This is a psycho ninja chick movie. And any psycho ninja chick movie has got to be worth watching.
It begins with a bunch of people playing golf. Then a ninja shows up and kills everybody. Then the cops show up. Lots and lots of cops. Dozens of cops. The ninja kills most of them. Finally, having been shot about 98 times the ninja has had enough and he’s about to expire. But his story is not yet finished. Christie (Lucinda Dickey), a perfectly ordinary young woman, finds him lying in the bushes about to die and something weird happens.
One thing that’s cool is that we never find out why the ninja ran amok on the golf course. We presume someone hired him. We have no idea who that someone could be. Writer James R. Silke knows that we don’t need to know. This is not a mystery or a police procedural, it’s a ninja action picture.
The cop who interviews Christie, Officer Secord (Jordan Bennett) takes a shine to her. Christie doesn’t date cops. But Secord isn’t a quitter and his desperation to get into her pants is finally rewarded with success. And soon there’s a thing between them.
Christie has a sword, a katana. We soon have reason to suspect it’s a magic sword.
The cops who shot that ninja start to die in rather grisly ways. Maybe there’s another ninja about.
There is, in a way. That evil dead ninja has possessed Christie. She now intermittently turns into an evil lady ninja.
And there’s another ninja, Yamada (Shô Kosugi). He has an eye patch. We don’t know if he’s a good ninja or an evil ninja.
More cops get sliced up. Poor Secord doesn’t know what’s going on. Christie doesn’t know either.
Truly immense quantities of mayhem follow.
This is not just a psycho ninja chick movie. It’s also an incredibly bad rip-off of The Exorcist. And it’s a bit of an 80s dance movie as well. Lots of aerobics. And a video game movie. If something was fashionable in the 80s it will show up somewhere in this movie.
The acting is terrible. If you’re wondering why Lucinda Dickey did not become a major star then watch this movie and you’ll have your answer. The gal just can’t act.
But then this is not exactly a character-driven movie so that doesn’t really matter. It’s all about the martial arts action and there’s plenty of that and it’s pretty entertaining with a very high body count. And Miss Dickey can dance and trained dancers always handle fight scenes pretty well.
There are some really bad special effects as well, which adds further layers of fun. I have no idea why some of these effects were even there except that I think they wanted a video game vibe.
What do you want in a psycho ninja chick movie? You want a cool lady ninja and you want her to be totally nuts and you want her to leave a path of death and destruction behind her. That’s what this movie offers. It doesn’t offer anything else. It doesn’t need to.
Ninja III: The Domination is in truth a very bad movie but that’s what makes it fun.
I have the Spanish Blu-Ray release which sadly doesn’t provide a very good transfer. On the other hand this is the sort of movie that is more enjoyable if it looks like you’re watching it on a VHS rental from Blockbuster back in the day.
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