"Ninja III: The Domination" - A Cannon Film/The Good Kind of Bank Fraud
I suppose I should have been paying more attention to the movies "How Did This Get Made" had been riffing about since the pandemic occurred. Surely besides the recently release "Bloodshot", their producers must have been making an extra effort to find free movies from streaming services instead of just lousy ones.
Five minutes later...
There was no rhyme or reason as far as I could tell. It appears they are not in league with Shout! Factory which is kind of sad. Are the downloads lower when they cover a Roger Corman classic or a product of the Cannon Group? I am just saying that those films are comedy home runs while "Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets", "Underworld: Blood Wars", and "Space Jam" tend to be horrid ideas that only The Asylum would try to knock off.
Films with at least 10's of millions of dollars as a minimum budget have to consider the concept of shame. If they fail, they will be remembered in infamy. This is why "Electric Boogaloo: The Wild, Untold Story of Cannon Films" was necessary. These films can be fondly remembered for solely being escapism and not art. It is basically mental porn, a break from your day or much needed relief.
Historians do not like to bring up porn when there is art to discuss, so there is a greater chance that we will lose films like "Ninja III: The Domination" from our collective consciousness. If this film (or most Cannon flicks not featuring Chuck Norris) had a plot that made as much sense as "Deep Throat", perhaps the conversation would be different.
Six bodyguards were not enough to protect a yuppie scientist as an evil ninja makes short work of them on a fairway. This is not your traditional Japanese assassin because stealth is quickly abandoned, which leads to the police easily finding him on the golf course and quickly dispatch the entire force to stop this threat, green fees be damned. Perchance, the ninja may just be respecting the sanctity of the course. Regardless, he seems to not only mean to take no prisoners, but goes out of his way to maximize his kill count.
Eventually, the police shoot him enough times that he retreats to die in seclusion. Thanks to being discovered by phone lineswomen, Chrissy, he gets a break. When she goes to assist, he gives her his sword, and along with it, his spirit. Also being an aerobics instructor, she is the perfect weapon for the ultimate killer. His ability to take over her body assures that he will kill the remainder of the police force that is responsible for his death because only a ninja can destroy another ninja's spirit.
"Ninja III: The Domination" provides the audience with everything that was accepted as cool in the early 80's. The generally considered nonsensical story (Maybe I am overly observant. I was the excuse a bunch of my high school classmates used to rewatch "Donnie Darko". Russ will make sense of it.) allows for anything to happen like possessed arcade machines and V8 as an aphrodisiac. Every kind of ploy to keep the viewer's interest seems to lead them being forgiving of a ninja film with no exterior night scenes.
I hate to say it, but there is nothing great about the production of the film. The editing is poor, the visual effects outside of creepy laser and doll on string effects are bad or nonexistent, we see that our female lead's nipples have been taped down, and it seemed designed for HBO airings. F.W. Murnau (per John Malkovich) said, "If it isn't in frame, it doesn't exist!" Making sure to get all those TV replays, director Sam Firstenberg crams all the action into the 3x4 perspective. That results in shooting a ninja while forming a circle to attack more ridiculous.
The acting is all passable and you cannot help but enjoy "Big Trouble in Little China's" James Hong (Lo Pan) as an exorcist. What makes the feature work is that is so over-the-top with its premise(s) and set pieces, you want to see how it resolves. It is like the creative forces knew that this film could only be so bad that it's good, and they were just careful enough for it to stay at that level. No risks were taken to try and deliver art, so it does not insult the audience's intelligence.
When I left "Ninja III: The Domination", my only thought was that we need a cheesy version of this film every decade. Its charm is that captures everything we look back shamefully on in terms of trends to ground a ridiculous story. This is what we should have started seeing when the parody film genre had played itself out.
"Ninja III" is fun for fun sake. It will not turn you away with being too violent, too sexualized, or too mean spirited. You are suppose to just sit back and forget about your troubles. I was thinking about how I wished it could have mixed some "Home Alone 2: Lost in New York" elements when they had a battle in a dilapidated home. Who would not rather do that than thing about moving to a place where the police may have dug out a bullet from the bedroom floor? This is one of the best Cannon Films because it is an absolute escape.
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