Empire of Spiritual Ninja

From the archive

Also known as American Force Ninja, the boss of this movie is Gordon, a ninja master who has renounced the ways of the ninja and is more concerned with selling heroin. You know he’s the bad guy because he has a swastika on his ninja mask. His enemy is the so-called Lady Detective — what, is this like Suzy Bannion being called the American Girl? — who is being protected by the CIA Action Men and a ninja — a tame ninja at that — named Captain Scott. Much of this movie takes place in a disco, which I’m good with, except that it has nothing to do with anything else in the film. Also: this reinforces one of the rules of the Godfrey Ho/Filmark Cinematic Universe: only a ninja can kill a ninja. This goes even further to prove that a ninja can shrug off bullets and grenades, unless thrown by a ninja. The box art, however, is a million times better than this movie. I want to make whatever movie that it’s for so that I can watch that a million times. Sadly, this doesn’t have much of the typical awesome bootleg songs on the soundtrack. But if one Godfrey Ho movie lets you down, he has like ten more. Or twenty. Maybe even more. Cast: Tom Berlin, Danny Raisebeck, Sun Chien, Sorapong Chatree, Laura Bells. Action Director: Tony Kong Associate Producer: Dalie Yeung Producer: Tomas Tang Director: Bruce Lambert Format: Color, 35mm, Languages: English, Spanish, German Feature Length: 90 minutes Drugs, terrorism and political assassination — the evil Empire of the Spiritual Ninja has struck again, and only the great Ninja Master has the ability to wipe them out. But, he has a formidable opponent on his hands, because it is one of his old pupils who now rules the dark side of the Ninja power. A thunderous attack on the Empire's headquarters is the fighting ground for one of the fiercest battles ever waged to restore the true spirit of Ninja honor.Criminal activities of the spiritual ninja are headed by a ruthless ninja warlord and follows the CIA’s subsequent attempts to bring them to justice. Enter Captain Scott, one of the CIA’s ‘Action Men’ who also happens to be a Tamo ninja Empire of the Spiritual Ninja by Godfrey Ho (1988)Sometimes you need to watch a movie simply because of its title alone, even if you know it’s going to be terrible. Case in point: Godfrey Ho’s Empire of the Spiritual Ninja (which is attributed to Ho’s Bruce Lambert pseudonym). Now, we can all agree that that’s a great title. But that’s really all the film has going for it. (Well, that and Sherman Chow’s proto-vaporwave soundtrack.) Employing Ho’s famous cut-and-paste filmmaking approach, Empire of the Spiritual Ninja is a truncated, barely coherent mess about police efforts to bring down the “Spiritual Ninjas,” a violent gang of ninja drug dealers led by the cruel — checks notes — Gordon. Fortunately, the CIA are also involved, and they’ve got a secret weapon: Captain Scott, who just so happens to be a ninja himself. Unfortunately, the silly ninja action is sadly lacking, making this less bearable than some of Ho’s other films. Also, the awesome cover artwork bears no resemblance, at all, to the film’s actual events. On a side note, the version currently streaming on Tubi was clearly ripped from a German VHS tape; it has burned in German subtitles and poor VHS tracking lines that gave me a near-physical reaction when they suddenly appeared. (If you ever had to adjust the tracking on an old, worn out VHS tape, then you’ll know exactly what I mean.)