Ninja Hunt

Ninja Hunt
1983 – Hong Kong
Director – Joseph Lai
AEE, 1992, VHS

No doubt this is going to be a shit fest, Joseph Lai is as far as I’m concerned essentially a pseudonym/alter ego for the notorious Godfrey Ho, thief-master frankenfilmmaker extraordinaire. In any case the name Joseph Lai certainly carries it’s own stigma of shit.

Some ninja, knowing the lasting virulence of the magnetic tape format, steal a secret formula recorded on video tape, which it is rumored can give soldiers a morale boost/bloodlust. They bring it to their goofily yellow clad boss, White Man #1.

Richard Harrison, in the trying role of White Man #2 is called in to investigate the disappearance of the formula cassette. In lieu of appearing in the remainder of the film, White Man #2 calls on his Asian assistant, Aaron who will never appear in the same frame as WM2, to do the legwork and dangerous investigation part of the dangerous legworky investigation. Clearly, this indicates that this is a strictly Asian film with nuggets of white meat haphazardly deep-fried in it for overseas marketability.

Aaron quickly befriends a pint-sized hustlin’ street kid who’s down with all the top Asian gangsta’s in Hong Kong, including Campbell, who’s sleeping with Billys mother. Aaron is repeatedly mugged by Campbells goons, and then there is a dance-club scene with stolen Michael Jackson music.

Suddenly WM1 and his white-man ninjas appear again in silly costumes, muttering administrative business and plotting against WM2. WM2 appears at Billys moms home and confesses to fathering the runt, followed by an inter WM ninja fight.

There is a rock/paper/scissors match at a dance club which devolves into a slapfight and crap, crap, unintelligible crap.As WM2 and his imperialist ninja administration team plan the colonial crackdown on the other Asian four fifths of this film, Billy suffers the culmination of emotional trauma at the hands of his mother who has insisted his whole life that he refer to her as “Auntie” and wear hideous plaid sportscoats.

Finally, heaving themselves bodily from behind their fiercely monolithic mass produced oaken administrative desks, the WM scuffle heartily over the videotape and eventually the winner gets a soft-on.

This means there were at least 20,136 other tapes belonging to the club:

A slightly less crappy poster version of the cover image: