Ninja III: The Domination

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

Breakin' (1984)

Back when it was in its heyday, I couldn’t breakdance worth a shit.  Oh sure, I bought the instructional book from my school’s book club (and thus cementing my street cred for all eternity), and I studied the detailed breakdowns of each move.  But there wasn’t a chance in Hell I was going to pull off even the simplest of steps.  I’ve never been adept at things that require a decent amount of physical skill and agility.  I played Pee Wee Football for one year (on the team seemingly constructed entirely of the worst players who tried out).  I think we won one game.  I could be wrong.  It could have been none.  When I used to skateboard, if there was a trick that required the board’s wheels to leave the ground, I couldn’t do it.  Oh, I tried, but it wasn’t happening.  So, my skateboard became basically a very hard, very coarse seat with wheels.  I admire the skill of people who can do these things, some of whom probably even try hard at them.  Of course, there’s also that bastard part of me that just wants to punch them in their stupid faces, but he doesn’t come out too often, and even when he does, he gets over it quickly, because I can assure you, there are things I can do a hundred times better than they.  No, I won’t list them, but to twist around Dizzy Dean’s quote (and give a little credit to local journalist/personality L.A. Tarone), “If you can do it, it ain’t bragging.”

Kelly (Lucinda Dickey) dances her days away at the studio of skanky instructor Franco (Ben Lokey).  Dancing buddy Adam (Phineas Newborn III) entices the eager young lady to come with him to see some “street dancing.”  There, she sees firsthand the fresh moves of Ozone (Adolfo Quinones) and the distressingly high-pitched Turbo (Michael Chambers), and she even gets to partake a little bit, capturing Ozone’s attention.  But the more Kelly hangs with her Breakin’ buddies, the more she struggles over where she belongs.

And that pretty much sums up Joel Silberg’s film to a T.  Thematically, its primary interest is in the division between “serious” dancing and “street” dancing.  What’s intriguing is how this is represented in the film.  Kelly is interested in breakdancing, but is uncomfortable doing it at first.  She has to be brought into that world by Ozone and Turbo.  Her friend Adam can go between both worlds, but he understands that there is an implicit line between them (a bit more on this later).  Franco thinks that breaking is lowly and undeserving of consideration as anything other than a sideshow.  By that same token, Turbo disdains Kelly’s intrusion into his (and Ozone’s) dance world.  Ozone, on the other hand, wants Kelly in his world, but he’s also interested in her romantically.  

This brings me to the underlying notion about this division, and it’s one not only of class but of race.  The breakers are largely underprivileged and non-Caucasian.  Of course, their rough edges rub the upper crust a little raw.  But there’s a character in the middle who helps to span the gap for those audience members not on board from the start (inconceivable, I know).  Kelly’s agent James (Christopher McDonald) is incredulous when Kelly brings up the idea of getting behind an act with Turbo and Ozone.  He’s even shown at one point lounging in a suit by his pool, feeding his dog by hand, just to hammer home that he is genteel and savoir faire.  Yet after he sees them battle-dance their rivals (and as I’ve noted before, it is this sort of thing which is mirrored in many Martial Arts films where conflicts are resolved in equally choreographed but much more contact-friendly displays of prowess), he is ready to back them, not only because they’re talented and his client is involved with them, but because he can make some money off them.  However, James’ capitalistic tendencies never undermine his genuine admiration for and interest in the street dancers.  

On the race side of things, you have Ozone, a Latino who is clearly and amorously interested in the lily-white Kelly.  Maybe with the more urban audiences this would be accepted without a second thought, but for middle class, suburban families in the Eighties, this would not have sat entirely easy.  In this, we have a further illustration of the film’s internal conflict.  Naturally, then, we have the various scenes where Ozone and Turbo go out of their way to tweak the noses of the White Establishment.  Turbo dances at Franco’s studio and then tells the tightass that he is owed money “for teaching you how to dance, sucker.”  Ozone and Turbo show up at a High Society function for James, where they are condescended to by pudgy White people and come back with a few snappy retorts.  Oddly, Adam actually does exist in both dance worlds, but he’s Black, and we get the idea that he started in the serious dance world before getting into the street side, though I don’t recall this being stated outright.  If true, however (and let’s say for the sake of argument that it is), it makes his dual existence easy to accept.  Had he come from the other side, it would have been more difficult to swallow, and there would likely have been some form of suppression/subterfuge in the story that allowed him access to the White-controlled serious dance world.  

