New York Ninja was filmed in New York City in 1984. Don’t worry if you didn’t see it at your mom and pop video store, because its original distribution company 21st Century Distribution Corporation — before Menahem Golan was given the name — went bankrupt. Years later, the footage was acquired by Vinegar Syndrome, except they had no final script, audio or idea of what the movie was about. Thanks to new director — “re-director” — Kurtis M. Spieler, the movie came together, including new dialogue from an amazing cast.

Each film reel — six to eight hours in length — was put together to match what Spieler thought the film was meant to convey at the time. All he had was a shooting script that even mentioned a character named Detective Dolemite, who may have been planned to be played by Rudy Ray Moore. We may never know.

The cast is a literal who’s who of genre cinema:

Don “The Dragon” Wilson is the voice of John Liu, who is also the New York Ninja, and who is also the original director, writer and star of this film. He made three other vanity kung fu movies — Dragon Blood, Ninja In the Claws of the CIA and Zen Kwan Strikes Paris — that are all worth tracking down and watching.

Michael Berryman is the Plutonium Killer, which is where the majority of this movie’s effects budget went.

Linnea Quigley is Randi Rydell, John’s co-worker and love interest.

The cops on the case, Detective Jimmy Williams and Detective Janet Flores, are voiced by Body and Soul star Leon Isaac Kennedy and martial arts legend Cynthia Rothrock. And yes, that is Ginger Lynn’s voice as John’s wife!

The film starts with John finding out that his wife is pregnant. As he runs to work as part of a news crew, she sees another woman getting abducted. In moments, she’s dead and he’s decided to become a white ninja on rollerskates, keeping New York City safe.

If you thought the gangs in Italian post-apocalyptic movies were wild, well, the ones in New York Ninja challenge even Mexican cinema like La Venganza de Los Punks for how colorful the gang members can get. The Plutonium Killer also likes to expose himself to radiation before assaulting women, which is something I’ve never seen as a plot element before.

There are also people cashing in — kind of like the merchandise sales out of nowhere in Yeti Giant of the 20th Century — with people selling I Love The New York Ninja shirts. And there’s also a gang of precocious ninja kids who show up and save our hero every now and then.

I always wondered if another movie could make me feel as much joy as Miami Connection. This is it.

You can get the 35mm trailer from Vinegar Syndrome, as well as the movie itself on VHS and a comic book.

How amazing is it that when Godfrey Ho rips something off, he goes harder at ripping a movie off than anyone else? Like Bruno Mattei probably looked at him with some level of admiration. This one goes so far that the Spanish VHS box even steals the art from the stolen so many times movie Hands of Steel.

When there aren’t ninjas in this — there are no demons — you get a hero who shoots someone in every limb while two women cheer him on and a bad guy who wants to talk about politics even on his wedding night.

Robinson Collins (Stuart Smith) is only here because of Godfrey Ho’s new footage. He’s hunting Willy, a Thai gangster who is so bad that he sells American secrets to the Russians. Hopefully Robinson’s agent Max — who exists in a totally different movie — can solve it all. He’s played by Sorapong Chatri, who was one of the biggest movie stars in Thailand.

There are a lot of ninja fights here that have swords being used with no blood which is a bit disconcerting.

This time around, the music is taken from some different sources, like the Lalo Schifrin soundtracks to Sudden Impact and Cool Hand Luke, as well as Alan Silvestri’s soundtrack to Cat’s Eye.

When you look at either poster for this movie, you may think that you’re getting something amazing. You are and you aren’t. You must open your mind to Godfrey Ho’s films in the same way that you need to vibe with Jess Franco. You get to know the worlds that they create, how they keep going back to the same ideas, how the same shots will appear — this one is very Franco with the shots of planes that last forever and cameras gazing into the skyline for even longer — and then it all starts to become very comfortable and welcoming. You see the same faces as welcome sights that bring you sheer joy.

You can watch this on Tubi.

You may know this movie as Thunderbolt Angels but I saw it as Ninja Powerforce, which sounds like the kind of dumb genre classification some neckbeard that slavishly masturbates over Decibel would give to a band that nine people have listened to.

This is yet another Joseph Lai and Godfrey Ho — which may be the same person depending on who you read — ninja movie made from two movies, this time that the same footage of Richard Harrison dressed as a yellow ninja with a red headband that says “ninja” that was for one movie and ended up in so many films and a Cheung Chi-Chiu movie The Return. That movie is about gangsters who grow up and one trying to go straight. The ninjas work their way into that movie and unlike the stealth experts they are meant to be, they just barge right through the narrative.

