If the first movie is close to the comic with some kid elements and the second backs off from that, the third Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie goes all into silliness, as the turtles go back in time to feudal Japan and switch places with the honor guard of Lord Norinaga (Saburo Shimono).

It’s all because of some things that April O’Neil (Paige Turco) buys at a flea market, including a scepter for Master Splinter. At least Casey Jones (Elias Koteas) gets to be in this one, even if he just sits around for most of the movie.

Only Brian Tochi (Leonardo) and Robbie Rist (Michelangelo) did voices for all three of the original movies, but Corey Feldman returned as Donatello and Tim Kelleher is Raphael, with James Murray taking over as the voice and puppeteer of Splinter.

Co-creator Kevin Eastman said of this movie, “What we tried to do with the third movie was to make it as good of a story as we could. We went through a painstaking level of do’s and don’ts, what they could and couldn’t do. We wanted something that would be good for all ages again. I call movie one the best, movie two the worst, and movie three halfway in between.” A lot of the ideas in this come from the “Masks” story in issues 46 and 47 of the original comics. The time scepter looks a lot like the one that Renet, the apprentice timestress of Lord Simultaneous uses.

What we do get to see is the Turtles helping Lord Norinage’s son Kenshin (Henry Hayashi) and his lover Mitsu (Vivian Wu) to stop the war between villages and the sale of guns to the samurai by Walker (Stuart Wilson). The whole idea of not changing time is never even considered by this movie.

The costumes were made by All Effects Company instead of Jim Henson’s Creature Shop. I guess Golden Harvest was pretty much done with the movies by this point and didn’t feel like spending much.

This was directed by Stuart Gillard, who wrote the script with Turtles creators Eastman and Laird. He also directed Lost Boys: The Thirst, War Games: The Dead Code, the remake of The Initiation of Sarah and the Disney movie Girl vs. Monster.

Even though I don’t like this one, I did do this art of a Samurai Leonardo.