There are several renowned unfinished films, ranging from von Sternberg’s “I, Claudius” to Jerry Lewis’ “The Day the Clown Cried” to different Orson Welles projects that are still being put together by former colleagues decades after his death. However, most such projects, which are frequently abandoned due to financial and/or legal issues, languish in obscurity, which is exacerbated by the fact that no one calls for the resuscitation of something they don’t know exists.
But someone did notice the suffering of “New York Ninja,” a 1984 independent martial-arts extravaganza that would have been multi-hyphenate star John Liu’s first (and only) American film. An already marginal, guerrilla-shot project whose plug was pulled when the planned distributor went bankrupt, it has now been meticulously if not overly seriously reconstructed by Vinegar Syndrome’s Kurtis M. Spieler, who “re-directed” the existing footage without any surviving original script or sound components.
With its newly dubbed dialogue performed by a slew of fan-favorite exploitation vets such as Cynthia Rothrock, Leon Isaac Kennedy, and Ginger Lynn Allen, this Frankensteinian feature emerges as a bonanza of grindhouse badness that will be released in a series of mostly single-date theatrical showings beginning Jan. 17. Like another solid-gold camp nugget unearthed a few years ago, “Samurai Cop,” it could quickly garner a tardy but well-deserved cult following.
The Blu-ray release includes a 50-minute documentary (“Re-Enter the New York Ninja”) that recounts the film’s shady beginnings and final redemption. However, because all of the original production records were destroyed, the majority of the cast and crew remain unidentifiable. When Liu was finally apprehended in Vietnam, he refused to help with Vinegar Syndrome’s preliminary study or the assembling of the first-ever release cut. As a result, there was a lot of “creative freedom,” especially as Spieler had to develop a narrative to glue together footage whose original tale was nearly meaningless in unedited form. He also had to compose dialogue to fit the quietly moving mouths on-screen… sort of.
Liu’s protagonist, also known as John (now played by Don “The Dragon” Wilson), is a wiry Manhattanite who is pushed into despair after his pregnant wife is murdered by gangsters in the midst of a citywide kidnapping epidemic. When he isn’t bare-fistedly destroying plates and particle boards in his anguish, he protects children and other innocents from lawless punks ravaging the streets, a la “Class of 1984” and Cannon’s “Death Wish” sequels. There’s also a mysterious man in a Rolls-Royce known as the Plutonium Killer (voiced by horror favorite Michael Berryman) who is responsible for mutant murderous radioactivity.
John is consoled by his buddy, TV reporter Randi (Adrienne Meltzer, voiced by Linnea Quigley), who is also working on the crime wave investigation, along with her comedy-relief cameraman, two jaded police officers, an Interpol agent, and others. When our hero’s covert delivery of vigilante justice — and his flying feet, often on roller skates — catches the attention of the media, a Superman-like fan base emerges among people for what they dub the “New York Ninja.”
“Ninja” features cheesily entertaining components that it blends in a very vibrant form, thanks to shoestring production values, Liu’s briskly funny fight choreography, smart use of stolen locales, and 35mm pictures in first-rate preservation condition. The editing is crisp, and the original score by Detroit-based latter-day retro band Voyag3r expertly re-creates ’80s synth-rock soundtrack elements.
The end result of all this splicing is a gloriously campy but endearing whole — exactly the reverse of last year’s “Grizzly II: Revenge,” another salvage project whose equally old derelict components proved too scant to make even a watchable curio from. The gaming goofiness of the action, which includes too-clumsy-to-be-offensive sexploitation as well as a dose of wicked sci-fi horror, plus contrasting stabs at “G-rated” appeal, ensures a psychotronic good time for all. (There will eventually be a cheering army of “child ninjas.”) The on-screen actors’ raw hamming is wonderfully balanced by the voice actors’ relatively deadpan contributions, which further add to the absurdity of the speech and events.
With all due respect to the reconstructionists, one guesses that if “New York Ninja” had been completed in 1984, it would have been recognized as one of the era’s more outré low-budget guilty pleasures by completist genre aficionados ever since. This delayed release, on the other hand, provides it the advantage of releasing as something of an Event among trash nostalgists, an uncovered celluloid time capsule from Times Square’s worst days.