But Silberg and company seek to level the playing field, and there are several dance numbers that are lit and treated as respectfully and shot as thoughtfully as anything in Singin’ In The Rain (though without that earlier film’s production design or budget).  Thus, we get sequences like Turbo and his broom, which is filmed as if it were mercury sliding across a tilting platform.  Needless to say, the path to legitimacy for the breakdancers requires some clever (okay, not that clever) deception, but it is done with their tongues firmly in cheek.  But gradually throughout the film, elements of Kelly’s style seep into her numbers with Ozone and Turbo as surely as elements of theirs seep into hers, until the final dance sequence fully integrates both approaches while being given the sort of treatment normally reserved for the “legit” dance world.  Even through the haze of neon, smoke machine fog, and hideous fashions, it’s still a thing of beauty.

MVT:  The MVT on this one is Joel Silberg (sorry, Lucinda, you got it for Cheerleader Camp).  He treats his subjects with respect and films them with some degree of visual flair.  Nevertheless, he understands enough about blocking what he is filming to allow the performers the onscreen space they need to show off the goods.

Make Or Break:  I loved the Training Montage, partly because I’m a sucker for Training Montages, partly because I relish any chance I get to watch Dickey strut her stuff.  

Score:  7/10

Cheerleader Camp (1987)

I can completely understand the appeal of being a male cheerleader.  I know what you’re thinking; this is just a sex thing from some horny guy.  Well, you’re absolutely right.  I honestly couldn’t care less about school spirit or the talent it takes to create and perform a solid routine.  I’m not saying cheerleaders are talentless.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  In my mind, they’re like the Peking Opera performers of American scholastic extracurricular activities.  But I’m selfish and something of a pig, so the thought of holding up a cute girl by her bum appeals to me.  

That said, I was almost a team’s mascot once.  In grade school, our symbol was an eagle, and the school debated having a mascot for their basketball games (it was the only sport they sponsored).  Being a fan of special makeup effects, the idea of creating a costume and performing in it appealed to me.  I had visions of a nice, baggy zip-up suit with a large mask/helmet that I could dance around the gym in, rallying the crowd.  And then, like everything else, reality came crashing in, demolishing my spirit for the venture.  You see, the powers that be wanted to have the mascot wear what was essentially a uniform with tights on its legs.  Yeah.  No thanks.  For those who can pull that look off, more power to you, but I’m not one of them, and I wasn’t about to have what was already shaping up to be a nightmarish puberty transformed into one of cataclysmic, nigh-apocalyptic proportions.  Yes, I’m exaggerating here, but have you ever met a pubescent who didn’t see every single moment of their lives as either grandiose triumph or agonized tragedy?  If I were smart, I would have changed this attitude once I hit college.  But no one has ever accused me of being all that smart.

Alison (Betsy Russell) wanders the dark locker room of her innominate school.  Changing into her cheerleading outfit, she makes her way to the football field, where she is alone.  Or is she?  Some discarnate voice talks to her, and soon she is doing her damndest to perform.  Then her parents show up, but they seem disappointed in the girl despite her best efforts.  Waking up, Alison realizes she is en route to “the big competition” at Camp Hurrah.  She and her ragtag cheerleading troupe from some unknown college pull in, and some stuff happens.  Then some people die.

To my mind, the most appealing theme of this film concerns inadequacy.  Alison has nightmares about her failings, both as a cheerleader and as a sexual being.  She lives in a constant state of self-doubt.  It’s so bad, she takes pills in order to cope (what type, I cannot recall).  Alison can’t even hold onto her boyfriend Brent (Leif Garrett) much longer than the time it takes to put their van in park.  In Cory (Lucinda Dickey), the team’s mascot (a crocodile, not a glorious eagle, I might add), Alison finds a confidante.  She also finds a supporter.  Cory is Miyagi-esque in her dedication to improving Alison (“There’s more than one way to be a winner”), though Cory also deals with issues of insufficiency, lamenting that she’s only the mascot and not a full cheerleader.  Though she is a member of the squad, Cory is faceless and sexless in her anthropomorphized costume.  This is emphasized in a scene where the various mascots are instructed to eat their lunch with their full costumes on.  Farcical stick-up-the-ass Miss Tipton (Vickie Benson) proclaims, “You’re a mascot, not a human.”  It mirrors the military practice of tearing an individual down in order to build a warrior, but here it’s strictly in the pursuit of humiliating an inferior caste of the cheerleading social structure.    

