PII

This reminds me of Ridley Scott and Dan O'bannon denying for years, or perhaps it was even decades; I'm uncertain, that they were inspired by the Mario Bava film "PLANET OF THE VAMPIRES" from 1965. They claimed that they had never seen the film and did not relent for a long time, but then years or decades later finally admitted to having seen the film prior to making ALIEN. I guess they didn't want to be accused of being rip-offs in the early days of ALIEN and then enough time passed that everyone could simply see it rather for the "heavy inspiration" that it really was. PLANET OF THE VAMPIRES, too cerebral for a B movie club??

Here's my breakdown. Great movie. Good Martial arts. Great Special Effects. Relatively Coherent Story. In spite of all my peanut gallery comments I very much enjoyed this film and would recommend it. In all seriousness this B Movie is probably better than 90% of all the "hundreds of millions of dollars to produce" films that I've seen." On a scale of 0 - 5 stars I'd give it a very solid 17 1/2.

¡SPOILER ALERT! DO NOT READ UNLESS YOU'VE SEEN THE MOVIE OR JUST DON'T CARE ABOUT MASSIVE SPOILERS! NINJA III: THE DOMINATION (Breakdown w/Peanut Gallery Comments) My very first thought as the film opens with a guy descending into a cavern and unearthing some relic was: “Oh My God it’s Burial Ground!” Am I about to be treated to Ninjas and Zombies? Nope. But you can’t blame a guy for hoping. The movie proceeds with an Evil Ninja murdering people on a golf course. My next thought is: I wish I owned “Ninja Golf” for Atari 7800. In maybe the first great moment of the film, Evil Ninja beats Arnold Schwarzenegger to lifting up the enemies ride by the back bumper by 3 years à la Predator. It’s only a golf cart, but still. Lots of great ninja/action occurs for a while including a well choreographed chopper crash. The opening act more or less concludes with Evil Ninja deciding to use some kind of magic smoke bomb to evade the few cops he didn’t manage to kill after being shot point blank about 100 times. On to better things. Cue a shot of some great 80’s hair and great 80’s music emanating from a silver boombox. Our heroine Christy sees Evil Ninja stumbling about from her vantage point on a phone pole and goes to help him. He attacks! Alas, after taking out nearly an entire police force and downing a helicopter, Evil Ninja is unable to handle this one phone company worker. In the scuffle he does however manage to transfer a demonic possessing spirit into Christy’s body by way of his Katana. Cut to Christy at the police station, more great 80’s hair and clothes and a really shameless bit of Coca-Cola product placement. Rookie cop Billy decides to hit on Christy but she don’t want none of that. Next its time for our heroine to play a trackball arcade game called “Bounce” while dressed in a great 80’s aerobics outfit (this may be my favorite part.) A quick list of other stuff in Christy’s pad besides the Arcade machine includes: lots of neon lighting, a payphone and of course an art print of one of Patrick Nagel’s pieces that has not yet met its destiny to fade while hanging in the window of an out of touch hair salon. It’s time for Christy’s Aerobics class. Cue more great 80’s music and lots of bending over at the waist which is closely followed by the ‘everyone rapidly jiggle your boobs’ portion of the workout. This is about the time we see that Billy has followed Christy and has been taking part in the workout but just can’t keep up with the ladies. Younger viewers might wish to shield their eyes around this point as the film dates to a time far back in the olden days when it was socially acceptable for an interested male to pursue a female. After turning Billy down again, Christy heads outside and kicks the asses of 4 would be rapists while a crowd of people including Billy the cop look on but do nothing to help. Afterward, Billy insists on driving Christy home, to make sure she doesn’t get arrested for assaulting 4 rapists while a crowd looked on (makes perfect sense.) She continues to resist his charms with a bad attitude until Billy verbally stands up for himself and allows her the chance to leave the car at which point Christy completely 180’s and wants to do him. Christy invites Billy to her pad and then seduces him by getting half naked and basting herself in V8 (Yuck, I guess she didn’t have any whipped cream or chocolate sauce because she’s supposed to be a health nut.) Implied sex happens and …Cut to ‘is it just a dream?’ -time in which Christy wakes up with Billy still asleep because her closet is glowing and beckoning. She opens the closet and the Katana she got from Evil Ninja is glowing and Christy’s Jammy jams are billowing in the breeze. At this point I was totally expecting the sword to say: “¡ZOOOOOL!!!” Fast forward a little… Christy has been experiencing hallucinations. Every time she sees a cop she views an Evil Ninja memory of the cop shooting at her. How does she deal with this new problem you ask? With another great 80’s music video style workout, that’s how. Next thing you know, the Bouncer arcade machine comes to life, makes R2D2 noises and spews an absolutely brilliant light show all over Christy’s stunned face while the sword floats out of the closet. Symbolism anyone? Christy is now charged up and ready for her first felony. With the number “III” lit up on the wall from light between stairway railing bars, Christy breaks into a cops house and takes him out. She also beats Uma Thurman to katana-slicing a ball thrown at her by 19 years! The next day Billy sees a Japanese guy with an eyepatch among a crowd at the crime scene. Meanwhile Christy’s psychiatrist is unable to help her with the mysterious bruises on her body and her inability to recall where she’d been or what she was doing. (Go figure.) Next Christy murders a cop and his two young upstanding lady friends in a hot tub by way of a poison tipped needle and strangulation. Afterword the Japanese fellow with the patch comes in to check on Christy’s handiwork by sticking his hand in some of the blood (what any reasonable person in 1984 would do of course.) Billy comes over to Christy’s and the clock is at precisely 3:11 which probably signifies something but we’ll just go on and ignore it. Guess what time it is? If you didn’t guess sexxy 80’s workout video! go and make yourself a nice cup of coffee and start reading again from the beginning (just kidding.) Billy and Christy both want to get to the bottom of what’s going on and discuss things which gives the actor who plays Billy some time to lean on a shelf and flash the ol triad hand sign but we won’t discuss that here. What’s important is Billy lets Christy know that the police have a secret Japanese friend that she should go with him to see. With that Billy takes Christy to see James Hong. (Ladies and others take note: When you feel like something is wrong and your new boyfriend offers to take you to somebody’s dark basement and have a complete stranger chain you up and feed you God only knows what to smoke while you’re chained up; the correct answer is: ‘Sure, why not.’) The verdict is in: Christy is possessed by the demonic Evil Ninja spirit and only a Ninja can destroy a Ninja. Meanwhile Eyepatch Ninja sneaks into a cop fortified facility, expertly taking out numerous cops along the way to reach the deceased body of Evil Ninja in a drawer. We’re in the morgue! The time on the wall clock is 1:18 and Patch Ninja has a flashback to nefarious stuff that happened in Japan. At Billy’s desk in the police station, Christy does not remember the visit to James Hong and Billy pretends nothing big happened, while some older cops remind Billy to attend a funeral for a fallen officer. Next Christy cools her buns next to what resembles a miniature noose hanging from the drapes back at her pad. Zooly-Evil-Ninja-From-The-Next- Dimension harasses Christy something awful by way of other-worldly phenomena and you know what that means: Time for another aerobics dance workout to combat the scourge! It doesn’t work however and Christy is possessed again, infiltrating the funeral and killing 4 cops from a tree by means of bow and arrow. Even after 4 arrows, no one has a clue which direction the attack is coming from. Christy takes out a bunch of cops in the chase and a bunch more officers realize that this movie’s viewers haven’t really been treated to a great hand to hand fight scene yet and decide to pursue her with only the aid of batons which they keep in the trunk of one of the cars, special for taking down assailants who are impervious to bullets. Christy evades the cops and Patch Ninja shows up to pursue her to an abandoned house. The two fight but Patch allows her to escape when the police arrive and then allows himself to be arrested. Billy shows up and talks with Patch Ninja who tells Billy to bring the sword and the girl to the old temple. Patch Ninja then cleverly escapes. Billy confronts Christy. She says she loves him, then tries to kill him with the katana (so typical) but can’t bring herself to do it even though she’s possessed, and then runs out. Billy pursues and everyone ends up at the old temple. Christy is herself and nearly makes a deal with Patch Ninja to let him try and return the spirit to its former body but upon realizing that she may die in the process, fights with Patch Ninja instead. She quickly fails, the spirit comes out of her and returns to the deceased Ninja’s body. ¡FIGHT! Evil Ninja and Patch Ninja face off. Billy enters the temple and reconciles with Christy as the fight moves outdoors. Evil Ninja looses the sword and Christy picks it up and stabs him. Evil Ninja rotates into the ground like a screw and causes an earthquake that creates a cleft in the ground which Patch Ninja falls into, to hang from a cable. Evil Ninja crawls up to attack Patch who then stabs him in the head killing him, before climbing to safety. Billy and Christy smooch. Patch Ninja says: “It’s over” and walks into the sunset. Evil Ninja’s body disappears leaving only his long and short sword behind in the shape of a “y.” Patch Ninja ascends the hillside to look off into the distance.

