Enter the Ninja
If a movie could beat the crap out of you, kick you in the groin, pummel you with nunchucks, then kick you in the groin again, before bending down and whispering in your ear, “You feel that ache in your nards? That’s justice, buddy,” it would be 1981’s Enter the Ninja. This is a movie that features more ninjas doing ninja things with swords, sai, nunchucks, staffs, spears, automatic doberman launchers, flamethrowers, guided ballistic missiles, blowguns, and garden weasels during the opening credits than most Chuck Norris movies manage to work in during the entire film. Once you start watching Enter the Ninja, there is no doubt in your mind that you’re about to see ninjas, and that those ninjas will… well, enter.
Italian actor Franco Nero plays Cole, the star of this 100 or so minutes of ninja ass kicking. He’s dubbed in, and badly; the foley work here is roughly on par with a Godzilla movie, and the body count is about as high. Cole doesn’t pause to knock Japanese fighter jets out of the sky or stomp tanks, but by the nine power centers of ninjutsu, he freaking well could if he wanted to.
Cole is such a bad ass that at no time does he even consider shaving his bushy 1970s Porno Mustache, even though it shows clearly through his snow-white ninja mask. Oh, and that’s another thing — Cole is such a badass that, while other ninjas wear black, because it’s scary and makes it easy for you to hide, or red, because they have the survival instincts of a pack of Star Trek security guards and the maroon color helps hide the blood in which they’re constantly drenched, Cole picks glowing freaking Clorox white. That’s right, this is a ninja who does his ninja thing dressed completely in bleached white cotton. Shove your stain remover pen up where the sun doesn’t shine, Tide, because Cole doesn’t need it. Take that, common sense.
The movie opens with Cole being chased by the aforementioned red-garbed ninjas. These ninjas fall down so fast, so hard, and so repeatedly that one wonders if they don’t all suffer from the same inner ear infection. Cole, for reasons unknown to the viewer, hacks, slashes, stabs, nunchucks, and ninja-stars his way through their ranks, leaving their bodies littering the woods. He then faces off against his black-clad ninja nemesis, Hasegawa (played by the legendary Sho Kosugi) before confronting some old Mister Miyagi looking dude and chopping his head off.
Satisfied that his Saturday morning has contained sufficient mass murder to hold him through the weekend, Cole goes on inside to relax. The red ninjas — surprise! — all file in and sit down, as does the headless old Asian dude (who looks remarkably well for having had his head cut off) and the somewhat disgruntled Hasegawa. The one red ninja who took a ninja star to the center of his forehead appears to be having a slightly less enjoyable time than the others, as blood and brain matter are weeping down the front of his face from the gaping wound, but apparently this is all in fun at the Iga Region Mysterious Ninja Academy.
With his ninja diploma in hand, Cole eventually goes to the Philippines, where he helps an old African mercenary buddy or something, and that buddy’s really hot wife, in fighting off a bunch of thugs who want to force the old military buddy and the aforementioned hot wife off their farm. Seems that an evil and more than slightly whacky villain named Venarius, who spends his spare time organizing synchronized swimming endeavors in his office, wants the property because it’s got, like, oil or something, and he’s willing to risk his entire financial empire and hire endless legions of thugs in order to pull it off illegally.
Cole fights wave after wave of Venarius’ thugs, including a fat guy with a hook for a hand (whose name is, and I’m not making this up, “Siegfried ‘The Hook’ Schultz”). Eventually almost everybody gets ganked but the hot wife and Cole himself, and Cole gets good and riled up, puts on his snowy-white ninja garb after toasting some hotdogs or something by an open fire in the woods, and sets out to ninja the living shit out of the rest of Venarius’ hired goons.
Ultimately, the white-clad Cole and his black-clad nemesis, Hasegawa (who has been conveniently hired by Venarius, who in turn spends at least a day whining, “I want my own ninja! I want my own ninja! Waaaa! Get me my own ninja!”), have a climactic battle to the death in a conveniently arranged arena. Cole pauses to kill Venarius and everybody else in the room except his dead buddy’s hot wife, before out-ninja-ing Sho Kosugi (no small feat for a dubbed Italian actor who looks like he walked straight off the set of Debbie Does Dallas).
The movie ends, inexplicably, with Cole giving another character some total line of bull about how his super ninja powers are to be used only for defense. He stops when he spots “The Hook” working at the airport and basically says, “Hold on, I have to go kill this guy horribly… uh, in defense, like.” Then he winks at the camera as if to say, “That’s right, ladies. There’s more than enough Franco Nero to go around. I’ll wear the ninja outfit if you like.”
I’m not certain, but I think I heard the sound of a zipper being lowered, just before the credits rolled.