The Blazing Ninja (1973)

Spy movies are fun to watch because the espionage can lead to unexpected twists and turns as the competing spies battle it out with their wits.  They must outsmart each other in order to come out on top.  It could be a battle for world domination, or a simple case of infiltrating an organization.  The characters have been trained to do things that the average person will never do.  They break into places that audiences could only wish to explore.  They get involved in behind-the-scenes action stories that get covered up so that the general public will never know about them.  The genre is fun for almost all who watch it.

The Blazing Ninja took the idea of a spy movie in a different direction.  It was a kicking and punching action extravaganza that was much more martial arts than spy, even though it was trying to tell a spy story.  The movie took place in the 1930s or 1940s when the tensions between China and Japan were hitting their peak.  A resistance was coming up that would try and stop Japan.  To counter this resistance, Japan sent one of their best spies to stop it.  That’s about all that the story is, between the kicking, punching, and crazy dubbing.

Since the story made very little sense, it is hard to coherently think about it.  There was enough craziness and insanity to be entertaining.  That wasn’t a problem.  Trying to sort all of that out into a concise train of thought is difficult because The Blazing Ninja wasn’t focused on storytelling.  Coming out of the movie, trying to explain to people what happened in it is a task and a half.  There’s not a clear starting place since even the opening scene felt like it came from a different movie.

Let’s begin with the opening.   The Blazing Ninja kick started with a man fighting off a bunch of construction workers who looked almost nothing like their 1930s or 1940s counterparts.  He beat a bunch of them up before looking at the camera for a freeze frame as the title popped up.  The fight seemed to have almost nothing to do with the rest of the movie, and the title seemed completely out of place since nobody in the scene seemed anything like a ninja.  Hell, the movie was about spies, not ninjas.  Nobody was a blazing ninja in the movie.

The most important part of that opening, however, was the look of the construction workers.  As was said earlier, The Blazing Ninja was set in the 1930s or 1940s.  It was about a feud between Japan and China that had reached its peak.  Yet nothing looked or felt like it was from that era.  It was as if the style of the 1970s had been transplanted into those decades.  The people were wearing suits from the 1970s.  The action felt very 1970s.  They drove cars from the 1970s.  Even the music, which had sometimes been directly ripped out of 1970s movies, didn’t fit the setting of the first half of the century.  The Blazing Ninja was a 1970s movie through and through, playing on the kung-fu and exploitation popularity of the time.

The scene immediately after was a bunch of guys sitting around a table joking about how someone had just died.  They may have been referencing the guy who was fighting the construction workers, not knowing that he won the fight, but it could have been anyone.  The movie didn't care about continuity in any way, whatsoever.  A guy walked in, threatened those “ninja bastards,” which might explain the ninja thing because nothing else would tip anyone off to the presence of ninjas, and then fought them all.

Neither the guy from that scene nor the guy from the opening were the major player on their side of the conflict.  Both of them were working for the leader of the resistance.  The whole movie, they were trying to get away from the Japanese spy, Yoshido, as he continuously attempted to attack them.  There were a whole bunch of fight scenes as the two sides played a game of cat-and-mouse through the towns of China.  It all culminated in a showdown between the leader of the resistance and Yoshido.

The final scene of the movie was a fight scene between Yoshido and the resistance leader.  Backstory was thrown into the movie where they were friends back in their school days, even though the two of them were a Chinese rebel and a Japanese spy.  They talked about fighting like back in the old days.  Then they talked about it again.  And again.  Then they fought.  Yoshido’s men attacked with weapons, even though Yoshido wanted it to be a one-on-one fight.  They slashed the resistance leader with a sword and shot him, before Yoshido thought it was okay and arrested the man.  Then the movie ended.  It ended there.  Of all places, it ended with the resistance leader being arrested.  That’s it.

The resistance leader didn’t have any help in that fight because he had told his rebel companions to leave.  They had been through enough already during the events of The Blazing Ninja.  One of them had been shot during a getaway, leading to a doctor betraying them in one of the most ridiculous scenes.  When the rebels brought the doctor to the location of their injured friend, he pulled out a gun and said “I’m not a real doctor, but you’re really dead!”  It was only one of the many examples of ridiculous dubbing voices.

