sadness and grudge towards my friends fades away as the opening scenes of The Octagon jump in my face. At this point, I'm wide awake and thrilled. "At least it's good for a few laughs".

And it was. The plot is fascinating:

Chuck's character was adopted by some Ninja master, and a rivalry is born between Chuck and his new fathers son, Seikura. When Seikura cheats in a race between the two, and thus dishonors the whole family, he is vanished by his father.

We meet Chuck's character Scott James, some sort of mercenary. Seikura is now training terrorists in some camp in South-America. And so the plot thickens.

As the end draws near I am vast asleep. The Octagon has served its purpose and dozed me into dreamland. Never mind the sandman. As long as Chuck's around, there's no need to fear insomnia!

Fighting expert Scott James (Chuck Norris) takes an interest in a dancer named Nancy. He takes her to her place where she is attacked by masked intruders. He realizes that they are ninjas although ninjas don't exist anymore. In fact, a ninja group is secretly training international terrorists in their craft. Scott encounters another damsel in distress, Justine (Karen Carlson) who is also being targeted. Meanwhile, his friend AJ (Art Hindle) has been doing his own investigating. McCarn (Lee Van Cleef) is his mentor.

The writing is a mess, but I don't think anybody care, least of all the writers. It's a lot of contrivance, and silly stupidity. It's ninjas. They may as well call this Chuck Norris vs Ninjas. That would be a better title. The training camp is much more interesting than listening to Chuck Norris' inner whisper voice. WTF. This is Chuck camp.

The Octagon's premise is simple. Chuck Norris vs Ninjas. That's really about it. Norris is Scott James, a man haunted by memories of his growing up and rivalry with his former martial art brother Seikura, who now heads a Ninja training camp and is teaching international terrorists the ways of the Ninja. James must stop the organization and face off, once and for all, with his former brother.

There's little in the way of story, and sadly the film takes it's time in getting to the point where Norris finally takes out the Ninja trash. Like a lot of his movies, the lack of much plot means the film moves pretty slowly between the action. When the action does kick in, it's quite impressive. The real standout though is Norris infiltrating the Ninja base in the film's climax. It's classic Norris.

The cast are okay. Lee Van Cleef and Richard Norton pop up in small roles, Richard Norton actually has a few different roles here.

I would have rated it an 8 out of 10 if there was a bit more action in the middle half of the film. For the most part, only Chuck Norris and ninja fans will get the most out of THE OCTAGON (1980).

Overall worth watching..7 out of 10

The Octagon on the surface is just another in a long line of not-so-great Chuck Norris karate pictures. But wait; there are differences.

Admittedly the quality of production is poor, but the addition of ninja assassins as chief antagonists was interesting. It should have intrigued us, but the film was just not meant to be great. The most entertaining aspect of the film is Chuck Norris' voice over narration of his thoughts. His voice echoes in whisper whenever he thinks of anything. This element may have been meant to be mysterious, but obviously it was just another part of the movie that may have swayed the viewer into thinking this was a comedy. This movie is at best described as a guilty pleasure, or something to watch on a night when you can't get to sleep. But for sarcastically humored people, or just undemanding viewers, The Octagon is fun to watch.

It's true that it may not appeal to martial arts movie lovers across the board because it actually has quite an involved, twisty plot and is going to be too slowly paced for some. There's not much in the way of action until the big finish. Still, for an undemanding B action picture, this viewer found the production values to be reasonably good, and there are some fine performances among the supporting cast. What lends "The Octagon" a high amount of unintentional hilarity is Chuck's overdone internal dialogue, all done with an exaggerated echo effect.

Chuck stars as Scott James, a former fighter with bad memories, particularly of growing up with a hostile adoptive brother, Seikura (Tadashi Yamashita), who as an adult is now running a training camp for terrorists. A beautiful young heiress, Justine (Karen Carlson), wants revenge against Seikura because her father was one of Seikura's victims, and tries to hire Scott for her purposes. Scott isn't too happy that somebody would try to use him, and doesn't particularly want to get involved, but eventually realizes that he must.

This is boosted to a degree by the engaging presence of Lee Van Cleef, who's a gas as an anti-terrorism expert / old friend of Scott's. Art Hindle ("Black Christmas" '74, "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" '78) co-stars as Scott's buddy A.J., who makes a mistake in getting interested in a cause and gets in over his head. Sexy Carol Bagdasarian, daughter of composer / songwriter / actor Ross B., plays Aura, a terrorist-in-training who experiences a change of heart. Kim Lankford ("Malibu Beach") is likable during her brief screen time. B movie legend Richard Norton makes his film debut in two credited roles and several uncredited ones as faceless ninjas. (He's joked that he must have died a total of eight times in this movie.) And keep an eye out for people such as Brian Libby (whose next screen role was as Chuck's psycho nemesis in "Silent Rage"), Jack Carter, Ernie Hudson, Chuck's son Mike who plays Scott as a teenager, and an uncredited Tracey Walter.

Good production design (by James L. Schoppe), cinematography (by Michel Hugo), and music (by Dick Halligan) help to make this a decent if unexceptional bit of entertainment. Chuck, as always, fares much better when kicking ass than when simply acting, but he still makes for a formidable hero. And the snarling Yamashita is a worthy bad guy. Some viewers may be amused to note how brutal the violence is at times.

Overall, this is fun enough to watch.

Seven out of 10.