New York Ninja (1984) Review

New York Ninja | Blu-ray (Vinegar Syndrome)

Director: John Liu
Re-director: Kurtis Spieler
Cast: John Liu and voice acting of Don “The Dragon” Wilson, Linnea Quigley, Michael Berryman, Vince Murdocco, Matt Mitler, Leon Isaac Kennedy, Ginger Lynn Allen, Cynthia Rothrock
Running Time: 93 min.

By Paul Bramhall

John Liu’s directorial career spanned 3 productions in total – 1979’s Zen Kwun Do Strikes in Paris, 1981’s Ninja In the Claws of the CIA, and 1982’s Dragon Blood – each looking to extol the virtues of Liu’s image as a sex symbol and the founder of the mysterious martial art Zen Kwun Do. As it turned out though, at the time the world just wasn’t ready to handle Liu’s ego fuelled cinematic odysseys, and they were all box office bombs, leading to Liu disappearing into the ether. That is, until 2021. At some point US based cult film distributor Vinegar Syndrome had purchased the assets from the long gone 21^st Century Distribution, of which their reels sat in VS’s film archives. In 2019 newcomer Kurtis M. Spieler had his curiosity piqued by a specific bunch of reels that were sat in a cardboard box labelled New York Ninja, an apparent ninja flick that was believed to never be finished, and destined for the trashcan (even Troma had passed on it).

The rest as they say, is history – Spieler decided to check out what was on them, and discovered literally hours of footage featuring John Liu running around New York in a white ninja costume. We can only speculate, but perhaps fuelled by the success of Sho Kosugi’s Enter the Ninja and Revenge of the Ninja, the now 40-year-old Liu decided to give filmmaking one last shot – and it was go big or go home. Looking to break the American market, he headed to New York and filmed guerrilla style on the streets of Brooklyn, backed by 21^st Century Distribution, who thought any movie featuring a ninja was likely to be a hit. However staff changes and money troubles seemingly led to filming coming to a halt somewhere along the way, and that’s as far as New York Ninja ever got. 

35 years on, the footage was discovered, and despite there being no sound, no credits, no storyboards, and no script (although one was uncovered much later, which interestingly revealed Rudy Ray Moore billed as Detective Dolemite – but who’s nowhere to be seen in the filmed footage), Spieler decided to attempt ‘re-directing’ the footage into a cohesive piece of filmmaking. Bringing onboard a voice cast of VS release luminaries like Don ‘The Dragon’ Wilson to dub Liu along with the likes of Cynthia Rothrock, and adult stars Linnea Quigley and Ginger Lynn, the end product is quite unlike anything I’ve ever seen. Godfrey Ho would be proud. Feeling more like a precursor to the following years Death Wish 3 than any of Liu’s kung fu flicks, New York Ninja paints an 80’s Big Apple overrun by street punks, graffiti, and decrepit housing blocks. You can practically feel the grime.

Like all of Liu’s flicks where he’s at the helm (or at least, was originally), describing the plot is a somewhat incomprehensible task. Women in NY are either being abducted or turning up dead, and it’s the Plutonium Killer who’s behind it, a fiend who gets off on exposing himself to a box full of radioactive material that makes his skin melt. He also has what can best be described as radioactive palms, where he can heat them up to a point they’re smoking (think Chang Yi in Phantom Kung Fu), although bizarrely the only time we see this technique is when he’s enjoying some reverse cowgirl action in the back of his car. He hires punks to kidnap women, who are then sold to a businessman for nefarious purposes we never get to see. When Liu’s wife is murdered just minutes after announcing to him that she’s pregnant, they find themselves a new enemy in the form of the New York Ninja! All of this – and the opening credits haven’t even rolled!

In the special features of VS’s Blu-ray release Spieler mentions how he put all of the footage together chronologically based on the clapperboard references at the beginning of each shot, but that when he did nothing made sense. For anyone that’s seen the likes of Ninja In the Claws of the CIA, that’s not necessarily an indication that they should be in another sequence, however credit has to go to Spieler for creating an entertaining 90 minutes out of the hours of footage that was available. Unlike Ninja In the Claws of the CIA though, Liu actually is playing a ninja here, and based on his home attire, katana collection, and futon, I assume is also supposed to be playing a Japanese character. This is both New York Ninja’s blessing and its curse, as watching Liu’s gangly frame in the ill fitted off-white ninja garb is every bit as ridiculous as you imagine it to be.

Clearly looking to imitate what made Kosugi’s Cannon outings successful, Liu’s primary focus whenever he dons his ninja gear seems to be on busting out a number of backyard ninja style poses, for what I can only assume was supposed to look cool. Cool it isn’t, however it is funny, gracing New York Ninja with a similar vibe to other so-bad-it’s-good cinema oddities like Miami Connection and Samurai Cop. Don’t get me started on his New York Ninja branded shurikens and explode upon impact bath bombs that make up his weapons of choice. Best of all is the constant Steven Seagal-esque doubling, when it’s blatantly not Liu in the ninja suit at all, such as when we see him in pursuit of a gang of punks while wearing roller-skates. The sequence leads to a hilariously awkward fight scene that at times is literally off-balance (thankfully Moon Lee did a much better job in 1990’s Nocturnal Demon).

However the sloppy fight scenes aren’t limited to Liu’s roller-skating double, with every fight being a far cry from even Liu’s worst efforts in Taiwan. Likely a result of working with untrained extras, almost all of the fights consist of Liu facing off against the same group of recurring punks (who wear a selection of ski masks, bandanas, and make up – probably to disguise the fact that it’s the same actors each time a new group enters the fray). Liu’s kicks are devoid of any intensity or speed, as are his opponent’s movements, who seem to nervously approach and attempt to pull off whatever simple piece of choreography they’ve been given. I swear at one point a punk literally drapes a pair of nunchucks over Liu’s shoulder. What’s worse is that the fights that have been included are the best, with the deleted scenes revealing additional action where there’s blatantly no contact, and in one Liu fumbles his landing from a tree.

So if you’re not going to watching a John Liu flick for the fights, then what exactly are you going to watch it for? The short answer is – everything else! New York Ninja is one of those cinematic oddities that has to be seen to be fully appreciated. Liu continues his genuine attempts at acting that we first saw in Dragon Blood, and just like there, he employs random hysterical outbursts to convey his emotional turmoil – here with added athleticism. In one scene we witness him pacing back and forth between a pair of walls after his wife is murdered mumbling, “why, why, why!?” over and over again, before he suddenly stops in the middle and launches into an epic star jump yelling “WHYYYYYYYYY!!!!” Best of all, it freeze frames as he does the splits in mid-air! We even get to see Liu in the skimpiest pair of red briefs you’ll ever lay eyes on go spear fishing in New York Harbour for dinner. I’m still processing that scene even now.

In fact Liu’s biggest influence on New York Ninja appears to be superhero comics, only instead of working for a newspaper like Clark Kent or Peter Parker, he’s a sound engineer for a news channel, one that sees him following around a cameraman and reporter looking to get the scoop on the punks. Of course whenever they stumble across them, Liu pulls some incongruous stunt like having to run off for food, only to turn up as the ninja seconds later and deliver a flurry of restrained kicks, before showing up again and asking if he missed anything while he was away. Liu’s positioning of his ninja as a larger-than-life hero is further backed up by the fact his fans start producing ‘I ♡ NY Ninja’ t-shirts and badges, and of course there’s the obligatory debate on whether his taking the law into his own hands is right or wrong. Just don’t make me talk about the army of kid ninjas that end up following in his wake.

Despite all of the craziness, it’s difficult to deny that New York Ninja feels flabby even at just over 90 minutes, and had it been completed it could well be argued it would be just as forgotten today as it was when it was a bunch of reels in a box. But it’s eccentricities ultimately outweigh any negatives – was John Liu ahead of his time by attempting to break the US market single-handedly in the 80’s? He could well be, as Jackie Chan’s The Protector was still a year away, and no other Asian star of the era likely had that unwavering self belief (no matter how misguided it was) to actually land in NY and attempt to make a ninja epic guerrilla style on the streets. Ending with Liu busting out the greatest breaking the 4^th wall moment since George Lazenby in the opening of On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, take whatever expectations you may have, and prepare for them to be shredded to pieces by New York Ninja branded shurikens.

Paul Bramhall’s Rating: 6/10