So weird to see you putting up a participation score on a shooter

Basically I tried to level up Lasers and Rings as much as possible while relying primarily on Lasers since they can take out everything in their path unlike a traditional projectile. By the time I got to the base stage (overhead stage) I had 8 Rings so picked up a couple more real quick so that I could shoot through the walls. And then relied on lasers for the final stage including the final boss. For stage 1 boss I did the same as Gensouki by going right under it with the laser. Right before you get to him there're a couple of floating platforms that need to be dropped, the second of which is really low so you've just gotta barely get under it and then get out of the way for it to fall before zipping in to take out the boss. 2nd level boss was probably the most annoying. It's kinda easy to get cornered if you're not careful. And boy that final boss can be a long fight. Main thing is to make sure you don't linger too close to him for too long or he'll bump ya and it's all over. Bir-aye sounds about right. ...like Bür-eye.. It was a shooter week for me. I did this, shot a couple of really great games of pool last night with a buddy and shot golf Sunday afternoon. The shot of the day was on the last hole. My drive went into a ravine that had a long tarp laid out in it that was held down with rocks on each side about every few feet and my ball hit one of those rocks and bounced really high to land on the green! ...And nice score @Gaia Gensouki, 700K is badass!

579,510 This is why I love playing the weekly. When you finally get that no death it's such an intense run. Feels great!

Hard game for sure, but really cool. I love the level 4 music. It's very unforgiving of error. The worst thing in my opinion is that it seems to have more "invisible bullets" than any other shooter I've ever played. In other words, it has a lot of: "What the heck even got me?!" moments. That and bullets that seem to appear right after shooting an enemy, which if the enemy was close is a likely quick death. Love scrolling in 4 directions though and shooting in eight..

I saw that over at "What Are You Currently Playing?" Figured you might show up here.

For me it was that time when the powers that be on this Earth all became horrendously ill as a consequence of willfully cultivating evil and died lickety-split leaving only good people to take over the reins of power in every country, making peace with each other for the benefit of all. ...Oh wait, that hasn't happened yet. Good luck, everyone!

Oh I can be even lazier I play on a Analogue NT mini so I just hit select + start

Use a yardstick to hit reset. It's not so bad.

Give me everything you own and I'll keep you in a bathtub full of perpetually warm nutrient rich olive oil. I'll even refresh it every couple of years or so. And once a day I'll put on an N64 themed puppet show for your amusement. Do we have a deal?

"Nightmare City" from 1980 is one of my favorite B's. Great example of a film that does some things well but is also ridiculous bad. It's on Youtube in Italian w/English Subs. I'll just leave it here for consideration... "Burial Ground: The Nights Of Terror" from 1981 is also fantastic for much the same reasons.. Also on Youtube, and in English...

I played the crap out of this on Game Gear. Great platformer.

I think you forgot to drink Chartreuse while eating fettuccine alfredo and dove bars while also being in the hot tub at the time...

boo! rye fy-tah!

Thanx, nice run yourself. Took me all week but I was finally able to catch up with @Gaia Gensouki's impressive beginning of the week run. I tried as much as possible to avoid shooting that dang yellow/orange car until the later levels...

Level 11 / 92,271

No way to walk through lower room....

Just for you, it's: "Best Of The Best Championship Karate!" You have to work out between matches... A LOT. And boy-o- boy is it ever fun...

The most important thing is to collect 8 letters that spell NINTENDO, which upgrades your car, but also adds something like 50k to your score. Then take first place every time, hit all the upgrades and blow up your opponents as much as possible.

Sometimes I like to wonder how things would have gone if all of the Simpson's "black" characters had been colored Red.

@BeaIank Is it me or did the original post say "pause your game at the start of level 12" ?

@Dr. Morbis It's about time you showed up. I was starting to think you'd been kidnapped and replaced...