Stars:
Emilia Crow, Blackie Dammett, Sonny Erang, , The Mighty Midget Death Squad.

Choice Dialogue:
* MADAME: "My girls are sterilized, sanitized, and lobotomized."


Choice Moments:
* The opening sequence which involves a Bruce Lee look-a-like and interpretive dance.
* The killer polo players who come equipped with their own attack music.
* Introduction of the German drug lord who loses some of his menace when it's revealed that his sidekick is a cappucine monkey.

Conclusions:
* The words "Mighty Midget Death Squad" are just fun to say
* Any movie with a character named Honey Hump can't be all bad (don't argue with me).
* It is possible that a hostage situation can be put down by a six-year old kid with a lighter.
* Anti-terrorist units only need three people.
* The Solid Gold Dancers can make a marital arts routine look really crappy.
* Just because you can sing, doesn't mean you should!

Review:
Some would call it an afront to my sense of good taste but there exists in my heart a long-standing love for chop sockey. There is something just deliciously wonderful about any movie genre in which bones breaking make the same sound as when I break a fistful of spaghetti in half.

I think it's the very audacious nature of this genre that makes me seek out titles like Ninja Claws of the CIA and Super Ninja Kao Fong and the Five Fingernails of Doom. Not that I am known as a person who judges a book by it's cover but COME ON! How can you leave movies with those titles sitting on the video store shelf?

Such was my attraction to Nine Deaths of the Ninja, which for some would be considered brilliant and by others not to be worth using to line the bottom of the bird cage. I happily belong to the former.

Nine Deaths of the Ninja begins more or less as one would expect with a shirtless wonder battling his foe. Then the movie leads into an opening title sequence that to put it mildly takes all definitions of musical talent and throws them out the window and into the traffic. Three interpretive dance students twist, kick and twirl around a guy with a sword who looks appropriatly humiliated while the fog machine goes into overdrive. Meanwhile the opening track is a very awkward version of "I Keep on Dancin'" sung by a performer to whom "pitch" and "tone" are dirty words.

That oddity out of the way, the movie can now begin. The three heroes are members of an anti-terrorist group, well not exactly members, they ARE the team. Anyway the latest assignment for the anti-terrorist unit is to take down a group of non anti-terrorists (!) who have taken hostages and demand that Rahji, a drug lord is let out of prison and while they are at it they also demand a cut back on the efforts to stop the Philippino drug trade. These bad guys aren't exactly tacticians at this sort of work because no one bother to offer up exactly HOW they are going to do this.

To their great relief, they won't have to think this thing through because almost from the moment that their little plan is hatched, they are made aware of the anti-terrorist unit. This probably has something to do with the three-man team showing up all over television in their little jumpsuits and all but shouting "Yee Haw! We Anti-Terrorist Unit!"

The most fun the movie has is with the bevy of bad guys thrown at the heroes as a deturrent. Those include The Mighty Midget Death Squad which are . . . exactly that, little midget assassins. Yes, three little killers in fedoras and sunglasses who try and make hash of our mighty heroes.

I saw this movie without subtitles but something tells me I didn't miss much. Somewhere along this very strange journey is some business involving a fairly large drug lord who can't stop laughing even when he takes his last breath. He's defended, for a time, by a team The Deadly Polo Assassination Team, yes a band of killer polo players. If that's not weird enough there is some business involving a babalicious madame named Honey Hump with a giant fro that I guess houses her arsenal of weaponry.

Finally after about an hour and half we get to the killer ninja squad, but there are only five, not nine. Of course, if you add in the Mighty Midget Death Squad, you could add four to that number except that there are six midgets and still the title wouldn't make any sense anyway and BOY am I reading too much into this.