They say that confession is good
for the soul, so here it goes. I don’t
get nearly as excited for new movies as I used to. Oh, there are still releases that I look
forward to from filmmakers whose work I respect, but in the main it’s difficult
for me to get all fired up over a lot of what hits my local cinema. The last part of that last sentence is much of
the problem. Very little of what I
consider to be of value (read: worth paying more than a rental fee) ever
actually makes it onto one of the ten screens at my local theater. They are too booked up having the latest
bland pseudo-comedy drivel or massively over-produced, ultra-homogenized
blockbuster play on multiple screens to make room for more low key or artistic
fare. Bear in mind, this is from someone
who considers himself to be a fan of both drivel and blockbusters (and if you
ask me nicely, I’ll gladly cry on your shoulder about the demise of the
Hollywood Independents era and bemoan the apparent ignorance of the vast
majority of studio executives currently in power who have likely never seen,
nor care to see, a film produced before the day they were born), and not that
more artistic fare imbues it with an innate superiority, but the lack of choice
becomes a frustration, particularly when one hears about the myriad films being
released for which your only choice of viewing is waiting for it to hit video
and watching it at home. This is the
second part of the problem, to my mind.
There is a difference between experiencing something in a movie theater
and experiencing something at home, and it’s not simply the size of the screen
that counts. Film watching is intended
as a communal affair (yes, modern audiences seem to have lost all sense of
common courtesy when it comes to behavior in public, but we only have so much
space here to get into that whole thing [not entirely true; we actually have
all the space in the world, but I only have so much time, as I’m sure you do as
well]). Some piece of humor which may
leave you cold while watching from your sofa may be uproariously hilarious when
in the company of fellow moviegoers.
Also, watching everything at home takes a certain specialness away from
these films, in my opinion. They become
little more than something else on your television, complete with the level of
control to which we’ve become accustomed to wielding in that regard. You can pause a movie to go to the bathroom,
rewind to inspect some detail or decipher some bit of dialogue, do chores as a
film unspools (and I’ve done all of the above, so I claim no innocence). These two main issues have diminished my joy
in regards to new cinema, and it’s sad.
Not sad enough that I’ll give up my passion for film, but sad,
nonetheless. Having said all of that,
I’m sure there are those reading this who may find it hard to believe that Sam Firstenberg’s Ninja III: The Domination (aka Trancers
[no, not that one]) actually played pretty widely in cinemas. But it did, and more’s the pity that the
theatrical distribution of pictures like it is a thing we have to talk about in
the past tense.
An evil ninja (David Chung) attacks and kills “a
prominent scientist” and his small army of bodyguards before being gunned down
by the local police force. While
moribund, he manages to pass his sword on to hot telephone repairwoman Christie
(the divine Lucinda Dickey) along
with his maleficent spirit which is hellbent on revenge (even though one would
think that getting killed is merely an occupational hazard for a professional
assassin). Later, Sho Kosugi shows up and fights some people while wearing an
eyepatch.
Like all movies with possession
as a subject, the most prominent aspect of Ninja
III is one of identity. Christie
blacks out when the ninja takes over; she completely loses herself. More than this, her physical appearance
changes. Her skin becomes pale and the
eyeliner on her eyes becomes more “Asian” (all the better to match the
guy-liner on both Chung and Kosugi). This physical manifestation of a change in
personality is something we’ve seen from Dr.
Jekyll and Mr. Hyde to The Exorcist
and everywhere in between, and here there is an implication of sexual assault
involved. When the ninja first grabs
Christie, he violently wrestles her to the ground and claws at her, and there
is the sense that he is about to rape her (never mind how illogical this would
be, considering his situation). Later,
when the strobe lights flash, the fog machine kicks in, and the wind fan
threatens to blow everything to Oz (as you get when a spirit possesses your
body), Christie is hit with a laser show that plays across her face and neck,
and again there is a level of violation at work here, because the way she
reacts is sensual, as if she were simultaneously being hypnotized and taking a
lover. The communion between Christie
and the ninja is both sexual and violent by nature, and the two are
inextricably linked as such by the filmmakers.