Cory tries to keep Alison off the pills, she offers a shoulder to cry on and an ear to hear her friend’s problems, though whether she’s helpful (or even can be) is (very) debatable.  This issue of shortcomings carries over into the realm of body image (though let’s face it; neither Russell, Dickey, nor any other woman in this film has anything to be bashful about in this regard).  While the girls sunbathe by a river, they are spied on by creepy, pervy men.  Reinforcing her dominance after stealing Brent from Alison without lifting a finger, Suzy (Krista Pflanzer) pulls off her top, attracting all the male eyes to her body, controlling them, and effectively marking her territory.  Likewise, Pam (fledgling porn queen Teri Weigel), who is a teammate of Alison’s, also doffs her top, and following after Suzy, seduces Brent, showing her superiority within the unit of her team.  However, once they’re alone, Pam rebuffs Brent’s amorous groping.  Having displayed that she is the better of Alison and the rest of the squad is enough for her.  It’s another manifestation of the competition motif that’s threaded throughout the movie.  Everyone is a competitor, like it or lump it.  And the characters either become stronger from the competition or are destroyed by it.

Don’t be misled, however.  John Quinn’s Cheerleader Camp (aka Bloody Pom Poms aka Bloody Nightmare aka Bloody Scream) is not a horror film.  Despite the V-C-Andrews-inspired poster art and the use of Albertus MT font (if that nomenclature doesn’t ring any bells, think of the opening credits to just about every John Carpenter film ever) for the main titles, this film would like to lull you into thinking it’s a Horror film.  However, any (and I mean any) trace of this genre is erased about seven minutes in when the non-comic relief fat guy (Travis McKenna) gets his bare porcine ass caught in the van’s window while mooning the camp attendees.  Mere moments later, he farts in the face of Miss Tipton, a stuck-up prig in the mode of Animal House’s Babs Jansen, who (naturally) has an inner deviant inside her a la Honeywell from Bob Clark’s Porky’s.  The Horror elements of the film could be seen as a sort of satirical comment on the Teen Sex Comedy subgenre as a whole, but they’re mostly unspectacular, and they can in no way be considered a focal point of the film (they even elide a classic-style Horror reveal towards the end for absolutely no reason whatsoever), something on which Horror films rely.  

But it’s not that the film wants to be both a Horror and a Comedy which bothered me.  It’s that it doesn’t seem to care one way or another, and this is reflected in the script’s complete lack of structure.  It has elements of both genres, but it doesn’t develop any of them, and any scene not concerned with being a period at the end of an incomplete sentence just flounders along until the filmmakers cut to another scene.  This extends to the actors’ performances, half of which seem to be taking everything deadly serious, while the other half are solely concerned with mugging for the camera in the most obnoxious way conceivable (you can take that to mean they’re in on the joke, but it’s not much of a joke).  Thus, you have two options when viewing this film.  You can either try to figure out what was going on in the filmmakers’ minds while creating this thing, which will only frustrate you as much as the end product, or you can completely void yourself of any and all expectations and just let it happen.  Being drunk out of your skull would probably be beneficial, as well, but who am I to dictate what you should do with your movie watching experience?

MVT:  Aside from being a formative figure in my trot to manhood (who, just for the record, still looks amazingly beautiful to this day), Lucinda Dickey also gives the most sincere, gradated performance in the entire film.  And, though I’m not fully certain it’s her in the croc suit (but suspect it is), she does a nice little dance performance in the film’s back half, complete with a little breakdancing move to finish it up.  What a dame!

Make Or Break:  SPOILERS.  While everyone who hasn’t bugged out of camp is being pursued by the murderer, Timmy (the tubby guy) bafflingly stops, turns on the video camera he has been living his life vicariously through for the whole movie (and making quasi-porn with, incidentally), and talks to it as if he was giving a toast at a friend’s wedding.  Then he makes a big to-do about having to micturate, and turns away, feigning horror.  It’s neither funny, nor scary, nor suspenseful, adds zero to the piece, stops its flow (no pun intended) dead in its tracks, and makes not a whit of sense on any level.  It doesn’t belong at this point in the film.  This is not to say that it would have worked elsewhere, but it made me throw up my hands and finally admit that there was little that could be done to save this film for me.  Dickey comes close in the final moments, but even she couldn’t overcome the hurdle set by this scene.

Score:  5/10