The Ninja Dragon

Rating:
Summary: It's no "DIE HARD"
Review: The make up for this action pack film is excellent. The make up makes up for the bad action. Its not half bad and its not half good.

Rating:
Summary: "Is there no one who will defend the Momiji bloodline?"
Review: Well, it's been leading up to it since the 1950's. With all the Japanese martial arts films and killer-monster-from-the-depths-of-the-sea films, it was just bound to get made, and here it is. In 1990, Japan made the first movie that is half a karate flick and half a Godzilla movie.

The plotline follows precocious yakuza daughter Shinobu, whose supposed to be the "sixth head of the Nindo clan". I don't know Ninja stuff, so I don't know what the criteria for this are (or how someone like Shinobu could possibly fit the bill for it.) At any rate, she's watched over always by the Ninja Defenders, a trio of chopsocky warriors who are sworn to protect the Nindo clan, led by Ryu Momoji, Ninja extraordinare. The Defenders are called into duty once more when the Nindos are all murdered and Shinobu is kidnapped by one of her fathers business associates, who appears to be some kind of slug from outerspace, preparing to wed Shinobu and use her to procreate his race and take over all of Tokyo, then Japan, then the Hamptons, and finally, the entire world.

If you watch the English dubbed version with english subtitles, you'll notice that a considerable amount of dialouge was thrown in not in the Japanese version (Man,Asians just aren't that talkative, are they.) Ryu, in the english version, sounds like something out of an old "BATMAN" tv episode. His punchlines include such gems as: "Ninja Pause!", "Ninja Go!", "Ninja flip!", "Ninja hear something up there!", and (my personal favorite) "Ninja Hernia!".Not exactly up there with "Make my day", "I'll be back", "Let's party", or even "Holy bad guys on the loose, Batman."

The martial arts scenes are extremely well done, making this a mandatory viewing fo martial arts fans like myself. This movie was too short to earn that fifth star. Overlooking that (and the cheesy overdubbed dialouge) THE NINJA DRAGON makes for a well-done martial arts film.