Exploring the ’80s Ninja Craze

As you’ve probably seen by now, I have a certain fondness for ’80s ninja-themed movies like Enter the Ninja, Rage of Honor, and The Octagon. But that fondness may be hard to fathom for anyone who didn’t grow up in the early-to-mid ’80s, when ninjas became an inexplicable pop culture phenomenon.

The enigmatic shadow warriors were seemingly everywhere: those aforementioned movies; TV shows like Knight Rider, Magnum, P.I., and The Master; and comics and cartoons like G.I. Joe and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. There were also flashy ninja magazines, instructional manuals, novels, and video games galore. Looking back, it was a pretty wild time.

But as Rob Hill reveals in his in-depth exploration of ’80s ninja cinema, the above just scratches the surface; it’s a lot stranger thanks to studios like Cannon Films and Filmark International Ltd., and filmmakers like Godrey Ho. The ’80s featured an increasingly bizarre assortment of ninja movies, many of them hacked together from other, unrelated movies and given elaborate (and awesome) titles like Ninja Terminator, Ninja Knight Thunder Fox, Ninja Operation: Licensed to Terminate, and Shadow Killers Tiger Force. Their production histories are often convoluted at best, but Hill dives right in and makes sense of the tangle of movies, filmmakers, studios, and actors.

Indeed, Hill has truly done yeoman’s work in assembling this video. I’ve seen more than my fair share of awful ninja movies, but I shudder to think at how many Hill watched in order to produce Shinobi-Geddon. I’m a little bummed that he didn’t include Chinese Super Ninjas or Duel to the Death, both of which feature some truly inspired ninja action. Regardless, his video’s a real treasure trove for anyone fascinated by ’80s cult cinema.