#Enter the ninja film series movie#
Certainly, Enter the Ninja isn't an especially great movie when it involves anything other than ninjas flipping out and killing people to be perfectly blunt about it, it's a tedious slog.Įnter the Ninja began life as a story concept by stuntman Mike Stone, who intended to star in the lead role himself. It's hard to say why: probably just because most Americans hadn't really seen anything like this before. Cannon would ride out the decade as the pre-eminent purveyors of schlocky, Zeitgeist-humping action movies, and the film that really launched them into the stratosphere was the 1981 release Enter the Ninja, the same movie that turned American ninjas into a pop culture perpetual-motion machine. The filmmakers, to the surprise of nobody keeping an eye on the exploitation of trends in '80s B-movies, were Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus, the heads of Cannon Films. All it took, from here was a little nudge over the cliff's edge, and now I will at last introduce you to the film and filmmakers who provided the kick. By this point, any resemblance to the historical figures was wiped out by the guttural screaming, exaggerated poses, and endless repertoire of edged weapons that we are familiar with today.Īs the decade wound to a close, it became just a matter of time before some savvy American producer whipped up a home-grown ninja picture, one that would reach beyond the niche audience for Hong Kong action imports, and in 1980, the two first shots were fired in what proved to be a decade-defining infatuation with the fantastic, martial arts madmen sort of ninjas: April saw the publication of the bestselling novel The Ninja, by Eric Van Lustbader, which was followed by the summer release of the film The Octagon, in which a group of ninja terrorists were defeated Chuck Norris (who'd presumably encountered the characters during his time making movies in Hong Kong). Over the course of the 1970s, international film audiences were able to see ninjas show up as fighters and villains in various Hong Kong action movies. More than a century after their popularity spiked in Japanese culture, ninja/ shinobi started to enter the Western pop culture consciousness through the 1967 James Bond picture You Only Live Twice, where they were part of the whole Exotic Oriental atmosphere that movie was trying to generate.
![enter the ninja film series enter the ninja film series](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/9f70sKbqr3g/hqdefault.jpg)
The black is taken from a theatrical conceit: in certain stage conventions, figures dressed in black weren't really "there", as they manipulated props and such. The image of the shinobi as a figure all in black dates to the 19th Century, when they were incorporated into contemporary pop culture as romantic historical characters. Note that "excellent disguise skills" does not mean "dressed in jet-black pajamas and hood with swords sticking out all over". During the Sengoku period in the 15th-17th centuries, the shinobi were increasingly hired as military spies and assassins, using high-level weapons training in concert with excellent disguise skills to accomplish their tactical missions. Essentially, my sense is that the shinobi were basically the down-rent version of the samurai, with a more rough-and-tumble, winning-matters-more-than-honor attitude, and a farm-based rather than urban-based background. Historically, shinobi were fighters from rural provinces in early feudal Japan, a millennium ago or less, who were trained in subterfuge and espionage tactics to protect local villages. Even the word is slightly bullshit: if I have my facts right (and PLEASE chime in if you have better info), the characters for the word ninja can also be pronounced shinobi, and the latter is the more "authentic", but the former was popularised in the 19th Century because it was easier to say for the Westerners who were at that time swarming into Japan like ants at a picnic.
![enter the ninja film series enter the ninja film series](https://cdn.i-scmp.com/sites/default/files/d8/images/canvas/2021/10/29/d00d2043-30c9-4b34-8dd1-219b73684189_4a327bc4.jpg)
![enter the ninja film series enter the ninja film series](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/4RsVOfPT_is/mqdefault.jpg)
That's okay, though, it's the same thing I thought of. The thing you just thought of is made-up fairy tale bullshit. Seems like as good an excuse as any to look back to one of the films that kicked things off.Īlright, so do something for me: think of a ninja. during the 1980s, of which Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows is but the latest aftershock. This week: my younger readers are perhaps unaware of the seismic event that was the ninja fad in the U.S. Every week this summer, we'll be taking an historical tour of the Hollywood blockbuster by examining an older film that is in some way a spiritual precursor to one of the weekend's wide releases.