The other two big examples of the dubbing of the movie came in one specific moment, as well as a recurring trait of the characters throughout the movie.  The one specific moment was when Yoshido went into a meeting with a woman and exclaimed “Oh! My friend’s beautiful wife!”  It was a weird way to greet someone, even in the 1940s or 1970s that the movie was set.  Then there was the laughing that every character did throughout the movie.  There was maniacal laughter left, right, and centre.  It was overwhelming at points.

The Blazing Ninja is one of those movies that ends up being just insane enough that it works.  The fighting was fun to watch.  The dialogue and story were ridiculous.  It all came together in a package that helped to solidify why Godfrey Ho was a master of bad filmmaking.  He might not produce artistic works of quality, but he manages to pack entertainment throughout his movies.  This was only the second Godfrey Ho movie to be featured in the Sunday “Bad” Movies.  It was also the second time his movies have been highlights of good times.

These notes may also be some good times:

• Godfrey Ho directed both The Blazing Ninja and Robo Vampire (week 171).
• Another martial arts movie featured in the Sunday “Bad” Movies was Miami Connection (week 23).
• Have you seen The Blazing Ninja? What are your thoughts on Godfrey Ho?  How about martial arts movies?  Let me know your thoughts in the comments.
• The comments are a place where you can suggest future movies for the Sunday “Bad” Movies.  I like to have input from the people who sometimes read the blog.  You can find me on Twitter too.
• Sometimes I will share bits and pieces of the movies I watch on Snapchat.  Add me (jurassicgriffin) if that interests you.
• We’re at a franchise week next week, and it seemed like the perfect time to dive back into the crazy animal attack movies.  It’s not the continuation of the Sharknado series.  Oh no.  But it’s close to those.  This franchise crossed over with a Sharknado character appearing in the first installment before the lead character appeared in Sharknado 4.  That’s right.  Lavalantula and 2 Lava 2 Lantula! will be next week’s movies.  Come back then to see what I’ve got for you.

Intruder (2016)

One type of horror that strikes fear into the hearts of audiences all around the world is home invasion horror.  People don’t want to find strangers in their homes.  That’s one of the worst experiences ever.  It’s happened to me before.  At university, I was in my room and I heard someone walk into the apartment I lived in.  I walked out to find a random guy in the living area.  He left when I asked who he was, and from then on, I kept the front door locked.

Movies are made all the time that convey this feeling of people trespassing in your living quarters.  It’s a relatable feeling, which is why there are so many successful instances of home invasion stories.  The Strangers, Funny People, and Home Alone all play on the idea of home invasion in ways that make them stand out from one another and all of the other movies of this kind.  But, as with any type of movie, there are bad films that counter out the good and leave people wondering why they were made at all.

One home invasion movie that deservedly went under the radar was Intruder, from 2016.  Elizabeth (Louise Linton) was a cellist who studied under Vincent (Moby).  While working out her relationship with her boyfriend Justin (Zach Myers), and meeting her neighbour John (John Robinson), someone mysteriously entered her apartment and began watching over her life without her knowledge.  All of this while she was taking care of a friend’s cat.

Some of the many home invasion tropes were at play throughout Intruder.  The difference was that it seemed more like a stalker story told through the filter of a home invasion.  The person who had entered the apartment wasn’t tormenting or trying to attack Elizabeth.  They were trying to insert themselves into Elizabeth’s life.  They were watching over her, pushing her life in certain directions.  That was something that was much more stalker than home invasion.

Home invasion movies tend to be about someone trying to violently enter a house to get to something or someone inside.  Many examples of this kind of storytelling exist.  Panic Room was a popular home invasion movie directed by David Fincher.  A group of thieves broke into a house, while the mom and daughter who lived there hid in their panic room.  There was a game of cat and mouse while the mom tried to get out for help, and the thieves tried to get into the panic room to get what they wanted.  There was a conflict between the two sides that pushed the movie forward from the initial home invasion to the defeat of the antagonists.

Or you could look at The Purge.  During an annual time when all forms of crime were legal, a rich family secured their house with an expensive system built to keep people out.  A man asked for help because people were trying to kill him, so the son of the house let the man in.  The attackers showed up and did whatever they could to get into the house in an attempt to kill the man that the son had saved.  The family had to protect themselves through any means necessary.

