DVD review: Ninja the Protector (1986)

An international ring of counterfeiters is spreading their phony currency throughout the world's money markets. A special police investigation unit is formed to track down the gang responsible for the counterfeiting scheme. Unfortunately, the gang is also a highly-trained group of ninjas that will require the skills of agent Gordon Anderson (Richard Harrsion), a top ninja in his own right, to combat these criminals who will stop at nothing to keep their plans alive. Ninja the Protector is written by AAV Creative Unit and Godfrey Ho who also is the director. This is another exampe of his special trademark, shoot some new footage with caucasian actors (often including Richard Harrison) and splice in these scenes into a old unreleased Asian movie (this time a actiondrama about two brothers Warren and David) and through  inventive editing and dubbing we get a totally new flick. The acting is bad and the painfully bad dubbing doesn´t help. The camerawork and editing is pretty decent. In my opinion the asian footage is pretty boring in Ninja the Protector, it features some fightscenes, nudity, sex and makes up the bulk of the flick but when I watch a movie with Ninja in the title I wanna see Ninjas. The new footage using caucasian actors and chinese stuntmen as ninjas, don´t believe for a minute that it´s Richard Harrison making all those fancy moves in the ninja versus ninja action. On the topic of ninjas; how come that every ninja in these flicks is wearing eyeliner and btw you have to admire their skills at teleportation.The final battle with a ninja versus ninja action on racing motorbikes could have been pretty cool but now it just looks mediocre, the final fightscene ends somewhat abruptly and sets up the flick for its wtf moment which is a very abrupt ending. The fightchoreography and swordplay is okay thanks to the Hong Kong stuntmen. There no gore in this. There is T & A, rape and several very boring softcore sexscenes in this, they occur in the old asian footage.
This review is based upon the Austrian region 2 DVD release from 84 Entertainment. It´s uncut and have both german and english audio.
Rating: 0½ out of 7. Ninja the Protector is confusing, the asian footage is quite boring and there's not enough ninja action but even so it has a certain strange and unique charm that appeals to some of us (including me). I suggest that everyone but dedicated Godfrey Ho fans should avoid this.

/JL