It’s time to stop fighting it and just embrace the neon-soaked, low-budget glory. I am a Jim Wynorski apologist. It’s a support group with surprisingly high membership. Wynorski is the ultimate cinematic high-wire act: a man who realized early on that if you have enough smoke machines, a few former Playmates and a script that moves at 90 miles per hour, nobody cares if the ancient temple is clearly a rented warehouse in Van Nuys.

The director may have flunked out of film school, but he turned an introduction to Roger Corman into a lifelong career. He didn’t just survive the grind of the B-movie circuit; he thrived in it, starting with a writing credit on one of my favorite Corman sci-fi riffs, Forbidden World, and moving on to Sorceress, Screwballs, Beastmaster 2: Through the Portal of Time and so many more.

He stepped behind the camera and never looked back, giving us the mall-horror essential Chopping Mall, as well as Deathstalker II, Big Bad Mama II, Sorority House Massacre II and III, Return of the Swamp Thing, and 976-EVIL II, another film of his that, yes, I admit I enjoy. I even like his Cinemax After Dark movies, like the Body Chemistry sequels and  Munchie.

So alright. I like his movies. I’ve learned something. I can even respect that he’s gone the way of most horror directors of my youth, alternating between children’s movies like A Doggone Christmas and A Doggone Hollywood with the softcore stuff he’s known for, SyFy-style creature movies and weirdness like Sharkansas Women’s Prison Massacre.

But if every movie Wynorski made was like The Lost Empire? He’d probably be one of my favorite directors.

We start in Chinatown, where three masked intruders try to steal the glowing eye of a statue. Everyone dies in the battle except for one cop, who barely makes it. And then, the next day, terrorists take over a school before Inspector Angel Wolfe (Melanie Vincz, Hunk) takes out everyone, which almost includes an undercover fed named Rick Stanton (Paul Coufos, 976-EVIL II). Luckily, she stops from killing him just in time and then, as is customary in police and federal working relationships, they aardvark.

When they wake up the next morning, Angel and Rick learn that her brother Rob (Bill Thornbury, Jody from Phantasm!) was the police officer who survived the jewelry store shootout. In the hospital, he hands her a throwing star and says, “The Devil exists, and the Eye knows where.” Instead of being freaked out, Rick launches into exposition mode to tell us all about Lee Chuck (when I realized this was Angus Scrimm, I lost my mind), a man who has become immortal yet must give Satan a new soul every day.

Keep in mind that we are about fifteen minutes into this movie, and we’ve already had a cop-versus-ninja battle, terrorists fighting a lone cop, a sex scene and an occult backstory. I already was head over heels for this one.

When Angel examines the crime scene, one of the glowing eyes makes its way into her purse — all on its own — before Inspector Charles Chang (Art Hern, Simon King of the Witches) goes into even more exposition, explaining the Eyes of Avatar, two jewels that the Dragon-God blessed with the power to rule the world. He tells her that Lee Chuck is real, has one eye and has joined the cult of Dr. Sin Do (also Angus Scrimm!).

With her brother dying from his wounds, Angel decides that she must destroy Sin Do, who has begun recruiting an army of terrorists, including Anthony Kiedis’ dad Blackie Dammit and Angel Pettijohn as Whiplash. So she does what any of us would. No, she doesn’t file the paperwork to get a task force and involve multiple police and federal units. She instead learns that Dr. Do — no relation to the video game character Mr. Do, although both have castles — only accepts groups of female soldiers in threes. And that means that she has to bring in her old friend, the Native American supersoldier Whitestar (Raven De La Croix, perhaps the greatest of all Russ Meyer’s women next to Tura Satana; she was also the associate producer, costume designer and animal handler of this movie while doing all of her own stunts) and Heather (Angela Aames, Fairy Tales, H.O.T.S.), a convict who she promises to parole — how does she have that power? — if she helps like some nascent version of the Suicide Squad.

Whatever. Logic be damned, the ladies are off for Golgotha, Dr. Do’s castle fortress, where more ninja battles and a cast that includes Robert Tessier (who was one of the four members of Stunts Unlimited along with Hal Needham, Glenn R. Wilder and Ronnie Rondell Jr.), Linda Shayne (Miss Salmon from Humanoids from the Deep who would go on to direct Purple People Eater), Kenneth Tobey (who was in so many movies, like the original The Thing, Dirty Mary Crazy Larry, The Howling and more), Anny Gaybis (who was in a movie with one of my favorite titles, Wam Bam Thank You Spaceman!) and Tommy Rettig (Jeff Miller from the Lassie series and the star of one of the strangest movies to ever escape Hollywood, The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T) await.

I mean, this movie is so close to being in the same continuity as Big Trouble In Little China that Alan Howarth did the music for it. I’ll go ever further and say that thanks to Blackie Dammit being in it, it might even be in the same universe as 9 Deaths of the Ninja. It’s a total blast, a movie that is somehow the answer to the unasked question, “What if Russ Meyer directed Enter the Dragon?”

This is definitely the movie to put on if you’re down. I mean, how can you be sad after watching a movie where Angus Scrimm’s bad guy character has a giant snake and can survive losing his head, much less one that features a prison shower flashback just to prove that one of the heroines was in jail at one point and hints that Raven De La Croix has supernatural powers? We’re going to have to go through a black hole and come out the other side to figure out how many I’d give this movie.

You can watch this on Tubi.