Within the movie stolen for this, Frankie is a gangster who kills a friend named Albert and does the time. When he gets out, his old friend Matthew has gone legit and also married his woman Mandy. He also finds a world where Albert’s wife has to become a sex worker to pay for their child after his death. The actual movie is pretty good, but it’s really odd when everyone suddenly develops ninja connections that exist only in thee dubbed dialogue for Ninja Powerforce because otherwise this movie goes ninja free for long stretches.

There’s a lot of dialogue about chivalry to the point that every mention of the word would start to make me laugh. This is something you’d never have in your life if it wasn’t for these ninja films.

The music in this one also goes a bit off script, with Windham Hill artist Mark Isham’s “Many Chinas” and “On the Threshold of Liberty;” Romanelli’s “Connecting Flight;” “Six Pianos” by American minimalist composer Steve Reich; Jean-Michael Jarre’s “Second Rendez-Vouz;” The Alan Parsons Project’s “Psychobabble,” “Silence and I,” “Children of the Moon,” Mammagamma” and “Sirius;” OMD’s “Electricity;” Clan of Xymox’s “Masquerade” and Mark Knopler’s “Going Home (Theme of the Local Hero).”

You can watch this on Tubi.

I’m kind of obsessed with John Liu. If all he did was New York Ninja or Ninja In the Claws of the CIA, I’d still be into him. But I keep finding his movies and they’re all as strange as the next. What a shame that there’s only one more that he made, Dragon Blood, for me to check out.

And yes, this also goes by a ninja title.

Avenging Ninja.

Beyond being the founder of the Zwen Kwan Do fighting system, Liu also directed and wrote this movie. And stars in it as himself.

Now you see why I’m so fascinated.

Liu was once a martial arts teacher but now he’s part of the Hong Kong film world. Well, for now. Because his father, an American aerospace scientist, has just been kidnapped and now he has to go to Paris, as the title promises us. What it delivers is a plot that literally confounds all attempts to explain it.

Let me try.

Liu had a romantic scandal that rocked the world of Zen Kwan Do. He fell for a wealthy woman named Catherine and her father came after him, which left one lover dead, another as a nun and Liu’s daughter somewhere out there, out where dreams come true like Fievel. But not in America.

Instead of finding his father, John fights goons. And fights a guy in an American flag gi. And fights more henchmen. He even fights when he goes to put flowers on Catherine’s grave. And then he meets two girls who are pretty much going down on an ice cream sundae and he follows them onto a little yacht, gets knocked out and has to fight again, this time Roger Paschy, the same guy he’s fought numerous times in this movie but never on a little boat before.

He mentions that he still has to find his daughter, but then the movie ends. What about his dad? Maybe he had another fight to get ready for.

Living up to the spirit of all martial arts movie that I love, this uses “My Way” and “Live and Let Die” with absolutely no concern for copyright. It also uses music from Lipstick — the disco music, not the baffling audio soundscapes that Chris Sarandon will sexually assault you to — and that really freaks me out in the best of all ways possible.

Honorable fighting, yes. Music rights, no.

There’s nothing like a martial arts vanity project. I have no questions in my mind that the real John Liu also impregnated every woman in this movie and they all ended up in French convents too. Then he flashed that smile, titled down his sunglasses and screamed, “The Budokan spirit will never die!”

You can watch this on Tubi.

Casey Bowman has taken over the Kōga ninja dojo and married Namiko Takeda, who is due to give birth to their first child. Well, was, as this movie fridges her and she dies when muggers — who attacked Casey earlier in the day — murder her. After her funeral, a former student named Nakabara (Kane Kosugi) gives him the offer of moving to Thailand, but Casey is trying to figure out his own path. That path starts by finding the muggers and killing them.

Casey ends up going to Bangkok, where he meets with Nakabara and begins training with him. But death follows and it’s revealed that Casey’s teacher — and Namiko’s father — Sensei Takeda once was one of the top three students with Nakabara’s father and Isamu, who was killed by Takeda in his ascension to being the top ninja. Now, Isamu’s son Goro has become the leader of a drug cartel and may have been the one to kill Namiko. Of course Casey is being fooled and used as a weapon, which means that the two men are going to have to fight to the death.

Directed by Isaac Florentine and written by Boaz Davidson, this movie gave me such great happiness, as if Cannon had never gone away. This would be the movie that they would be making, all action, minimal story and even a wacky cab driver.

You can watch this on Tubi.

