Ninja Thunderbolt (1984)

NINJA THUNDERBOLT is one of the infamous cut-and-paste ninja movies churned out by Godfrey Ho in the 1980s. It features a main film which attempts to be semi-serious but which is rendered all but incoherent thanks to the re-cutting and re-dubbing, plus lots of added-on scenes of ninja fighting and random action starring main man Richard Harrison. I do get a kick out of some of these movies - NINJA TERMINATOR is a hoot and I love SCORPION THUNDERBOLT - but NINJA THUNDERBOLT is a disappointment.The original film is pretty dull and the ninja stuff even more silly than usual. Harrison falls out with his ninja buddies and runs around randomly shouting 'ninja!'. There are a lot of set-piece battles in the woods and outrageously cheesy chase scenes. Yasuaki Kurata plays a ninja (of course) and Don Wong is the 'straight' lead. See it to believe it.

Godfrey Ho is probably the greatest trash or b-movie director, he is notorious for his ninja movies, Ninja Thunderbolt is probably the most notorious of his Ninja movies.Usually, the "plot" on Godfrey Ho movies are confusing and sometimes he "recicles" parts of his older movies and add's them to his "new" movie (AKA: Cut and paste technique).This time, Godfrey Ho tell us the story about the Ninja Golden Idol getting stolen. Inspector Wang gets involved in the "Ninja Empire" while investigating "regular" crimes.Highlights of the film include: -a chase scene is put "on speed up", adding a comical effect - A sex scene (are you thinking that this is a kid's movie ?) - The Chase scene where a bunch of ninjas are chasing Detective Wang (while he is driving a "Bubble Car"). Recommended for who wants to get approached in the craptastic world of Godfrey Ho !

This ninja-film is extremely bad and ridiculous. Besides from the fact that it is very dull and therefore hard to follow, the only good thing about it is that it's silly in a funny way (but only sometimes). I remember (OK you don't remember bad movies you saw 10 years ago, but this one was so bad that i did remember) that I rented this movie on video in the late 80's and thought I had a really exciting ninja-film to kill the evening with, but how wrong I was. (1 out of 10)

To put it simply, Ninja Thunderbolt is the best of the 'stolen jade horse insurance fraud is investigated by a man in a bubble car pursued by roller-skating ninjas' movies to come out of the Hong Kong based IFD Films stable in the mid 80s.Richard Harrison, as he does so many times in Joseph Lai's productions, puts on a brave face as his scenes are once again spliced into a separate film where he interacts with characters he's blatantly never met. In this case Harrison plays cool headed cop Richard (Richard's contract with IFD films stipulated that he MUST always play a character called Richard or Gordon) who assists bubble car driving cop Harry Wong in solving a suspected insurance fraud. I say 'assists', but in reality Richard's assistance is limited to telephoning him a couple of times and showing Harry - who is really in the same room as Richard - screen shots of the rest of the cast in upcoming scenes …er, I mean Hong Kong Police intelligence photographs of suspects to the fraud.But why waste time worrying about the plot – no one who made Ninja Thunderbolt did – when it contains some of the unintentionally funniest scenes ever committed to celluloid? Your sides barely have time to recover from one baffling action sequence before the next one takes you by the scruff of the neck and throws you head first into a vat of cheese. Only a master craftsman of the pedigree of Godfrey Ho would confuse the audience with a car chase involving two identical white Nissans, the tension cranked up just that little extra by running the film at Benny Hill chase speeds, or disorientate the viewer further with a ski-chase sequence (speeded up of course) shot from considerable distance (the other side of the valley) with seven or eight identically dressed skiers with their faces covered.But what really makes this film worthwhile are the roller-skating ninjas. Yes, you read me correctly, roller-skating ninjas. It even has a small part for a young Jackie Chan, and I haven't even got time to describe the 'sizzling' shower love scene, the cardboard telephone booths, the cars that drive in two wheels without even bothering to resort to the movie formula of hitting the rear-side of another vehicle, the motorbikes whose tyres screech on grass verges, the drug dealer who produces joints from his mouth, the...well I could go on and on.Basically, if you ever see a copy of this film in your local video store, or more likely in a bargain bin at your local market stall or car-boot sale, you could do much worse that get your hands on a copy. Your blood will forever be motivated by ninja spirit.