Ninja in the Claws of the CIA | aka Kung Fu Emanuelle (1981) Review

“Ninja in the Claws of the CIA” Theatrical Poster

AKA: Made in China
Director: John Liu
Cast: John Liu, Casanova Wong, Danny Lee, John Ladalski, Roger Paschy, Mirta Miller, Cheng Bik-Lin, Gam Biu, Raquel Evans, Jose Maria Blanco
Running Time: 77 min.

By Paul Bramhall

It’s always interesting when kung fu stars decide to step into the director’s chair and helm their own starring vehicles, from the globe-trotting adventures of Bruce Le in the likes of Challenge of the Tiger and Bruce Strikes Back, to the self-proclaimed cool of Donnie Yen’s Legend of the Wolf and Ballistic Kiss. One kung fu star who decided to start taking control of his career in a relatively short period of time was super kicker John Liu. After his breakthrough role in 1976’s Secret Rivals, just 3 years later he’d created his own martial art – called Zen Kwun Do – and decided to showcase it by directing, writing, producing, choreographing, and starring in Zen Kwun Do Strikes in Paris. Playing a Hong Kong movie star who heads to Paris to rescue his kidnapped father, a “well known American aerospace scientist”, Liu’s directorial debut is every bit as baffling as it sounds.

Liu would go on to direct 2 more productions which saw him similarly covering a multitude of roles, and in 1981 his sophomore feature arrived in the form of Ninja in the Claws of the CIA. Involving a truly mind-bending plot that sees Liu in dual roles playing twins – one a former military man now wheelchair bound, and the other a martial arts teacher (playing himself, John Liu) – proceedings only get more bizarre as they go. Taking place in the U.S., we learn that Russia has created a deadly new martial arts technique, and the CIA want to recruit Liu to teach the military his unique style of Zen Kwun Do. Liu’s style involves a form of self-hypnosis that can supress sexual desire and pain, however he wants nothing to do with it, declaring that he “can’t teach self-hypnosis to westerners.” However when he falls for a CIA trap involving the rescue of a lady being harassed while she’s buying groceries, he finds himself with no choice but to get involved.

As a kind of misguided magnum opus, NITCOTC (as I’ll refer to it from here on in) certainly ticks all the boxes of someone lost in their own inflated ego. When the CIA are briefing the military as to why they should hire Liu, they do so via a slideshow projection, which is basically a collection of all the martial arts magazine covers that he’s featured on. Liu here seems to be of the belief that he’s not so much playing a character in a movie, but rather a version of how he sees himself, with the only caveat being that none of it’s real. The cast is equally eclectic – we get Christian Anders, a German pop star whose karate skills saw him cast in Germany’s first karate movie with 1979’s Root of Evil. There’s Swiss Playboy Playmate Jolanda Egger cast as one on Liu’s trainees (more on her later). We also get French Vietnamese martial artist and actor Roger Paschy, who holds the dubious honour of featuring in all 3 of Liu’s directorial outings.

But that’s really just the tip of the iceberg. Once Liu is assigned to the military camp where Paschy is the commanding officer, and one that doesn’t take too fondly to his presence, it’s revealed there’s far more going on than meets the eye. It turns out Paschy and the military brass have been conducting their own experiments to turn soldiers into unstoppable killing machines, and they’ve been using poor Casanova Wong as their guinea pig. Don’t ask what Casanova Wong is doing here, just accept it. Unfortunately all the experiments he’s been subjected too, involving being hooked up to electrodes and alike, have made him slightly mad and prone to violent outbursts. Seriously, can we take a moment to reflect on why Casanova Wong played so many of these crazy characters!? Check him out in Magnificent Wonderman from Shaolin, The Master Strikes, and Strike of Thunderkick Tiger for similarly crazed performances!

Perhaps because he’s the only other Asian in the battalion Liu takes it upon himself to befriend Wong, or “the freak out” as others call him, a decision which is only solidified when Liu realises they were both born in the year of the rabbit. In one of NITCOTC‘s lesser head scratching moments, Liu decides to approach Wong with his offer of friendship during a military training exercise, which he interrupts without hesitation to gift Wong a box with a real rabbit inside. I’m looking forward to the day when someone approaches me with a rooster and an offer of friendship.

The scene NITCOTC is most notorious for involves Liu’s self-hypnosis kung fu being put to the test in a secluded forest while Paschy watches on. Convinced he’s a fake, Paschy asks Jolanda Egger to seduce Liu while he attempts to maintain his horse stance, which at one point sees her perform fellatio in an attempt to break his will. Thankfully the whole ordeal is shot with Liu’s back to the camera and he remains fully clothed – and for those wondering, yes it’s also implied that he remains flaccid for the duration. While it’s certainly the most outrageous part, my personal favorite moment happens earlier in the sequence, which involves Egger draping herself around Liu’s body while Casanova Wong runs around kicking him from all angles with no reaction. It’s a hilarious sight.

The later half of NITCOTC becomes like a 2001: A Space Odyssey trip into the unknown. Having struck up a relationship with the CIA’s data analyst, played by Mirta Miller (Vengeance of the Zombies, Bloody Sex), the pair decide to escape with the classified documents covering the secret experiments. The rest of what can loosely be called a narrative involves Liu on the run through Santa Barbara, Mexico, France, and Spain with the CIA in hot pursuit, which includes Naschy and Casanova Wong. Timelines and logic go completely out of the door at this point, resulting in either an incoherent mess or a patchwork glimpse into the mind of a genius, viewpoints will vary. In Santa Barbara we learn he’s opened up his own kung fu school, clarified by a lingering shot focused on the JOHN LIU ZEN KWUN DO signage. One of the agents tracking Liu says “You gotta admire the guy’s nerve operating a school under his own name”, which its hard to disagree with.

Before you can blink, we’re in Paris. This time the agent keeping an eye on Liu reports back saying he’s just “picked up his girlfriends’ kid from her apartment.” Huh? For reasons never explained, it seems Liu has now hooked up with a single mother played by Raquel Evans (Velvet Dreams, Erotic Family), and is playing stepfather to her kids. Nothing makes any sense, and somehow everything ends up in Barcelona where Liu asks Paschy to meet him in a ceramics shop for a fight. I loved the brazen lack of subtlety to this setup so much that it made me laugh out loud, with the only reason for the location being that it allows Liu to kick a whole heap of ceramic pots and plates into oblivion. At one point an exhausted Paschy leans on a post adorned with various ceramics, and instead of Liu delivering one of his lethal kicks to a sitting duck target, he instead kicks the ceramics, seemingly under the belief that the shrapnel would finish Paschy off.

The finale unfolds on an airstrip as the villainous CIA head honcho attempts to make an escape, and Liu’s left to duke it out with Casanova Wong who’s holding onto a live hand grenade. Whether the budget ran out, or they decided to change the scenario on the spot but didn’t have enough actors, the whole airstrip scene is extremely strange. Wong actually plays 2 roles – the mad soldier, and one of the villain’s lackeys – but for the latter he’s only disguised by a mask, and if you have hair like Casanova Wong did in 1981 (never mind his kicks!), there’s no way he could be mistaken for anyone else. This results in dialogue scenes in which Liu is addressing the villain with Wong alongside him, then when the scene cuts to the villain to respond, he also has Wong standing next to him as well, just, well, in a mask.

At the end of the day, if you’re a fan of John Liu then the selling point of Ninja in the Claws of the CIA is the chance to see him face off against the Human Tornado, Casanova Wong, in a couple of one-on-one fight scenes. As both his sophomore directorial feature and fight choreographer gig, he sticks to what he knows and there’s nothing particularly complex on display, so expect a lot of John Liu kicking both people and ceramic pots in equal measure. For some, that may be enough, for the rest, well, there’s always some self-hypnosis tips on offer to help out in the bedroom.

Paul Bramhall’s Rating: 5/10