Review – Ninja III: the Domination

I’m going to say a couple of phrases. These phrases will tell you all you need to know about whether or not you want to watch this movie. Because there is only one audience for a movie called Ninja III: the Domination, and that audience picks itself.

Are you ready?

Here we go:

Ninja versus helicopter.

Ninja versus squad car.

Ninja versus Cop on a motorcycle.

Aerobic exercise as ninja-spirit possession deterrent.

A ninja-possessed arcade game that tries to take over the main character’s mind mind while a sword floats toward  her and the eyes of a painting blink and there’s a lightshow like you’re at a Pink Floyd show and there’s fog coming from nowhere and holy crap what the hell is going on here!!!!

Now, if none of that sounds appealing to you, then please, walk away, don’t look back. But if any of that sounds appealing, then you may be ready to sample this incredibly, impossibly ‘80s ninja movie. This is not a good movie. However, this is a great bad movie. That is important.

Ninja III: the Domination begins with a ninja (duh) killing the crap out of a group of businessmen playing golf, in hilariously awful action scenes where the sword is nowhere near anybody and yet they immediately fall down dead. He proceeds to kill everybody in his way: security guards, cops, the girlfriend, a squad car. He punches a frickin’ squad car!

Of course, the police finally realize that they’re not dealing with an ordinary dude in pajamas, and begin to rain bullets into this guy. And then they shoot some more. And more. Less bullets were used in Schindler’s List. Finally, the ninja tosses a smoke bomb and disappears. The cops look around in a sort of exasperated idiocy, wondering how the little dude in pajamas could escape after they fired approximately 100, 000 bullets into him.

Enter phone company worker Christie, played by Lucinda Dickey of both Breakin’ and Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo fame. This chick clearly knows how to pick her movies. She stumbles across the dying ninja, who finally succumbs to his injuries. He passes his sword on to her, along with a bit of his spookycrazy ninja voodoo, and she proceeds to take revenge on the cops who capped his ass so thoroughly.

Along the way a nerd cop (Jordan Bennet) with the hairiest back this side of a yeti somehow manages to woo her with the worst pickup lines in the world, because the script demanded it.

This movie demands that you stare at it slack-jawed and drink it in. Much like the nerd cop drinks the V8 juice that Christie pours on her chest in the least-erotic supposedly erotic scene that doesn’t feature a single ounce of nudity even though it should have at least rewarded the audience with boob.

Yeah, Christie’s idea of hot ‘n sexy is to pour V8 on her chest.

She doesn’t get out much, apparently.

There are a lot of utterances of the famed ninja“Hi-yaah” sound in this movie. Like…a lot.

I will give the actors one thing: they are dedicated to the movie. Lucinda Dickey’s Christie goes into this ninja possession thing with an almost method actor dedication. Ok, maybe not, but there is no winking at the audience here. It is played as if it is the greatest movie of its time.

It may not be that, but it is absolutely the best ninja possession movie of 1984, though.

 

Discuss on the forum

Buy on Amazon