This kind of story wasn’t in Intruder.  There was the person who had entered the apartment.  They did use violence at a point.  They weren’t constantly trying to torment the person who lived in the house, though.  They weren’t torturing them or breaking in to try and get something from them.  They were a simple stalker who wanted to watch over the person who lived there.  That wasn’t the action/thriller type story that home invasion movies usually end up being.  It was a horror movie about a woman being stalked.

The main problem was that the movie ended up being about what the audience knew, which didn’t add much tension to the main character’s story.  She had no idea that there was someone in her apartment until the final moments of the movie.  Nothing tipped her off to the person being there.  The cat went missing at one point, and her boyfriend disappeared, but she never had any idea that things were wrong inside her own home.  The audience knew, which was a case of dramatic irony, but it would have been nice for Elizabeth to have some sense of things being wrong.  She simply wrote everything off with excuses instead of digging a little bit to try and figure out what happened.  She had no sense of the danger in her life.

As for the stalker, they didn’t really do too much throughout the movie.  They went into the apartment and simply watched Elizabeth as she went about her daily routine.  When she was talking to her boyfriend, the stalker was watching.  When she slept, the stalker appeared and watched her sleep.  The stalker did end up killing the boyfriend, but they never harmed Elizabeth and never did anything to tamper with her daily life.  Though an impending murder was implied through the film’s opening, where another woman was killed in her home by what looked to be the same stalker, the stalker never attempted to harm Elizabeth directly.

Intruder was not a home invasion movie, though it had a home invasion thread.  It didn’t have the cat-and-mouse taunting type of story that home invasion films have.  There weren’t the people living or staying in the house against the people trying to get in.  It was a movie about someone going into a home to watch over the person living there.  That’s much more of a stalker story than a home invasion storyline.  Only, it was a stalker story where the victim didn’t know she was being stalked.  It took away a lot of the tension that could have been there.

The story I have about the person that entered my apartment at university is more of a home invasion story than Intruder.  The person came in.  I knew they came in.  I confronted them, and they left.  That’s more of a conflict than Intruder, which never really had the victim confront the stalker that had intruded into her life.  That lack of conflict made it fall flat.  Intruder didn’t strike fear into the hearts of its audience the way it should have.

These notes will do a little better than the movie:

• Intruder was suggested by @MarceloJPico, who also suggested Chicks Dig Gay Guys (week 145), Die Another Day (week 153), Double Down (week 215), and The Parking Lot Movie (week 239).
• Have you seen Intruder?  Have you heard of it?  What are some home invasion or stalker movies that you like or dislike?  Share any thoughts you have in the comments below.
• You can find me on Twitter if there are any movies that you think should be covered for the Sunday “Bad” Movies.  Or you can put those suggestions in the comments.
• When I’m watching bad movies, I frequently share bits and pieces of them on Snapchat.  Add me (jurassicgriffin) if you want to see some of that, or other things I might share there.
• Let’s talk about next week for a second.  A while back, I saw a movie called Robo Vampire (week 171).  It was a mess, but I enjoyed it.  I decided that I would go back to that director at some point.  Next week is that week, as I check out The Blazing Ninja.  How was it?  You’ll find out in seven days.  See you then.

The Ewok Adventure (1984) and Redefining Franchise Canon

Hollywood is a business and, as such, works to make as much money as possible.  One way that the money is made is through franchises.  People will go see things that they recognize out of nostalgia for the previous installment.  Look at the theater experience now.  There’s not a week that goes by without some franchise releasing a new installment.  Deadpool 2 came out last week, continuing the journey of Wade Wilson while also showing more of the X-Men lore that has existed on viewing screens since 2000.  This week saw the release of Solo, the newest in the forty year old Star Wars franchise.  That brings us to this week’s movie.

The Ewok Adventure, also known as Caravan of Courage: An Ewok Adventure, was a television movie that aired on ABC in 1984.  It followed Wicket (Warwick Davis), returning from Return of the Jedi, as he helped Mace Towani (Eric Walker) and Cindel Towani (Aubree Miller) travel across Endor to save their parents from the evil Gorax.  They put together a band of Ewoks and caravanned to the cave of the Gorax to fight it.

