I was thinking that had I conjured up this tall tale of myself and a vigilante ninja trying to rid the Museum of Schlock of a vile gang and their wicked leader, the Goose Lord, I certainly would have lost the plot by introducing an undead zombie into the mix. But the story is true and I was frantically searching for my fallen compatriot in the dark. I stumbled over the bodies of the goons trying to see if the Revenging Manta had suffered the same fate. The ninja vigilante of downtown Orlando was slumped in the corner. I shook him and slapped his face, trying to stir him to consciousness. He groaned and I breathed a sigh of relief not realizing that I was being watched by someone or something right behind me.

— To be continued.

Tonight’s movie is 1983’s Revenge of the Ninja from director Sam Firstenberg. This is the second of the Cannon Group’s trilogy of ninja movies that began with 1981’s Enter the Ninja. I covered that movie a few years back and was shocked to hear Franco Nero sounding like a real American human being only to find out later that his voice had been dubbed over! For shame, Golan & Globus. For shame!

Our movie begins at a home in the picturesque Japanese countryside where a family is enjoying some lovely weather only to be slaughtered by a pack of ninjas clad in black. Yeah, it’s pretty brutal. They even go after the women and the children. When a man named Cho Osaki (Sho Kosugi) returns home to find his family slaughtered, there’s going to be some ninja fighting going on because Cho is himself a ninja. The only surviving members of his family are his baby son, Kane, and his elderly mother. Cho decides to move to the United States to start up a Japanese art gallery with his good friend, Braden.

Cho has a good life in the United States. He’s creating fancy Japanese statues that will go for big money once the gallery opens. Unfortunately, unbeknownst to Cho is the fact that these statues are stuffed with heroin. Turns out Braden is a drug lord working in conjunction with the Yakuza.

The idea is he’ll sell the heroin to the mafia for a tidy sum, but the mafia doesn’t want to cough up the cash right away so this means war! The yakuza dispatch a ninja with a silver mask to take out the gangsters one by one. The mafia doesn’t like the double cross so they send some of their own goons to the art gallery to steal the statues.

This leads to a full on brawl with Cho and some mafia goons. This is where the movie shines in its brutal fight scenes. When Cho is latching on to the back of a truck and getting dragged on the gravel, you see his cuts and torn clothes. Later, we get a spectacular ninja fight on top of skyscrapers in Salt Lake City. What more do you need from a movie? Just look at the poster if you’re still not sold. He’s got flames shooting out of his arm!

Jeff Shuster (episode 47, episode 102, episode 124, episode 131, episode 284, episode 441, episode 442, episode 443, episode 444, episode 450, episode 477, episode 491, episode 492, episode 493, episode 495, episode 496, episode 545, episode 546, episode 547, episode 548, episode 549, episode 575, episode 596, episode 597, episode 598, and episode 599) is an MFA graduate from the University of Central Florida.