In this same way, the film deals
with gender roles to some extent (perhaps even more than simple character
identities/personalities), although it does treat this element rather
problematically. Christie works as a
telephone repair technician, a trade more commonly associated with men. She owns a cabinet video game (Bouncer), which at the time would be
more associated with men (or at least I don’t recall a vast array of hot women
at Aladdin’s Castle, one of our local arcades, back in the day). She becomes a ninja assassin (certainly not a
common female role back then). Christie is
hit on by our hirsute romantic lead Billy (Jordan
Bennett), one of the cops who we first saw in the film’s beginning, while
giving her statement to a detective. She
also doesn’t especially care for cops (we don’t know if this is the ninja’s
influence or not) or soft drinks, so she’s rebellious in this sense. Christie also teaches an aerobics class
(since, after all, she’s a riff on Alex Owens from Flashdance thus requiring a tough, working class exterior and a
softer, passionate interior along with a plethora of shots leering over her
toned body), and she wears Billy down when he attends it with the assumption
that it’s easy (after all, if chicks do it…).
Later, Billy dismisses Christie’s “weird” feelings with an air of
condescension that’s maddening (and let’s just get this over with: this guy is
a Grade-A handjob and a chauvinist pig, and he never fails to irritate every
moment his smug character is onscreen). Billy
is a repressive force in Christie’s life, for conformity to traditional gender
roles.
After the ninja takes over
Christie’s body, she becomes even more masculine (read: aggressive) and more
deadly, but she also uses her good looks more to her lethal advantage in this
regard. One of the first things she does
with her ninja skills is beat the crap out of a group of musclebound would-be
rapists from her gym who accost one of her friends (let’s not question the
thought process these guys had, since they’re all gym members attacking another
member, and not only in broad daylight but also right outside the gym’s
door). This is all done while Billy
(remember, he’s a police officer) stands there gawking, after which he hauls
Christie off for another pushy attempt at getting together with her (which
works this time, mind-bogglingly enough; cue the legendary V8 [the juice, not
the engine] scene). But it’s Christie
(or at the absolute minimum, Christie’s physical body) who is in control of
most situations in the film, even when possessed, and this lasts right up until
she decides to try and exorcise this spirit.
At that point, the two halves become more divided, and Christie grows
from this ordeal, this encounter with the ninja’s masculinity, to a small
degree (it can be argued that she should be viewed as a double for the evil
ninja from the start [note that her work uniform and the ninja’s uniform are
very similar in appearance], and all her possession did was give her an excuse
to act out her discontent in the war of the sexes)to the point that she takes a
more active part in the finale (though by that point she’s also become
something of a background character).
And here’s where the complications arise. Christie’s adversity if both freeing and
repressive. She gets to act out her
aggressions against male society (embodied by the police) while being
subjugated by a more powerful male persona personality. It takes an even stronger male than that to
set her free, and then the world she returns to is very traditionalist (possibly
even Neanderthal) in its definition of gender roles. Consequently, Christie does little more than
go from the frying pan to the fire, from my perspective.
I grant you that this film, for
all the love it gets (and it gets a lot from me, as well), is essentially
hollow. The romantic relationship
completely doesn’t click. Kosugi seems like a character from
another film who just shows up in time to fight the bad ninja and nothing else
(they try to give him some pathos with a brief flashback, but it adds zero). The plot is episodic and undeveloped; the
film feels incomplete in some ways, as if they meant to add more and/or connect
more of the dots but then didn’t, and there are filler scenes galore as a
result. Yet visually, there is a ton of
Eighties flavor and texture, and it’s the collision of pop rock, pop art, aerobics,
Ninjitsu, and the supernatural that makes Ninja
III stand apart from the pack.
MVT: See above. The blending of some of the most disparate
elements in the history of cinema makes this little gem shine all the brighter.
Make or Break: The climactic
fight (and it should be said that the action scenes in this film are both
extensive and impressive) stands out for being well-shot and kooky in equal
measure. Plus, ninja (I’m pretty certain
the plural of which is “ninja,” like the plural of “moose” is “moose”)!
Score: 7.25/10
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