Scott Adkins grew up in a family of butchers, got mugged as a teenager and learned how to kick people really hard. That’s an origin story. He got his start in films with the Hong Kong movie Dei Seung Chui Keung and now you can see him in his own starring direct to streaming movies and also in big action movies like John Wick 4.

Directed by Isaac Florentine and produced and written — with Michael Hurst — by Boaz Davidson, this is as close to a Cannon movie as you’re going to get these days. I mean, it does exactly what Cannon did with Enter the Ninja, placing a gaijin as the best ninja ever. That movie does not, however, have its hero kick a man so hard that he flies out the window of a train and get run over by another train.

Casey Bowman (Adkins) is the best ninja in the dojo of Sensei Takeda. Or he’s close to it, if Masazuka (Tsuyoshi Ihara) has anything to say. He’s angry that the sensei’s daughter Namiko (Mika Hijii) is becoming friends with an American, so in sparring he throws a katana right at our hero, who dodges it and scars the angry young man below the right eye.

Years after leaving the dojo, Masazuka has become a killer and wants to steal the ancient ceremonial weapons of his old dojo. He kills his old master, but Casey and Namiko have taken the treasure the whole way to New York City to keep it safe. The evil ninjas catch up with them and frame them for the murder of Takeda’s professor friend. Then, Masazuka kidnaps Namiko right out of a police station and demands that Casey fight him for the rights to her life and the dojo’s weapons.

Of course, no matter how many battles there are in this movie, it has to come down to Casey and Masazuka, which involves ninja magic, the healing power of a sword and someone’s head getting sliced off their shoulders. No spoilers, but seeing as how Casey is in the sequel Ninja: Shadow of a Tear, you can figure it out.

I love that Masazuka has embraced technology in his journey to be an evil ninja. Night vision goggles? A suit with glider wings? More of this in ninja film. Also, more action. This movie never stops. Even the exposition is action.

Plus, this is really Snake Eyes vs. Storm Shadow. Or, again, Enter the Ninja. It’s really a million times better Snake Eyes movie than any Hasbro-produced Snake Eyes, even if it was made for literally 10% of the budget of that last G.I. Joe movie.

When can I get a Scott Adkins action figure?

You can watch this on Tubi.

April (Ginny Weirick), Courtney (Playboy model Trishelle Cannatella) and Monica (Maitland McConnell, Curse of Chucky) are the Ninja Cheerleaders and they must rescue their sensei Hiroshi (oh my, George Takei) from mafia boss Victor Lazzaro (Michael Paré) — who once owned the go-go club that Hiroshi bought in a tax auction — and his dark ninja girlfriend Kinji (Natasha Chang).

Directed and written by David Presley, this movie must have realized it had no nudity at the end of filming, as they put in these wipe sequences where people dance naked, including a ninja and a cheerleader. Because, one assumes, that’s why most watched this.

I am on the ninja side of the Ninja Cheerleaders brand promise.

Monica’s mom is Louise Stratten. Yes, the sister of Dorothy.

The only thing I liked about this was that the girl’s got bios at the beginning that were well written and that when George Takei sword fights, it’s sped up and lightning comes out of his sword. Well, the fights are surprisingly brutal, as well, which is not what I expected.

That said — it is beyond better than Cheerleader Ninjas, but you don’t need a grappling hook and ninja claws to clear that measuring stick. In fact, you can literally step over it.

You can watch this on Tubi.

Four Happy Valley High Hamsters cheerleaders, led by Angela (Angela Brubaker), have been by a church group for everything bad about the internet. They hire a gay teacher named Steven (Jeff Nicholson, who created the comic book Ultra Klutz) to train a group of Catholic school girls to take their place. He’s also working with Mr. X (Donr Sneed) who is turning all internet users into zombies.

The girls turn to the nerds, led by Maverick (Jared Brubaker), who are able to teach the girls how to be ninjas.

Director and writer Kevin Campbell directed an entire series of VHS how-to model kit videos in the 90s like Video Workbench: How to Build Science Fiction Models and Video Workbench: How to Build Car Models. Just last year, he came back to directing and made an internet referencing slasher called Back Slash.

Probably the reason why most guys watched this was because Kira Reed was in it. She’s also in Amityville Witches, Chained Heat 2001: Slave Lovers, Playboy’s Sexcetera and was an early internet adult star. Nearly all of the nudity in this movie comes from her.

As you can imagine, this is one of those films that sets out to be bad and overdelivers.

This is not Ninja Cheerleaders.

You can watch this on Tubi.