Underplayed Gems

Ninja Terminator (1985)

Ninja Terminator poster
Directed by
Godfrey Ho
Genre
adventure film, ninja film
Country
United States
Runtime
1h 32m
Rated
18
Rating
6.0 of 10 from 67 voters
Elsewhere
IMDb
The 3D catalogue: film cases on wooden shelves, with the cat sitting at the counter next to its greeting.

The catalogue in 3D

The film shelves have a room of their own that you can walk around in. The cat behind the counter is the AI Catbot, and they pick real films from the same catalogue when you tell them what you feel like watching. Nothing is for sale, here or in there. Go in from here and this film is already out on the counter, with more like it waiting on the shelf next to it.

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How it feels

A ninja master and his allies search for pieces of a magical statue while being hunted by a ninja clan. The film was created by adding new scenes with ninjas and a few American actors onto footage from an older South Korean movie.

campycheesyfast-pacedlow-budgetnostalgicquirkyunpolishedplayful

What happens

Ninja Terminator is a 1985 film released in the United States by IFD, directed, written, and edited by Godfrey Ho. It stars Richard Harrison as Ninja Master Harry MacQueen, Jack Lam as Jaguar Wong, Hwang Jang-lee (accredited as Wong Cheng Li) as Tiger Chan. Godfrey Ho frequently created movies by filming scenes that he then added to pre-existing films, re-cutting it together and dubbing over the actors with his own dialogue in order to create a new story. Similarly, Ninja Terminator reuses more than 50 percent of its footage from the South Korean film The Uninvited Guest Of The Star Ferry (Korean: 스타페리 불청객; 1984). IFD owned the international sales rights for the film and decided to insert Caucasian actors into the film in the hopes it would then do better overseas. Ho did this and added ninjas to the storyline, as he usually did for his films. The new footage introduced a storyline about ninjas hunting for pieces of a magical statue. (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

More like this

This page is from Underplayed Gems. Not quite it? You can browse by genre, country and year, or take this one into the 3D catalogue and ask the Catbot for something closer.