Ninja Dragon

• Cantonese: 上海風雲 Jyutping: soeng hoi fung wan
• Edited from the 1982 film Hei juan tao
• Directed by Godfrey Ho
• February 1987 (West Germany)

Ninja Master Gordon seeks retribution for the death of his partner Fat Ronald. Was this written by a child?

Ninja Dragon is a Godfrey Ho special-taking a film and adding in new scenes to make a completely unrelated movie. This is a technique that had previously been used in overseas animation brought to the West and was later used in Power Ranger. Clearly it is something that can create a broadly popular product or like here something that is so-bad-it’s-good.

Godfrey Ho’s talents were certainly best used for creating golden trash from something that was watchable enough to garner interest for international distribution. Calling his work a Frankenstein might be inaccurate. Calling it a cyborg is much more accurate. It is always new parts added to an older body.

This opens with a bunch of people sitting and talking in Hong Kong (or is that Shanghai because the movie sounds confused) about the hot chicks that are there. I think they are mostly English speakers dubbed by the same three guys that dubbed everybody in this movie. Ninja Master Gordon (Richard Harrison) is partnered with Fat Ronald who forced the sale of some drug facilities to him because selling narcotics is the sign of somebody worth seeking vengeance over.

Fat Ronald dies in a barber shop when his barber slits his throat. The barber is heavier than Fat Ronald. Why the nickname? Who thought that naming a villain Fat Ronald was a good idea? The one and only Godfrey Ho who was behind this gripping screenplay. 

This movie is hard to follow. I think Ninja Master Gordon runs a legitimate bank that caters to the underworld because he hands out money to the criminals at the table. That is contradictory but the dialogue lends credence to that. When his bank partner Fat Ronald is murdered he seeks vengeance but only as far as the new footage can be tied into the old footage.

Even though it’s hard to follow and understand it’s weirdly watchable. The poor quality makes it hypnotic. It would be like trying to pay attention to anything other than the Hindenburg disaster. The new scenes are just randomly added to the story to make the narrative (whatever that is) make sense. Dialogue is clunky and I’m being kind there. It often makes no sense. The pacing is all over the place possibly because minutes of the first movie were cut out.

It’s weird how the very white Ninja Master Gordon’s story is supposed to be connected to the main movie, but it is almost completely independent of that narrative. Very little of anything he does is connected to the main plot line of the assassination of Fat Ronald which supposedly motivates him and the whole war between Fox and Tiger crime families. It probably would’ve been better if Ho had just done a dub of the original film but he felt everything was better with ninjas. Yet that is the unintentional magic that polishes this turd.

The big showdown at the end is no big showdown. It’s backflips and ridiculous sound effects and quite possibly footage from other films that Godfrey Ho made. Somehow the dude from the opener with a badly dubbed Australian accent is the villain.

Ninja Dragon is just bad, but strangely watchable. It’s like a fevered child’s dream. It’s certainly not for everybody but for bad movie fans it’s a must see.