![]() The first thing one notices about Enter the Ninja is just how spectacularly miscast Italian exploitation star Franco Nero is in the lead role. ![]() When they won't comply, he sends another ninja - Hasegawa (Sho Kosugi), who just happens to be Cole's sworn enemy - to finish the job. He goes to see his old war buddy Frank (Alex Courtney) and his wife Mary Ann (Susan George), who are being harassed to sell their house by evil businessman Charles Venarius (Human Cigarette Christopher George*). Franco Nero (the original Django) stars as Cole, a veteran who has just completed his ninja training. The first film in Cannon's ninja trilogy, 1981's Enter the Ninja, kicks things off in glorious Cannon style with clumsy filmmaking, graphic violence and jarring tonal switches. Once confined to the shadows, the early 1980s put ninja center stage in pop culture. 1981's Enter the Ninja and its two sequels, 1983's Revenge of the Ninja and 1984's Ninja III: The Domination helped make "ninja" a household name, leading Cannon to continue exploiting the trend with its long-running American Ninja series. Through a trilogy of completely unrelated movies save for the use of the word "ninja" in the title and the presence of martial artist Sho Kosugi (playing three different roles), Cannon introduced a generation of video store and cable brats to the highly secret and deadly arts. The pre-release hype and bios of Kosugi and Stone are well worth the read.Celebrate '80s Action day the Cannon ninja way!įor better or worse (better), Cannon Films played a big role in popularizing ninjas in the 1980s. I’ve scanned the entire press kit, read it at this link. The decision to take ninja from villains and henchmen to centerpiece heroes was a damn good one. Considering Eric Van Lustbader’s novel The Ninja had been tearing up bookshelves since April of the same year, and The Octagon had been released about six weeks earlier than the said “late Fall” green light, Golan’s timing could not have been better. Mike Stone is widely credited throughout the document, and other contemporary press, with originating this film, so that must have been one successful lunch meeting. ![]() ![]() He assumed that everything had been done before in Martial Arts films, but after he was told about the unique art of Ninjutsu, he immediately began preparations on “ENTER THE NINJA.” Golan was a bit difficult to convince at first. Having never produced a Martial Arts film, Mr. In the late Fall of 1980, the concept for “ENTER THE NINJA” was brought to producer/director Manahem Golan. It will set the trend in Martial Arts films for the 80’s, making them the decade of the Ninja…Īnother detail I found intriguing was this: …the first Western film to deal solely with the mysterious and elusive art of Ninjutsu. ![]() Cannon’s 1981 press kit for Enter the Ninja featured newspaper-ready B&W ad mats and a 30-page document heralding, and I quote: ![]()
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