Ninja Terminator

• Directed, Written, and Edited by Godfrey Ho
• July 15, 1986 (Indonesia)

Three martial-arts students search for a statue claimed to have magic powers.

Godfrey Ho is perhaps one of the most prolific bad movie directors of all time. As the story goes he made so many movies under several pseudonyms even HE doesn’t know the count. Ninja Terminator is on this list. It reuses much of its footage from a South Korean film called The Uninvited Guest of The Star Ferry (Korean: 스타페리 불청객; 1984) but adds in new scenes creating a completely new plot involving ninjas and a magical statue. Not an uncommon element for his movies they say.

Following what’s going on in Ninja Terminator can be a little difficult. And that’s being kind. Given the new plot and the additional footage plus bad dialogue and awful dubbing, it’s a bit of a confusing mess. And certain elements will take your attention away from the actual story such as Ninja Master Harry MacQueen (Richard Harrison) making all these plans and stuff over a Garfield phone. That phone as a collectable is probably now worth more than the original production budget of this movie!

The plot involves the theft of a magical statue (maybe it’s magical) that upsets the leaders of the Ninja Empire (whatever that is) and the quest to get the pieces of the statue back because it was stolen. It races headfirst into whatever is going on like a toddler on six espressos excited to get their new toy on Christmas. I have no idea who the good guys or the bad guys are. I couldn’t even tell you about any of the characters. This is just incredibly inept. 

Yet I couldn’t help but watch. And I don’t feel guilty for having watched despite not having a firm grasp on why the one guy was wearing a platinum blonde wig for example. I assumed it was meant to be his hairstyle until he whipped it off at the end. Dialogue is bad most likely because the old plot has no similarity to the new plot and the new footage is really forced in.

The dubbing is awful to be polite and there are sound effects that give Ninja Terminator a cartoonish quality and that is definitely part of its charm. It’s not an outright comedy by accident but it is certainly comedic in unintended tone. Some actors are playing this way too casually while others are insanely intense about what they’re doing. The fight choreography feels like something you’d find in an old Power Rangers episode. I was half expecting the cast at some point to fight a monster in a rubber suit!

Clearly the title was an effort to cash in on the popularity of The Terminator, which had come out only two years prior to this Frankenstein feature. The closest we get to anything mechanical is a cheap wind-up toy that I guess was meant to be a sinister robot delivering messages and occasionally videotapes. No joke.

I don’t know whether to call this bonkers or weird or cheap or what. It possesses a quality that hooks you. At least it did for me. Just something about it that I can’t quite put my finger on. I guess you can chalk it up to the magic of Godfrey Ho. This is so awful and clumsy that you enjoy yourself. It is what a kid with a video camera might make. It apes what is cool but cannot be cool and finds its value in that. Some movies are fine meals. Some movies are junk food like a Snickers bar.

Ninja Terminator is worse. It is a pixie stick which is far worse than a Snickers bar. Yet it’s one of the best pixie sticks you’ll ever have. It’s proof that anyone can make a movie. It’s also the guiltiest of guilty pleasures to watch. I recommend this to fans of bad films.