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.
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