One of the most interesting things about The Ewok Adventure is that it is not even be part of the Star Wars cinematic canon anymore.  When Disney bought out the rights to Star Wars and started producing the newer movies, they deemed that the extended universe was no longer part of the lore.  Only the theatrical movies and The Clone Wars television show from before the 2014 clean slate counted as part of the continuity.  Everything else was tossed out, leaving The Ewok Adventure as a lost part of the Star Wars legacy.

Star Wars is far from the only franchise in movie history to change continuity in an attempt to reboot the series while playing true to its roots.  Most of the time, this sort of thing happens in horror films.  Many of the examples that will be brought up will be examples that fit into the horror genre, since those are the ones that come to mind most easily.  Let’s start with Star Wars specifically.

Star Wars

George Lucas’s space adventure franchise began in 1977 with the release of Star Wars, later renamed Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope.  It was followed by two theatrical sequels in 1980 and 1983 called The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, respectively.  Those could have been it, but the galaxy of Star Wars was expanded through three television movies about Ewoks and Wookies, as well as a myriad of books chronicling event that weren’t seen on screen.  In the books, people got to know the children of Luke, Han, and Leia.  The books dove deeper into the lives of supporting characters like Wedge Antilles.  There was even a history established in the world of Star Wars.  Then there were the theatrical prequels about Anakin Skywalker’s slide into the dark side, and the Clone Wars stuff.

Disney bought the Star Wars rights in 2012, and soon announced their plans to put out new theatrical movies that would, hopefully, go over better than the prequels had.  They did.  These new movies didn’t come without some controversy though, notably when it came to the lore that had been built since the 1970s.  Disney threw out all of the lore.  They didn’t erase it from existence.  The books, television films, and other story bits were collected into an offshoot called Legends.  But they took them out of the canon, essentially rebooting the franchise so it would be easier to do their own thing when it came to the new trilogy of movies.

Most of that rebooting worked for the Star Wars movies.  Episodes VII and VIII became two of the most successful movies of all time.  Rogue One was an interesting spin-off that brought in new characters, while still tying nicely into the original trilogy of movies.  Star Wars Rebels was a critically acclaimed television show, and there is a new universe of books that have been released since 2014, helping to set up the characters and story beats that people loved about the movies.  It was one of the more successful instances of rebooting part of a franchise to take other parts out of the canon.

Halloween

Halloween has been rebooted numerous times in big and small ways.  Of course, the most obvious was the third movie, which told a different story that wasn’t connected to the Michael Myers saga.  It told the story of a mask maker who was using his Halloween masks to cause a mass murder.  Then there was the Rob Zombie reboot that retold the origin of Michael Myers and Laurie Strode.  But the one most notable to the topic of erasing lore through a semi-reboot is Halloween: H20.

After the second Halloween movie, the story of Laurie and Michael was supposed to be over.  John Carpenter wanted the franchise to turn into an anthology, where each subsequent movie would be a different horror story that took place around Halloween.  That’s why Season of the Witch happened.  When that didn’t work out, the producers went back to the Michael Myers well.  Jamie Lee Curtis didn’t come back, so they wrote around that with the character of Jamie Lloyd.  She was Laurie’s daughter, now living with a foster family after Laurie died in a car crash.  That would be the basis for Halloween 4 through Halloween 6.

Jamie Lee Curtis agreed to come back for the seventh installment, as a celebration of the 20^th anniversary of Halloween’s release.  This meant that there had to be a way for her character to be alive again.  That way was to brush the mythology that the previous three movies had built under the rug.  They were no longer canon.  Halloween: H20 was a sequel to Halloween and Halloween II, but not any of the other Halloween installments.  It was essentially rebooting the franchise at the third entry to create a new continuity.  It was a mild success, with Halloween: H20 being one of the better installments, especially coming off of the crazy mythology of Halloween 6: The Curse of Michael Myers.  It wouldn’t be the last time that a horror franchise ignored some of what came before.

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre

The film that kicked off this franchise came out in 1974 and told the story of a group of friends who were attacked by a family of cannibals.  The iconic character of Leatherface helped bring about three sequels, in 1986, 1990, and 1994.  Then the franchise went dormant.  It wasn’t a long franchise.  Other horror franchises at the time had many more movies in a shorter amount of time.  It was a memorable franchise, however.

The mid-2000s saw a full reboot of the franchise from Platinum Dunes.  That’s not the one that’s important to this post, though.  What’s important is what came after.  Following the two Platinum Dunes movies, the franchise was half-rebooted again.  This time, it went back to the continuity of the first movie, but ignored anything that came after.  Texas Chainsaw 3D came out in 2013 as a direct sequel to the original The Texas Chain Saw Massacre.  It ignored anything that was done in the second through fourth installments, and instead only continued from the first movie.  Leatherface came out in 2017 as a prequel to both The Texas Chain Saw Massacre and Texas Chainsaw 3D.  It was a new continuity for a new generation.

Sleepaway Camp

The Sleepaway Camp movies are more known for the twist in the original movie than the actual quality of the slasher fare.  That twist helped garner the attention that created a five movie franchise.  The first four movies were all one single continuity, with the second and third films following Angela after her transition was completed.  The sequels were more comedic, playing on Angela’s morbid sense of humour.

Rob Hiltzic, the writer/director of the original Sleepaway Camp made his own sequel in the mid-2000s called Return to Sleepaway Camp.  This sequel retained most of the original’s tone.  It took out the dark humour that the sequels were known for.  It brought back a bunch of the original performers.  Most importantly, it ignored the events of Sleepaway Camp II through Sleepaway Camp IV.  It was a direct sequel to the original without any of the lore that the sequels had put into the franchise.  It wasn’t a huge success, having been made in 2003 and released in 2008 to little or no fanfare.  It was a return to the roots of the series, though, which was nice for the people who had come into the franchise with the first and gone through the different tones that were the sequels.

Those are only four of the franchises that were rebooted with later installments that picked and chose what parts of the lore to keep.  They would ignore entire works to try and keep a concise mythology as they moved forward.  Most of the time, it happened in horror.  Star Wars was one instance where it was a different genre.

What benefit do these soft reboots give to Hollywood?  In the case of Star Wars, it allowed the fans of a new generation to come into the movies without having to dig into the exhausting extended universe that had been built up for nearly forty years.  It let Disney create their own extended universe that people would be more likely to purchase because it was canon.  Things were easier for fans, and more money could be made by the studio.  Win win situation.

The Ewok Adventure was one of the works that was pushed aside in the Disney reboot of the Star Wars franchise.  The continuing adventures of Wicket were no longer canon.  They may have entertained a certain generation of children, but the Caravan of Courage would be forgotten in future generations.  It’s a shame.  This is basically what the Star Wars Story spin-off films are doing, only with different characters.  Maybe there will be a remake in the future?  Who knows?

Now let’s get to some notes:

• This post saw mentions of Halloween 6 (week 48) and the Sleepaway Camp franchise (week 150).
• Tony Cox played one of the Ewoks in The Ewok Adventure.  He was previously in Date Movie (week 164) and Mom and Dad Save the World (week 186).
• Wicket was played by Warwick Davis, who also played the leprechaun in Leprechaun in the Hood (week 120) and Leprechaun Back 2 Tha Hood (week 120).
• Finally, Debbie Lee Carrington was in The Ewok Adventure.  She made other appearances in Tiptoes (week 28), Howard the Duck (week 75), and Mom and Dad Save the World (week 186).
• Have you seen The Ewok Adventure?  What did you think of it?  What do you think of reboots that don’t reboot the whole series, but instead just remove some from continuity?  What others did I miss?  Let me know in the comments.
• The comments can also be used to suggest movies for me to watch in future Sunday “Bad” Movies weeks.  Twitter can be used for that, too.
• Sometimes when I watch bad movies, I share clips of them on my Snapchat (jurassicgriffin).  If that sounds like something you want to see, add me.
• Next week is another week of the Sunday “Bad” Movies.  What I mean by that is that I’ll be checking out another bad movie.  This time, I’m going into the horror genre once again to check out a serviceable yet lackluster film called Intruder.  I have no idea what I’ll write about it yet.  Keep your eyes open in seven days’ time as a post will be coming your way.