''New York Ninja'' is a 2021 American

action film Action film is a film genre in which the protagonist is thrust into a series of events that typically involve violence and physical feats. The genre tends to feature a mostly resourceful hero struggling against incredible odds, which include life ...

written, directed by and starring

John Liu John Chun Yah Liu (born January 8, 1967) is an American politician in New York City. A member of the Democratic Party, he is a member of the New York State Senate for the 11th district in northeast Queens. He previously served as the 43rd New Yo ...

. It was shot in 1984, but was not edited or released until 2021, when its footage was discovered and restored by the film preservation and

home video Home video is prerecorded media sold or rented for home viewing. The term originates from the VHS and Betamax era, when the predominant medium was videotapes, but has carried over to optical disc formats such as DVD, Blu-ray and streaming me ...

distributor

Vinegar Syndrome Cellulose acetate film, or safety film, is used in photography as a base material for photographic emulsions. It was introduced in the early 20th century by film manufacturers and intended as a safe film base replacement for unstable and highly ...

. ''New York Ninja'' was filmed in New York City, and was shelved after its original distribution company went bankrupt. The abandoned footage was eventually acquired by Vinegar Syndrome; without audio,

storyboards A storyboard is a graphic organizer that consists of illustrations or images displayed in sequence for the purpose of pre-visualizing a motion picture, animation, motion graphic or interactive media sequence. The storyboarding process, in the ...

, or scripts for the film, it was reconstructed by a new director, Kurtis M. Spieler, and dubbed dialogue was recorded by actors including

Don "The Dragon" Wilson Donald Glen Wilson (born September 10, 1954), nicknamed "The Dragon", is an American martial artist, film actor, and former professional kickboxer. An 11-time world champion who scored 47 knockouts in four decades, he has been called by the STAR ...

Michael Berryman Michael John Berryman (born September 4, 1948) is an American character actor. Berryman was born with hypohidrotic ectodermal dysplasia, a rare condition characterized by the absence of sweat glands, hair, and fingernails; his unusual physical ...

Cynthia Rothrock Cynthia is a feminine given name of Greek origin: , , "from Mount Cynthus" on Delos island. The name has been in use in the Anglosphere since the 1600s. There are various spellings for this name, and it can be abbreviated to Cindy, Cyndi, Cyndy, ...

Linnea Quigley Barbara Linnea Quigley (born May 27, 1958) is an American actress, film producer, model, singer, and author. She is best known as a B-movie actress, and is often referred to as a " scream queen" due to her frequent appearances in low-budget horror ...

Vince Murdocco Vince Murdocco (born 1966) is a Canadian actor, stunt performer, and former kickboxer Kickboxing is a combat sport focused on kicking and punching. The combat takes place in a boxing ring, normally with boxing gloves, mouthguards, shorts, and ...

Matt Mitler Matt Mitler (born May 27, 1955) is an American actor. He is also founding director (1997) oDzieci Theatre(the polish word for "children"), which balances its work on performance with work of service, through creative and therapeutic interaction i ...

Leon Isaac Kennedy Leon Isaac Kennedy (born June 1, 1948 or January 1, 1949) (sources differ) is an American actor, disc jockey, film producer and playwright. Kennedy's acting roles include Martel "Too Sweet" Gordone in Jamaa Fanaka's ''Penitentiary'' (1979), ''Peni ...

, and

Ginger Lynn Ginger Lynn Allen (born December 14, 1962), known professionally as Ginger Lynn, is an American pornographic actress and model who was a premier adult-entertainment star of the 1980s. She also had minor roles in various B movies. ''Adult Vide ...

Cast

as Liu, an employee of a New York City television news station **

as the voice of Liu *

as the voice of Nita, Liu's wife *

as the voice of the Plutonium Killer *

as the voice of Randi Rydell Adult film star

Sharon Mitchell Sharon Mitchell is an American sexologist and former pornographic film actor and director. In 1998, she founded the Adult Industry Medical Health Care Foundation (AIM), which tested over 1,000 adult film performers per month before a 2011 data ...

has a brief cameo on the subway train.

Production

Filming for ''New York Ninja'' began in late 1984 in New York City. According to the film's special effects artist, Carl Morano, "They had zero resources. Different people showed up on different days. We'd meet every morning at the

Howard Johnson's Howard Johnson's, or Howard Johnson by Wyndham, is an American hotel chain and former restaurant chain. Founded by Howard Deering Johnson in 1925 as a restaurant, it was the largest restaurant chain in the U.S. throughout the 1960s and 1970s, ...

where John iuwas staying and then take a van to the location." The film had an estimated special effects budget of $100, most of which Morano reportedly spent on creating the Plutonium Killer's melting face. Despite advertisements for the film appearing in

trade magazine A trade magazine, also called a trade journal or trade paper (colloquially or disparagingly a trade rag), is a magazine or newspaper whose target audience is people who work in a particular trade or industry. The collective term for this ...

s in 1984, the footage shot for ''New York Ninja'' was shelved after its distribution company, 21st Century Distribution Corporation, went bankrupt and sold its assets.

Reconstruction and release

The footage shot for ''New York Ninja'' was stored in

film reels A reel is an object around which a length of another material (usually long and flexible) is wound for storage (usually hose are wound around a reel). Generally a reel has a cylindrical core (known as a '' spool'') with flanges around the en ...

, ran about six to eight hours in length and included no actor credits. It was eventually acquired by

, a film preservation and

distribution company. Without audio,

, or scripts, Kurtis M. Spieler (credited as the film's "re-director" and editor) was tasked with reconstructing the film from the footage alone. The only known surviving script is Morano's shooting script, which alluded to a character named "Detective Dolemite"; the original filmmakers may have intended the character to have been played by

Rudy Ray Moore Rudolph Frank Moore (March 17, 1927October 19, 2008), known as Rudy Ray Moore, was an American comedian, singer, actor, and film producer.Dolemite ''Dolemite'' is a 1975 American blaxploitation crime comedy film and is also the name of its principal character, played by Rudy Ray Moore, who co-wrote the film and its soundtrack. Moore, who started his career as a stand-up comedian in t ...

''. Spieler suspects that Liu may have been unable to complete filming before the production shut down, saying that "the ending doesn't feel like it was ever finished". Vinegar Syndrome considered filming new scenes, but Spieler decided to work only with the original footage. In an interview with ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

'', he said: "I asked myself, 'If my job was to have been an editor in the 1980s, what would I have done? Speaking to '' Paste'', he said:

I was very aware of trying to maintain what I thought was the intended spirit or tone of the original production. I knew there was a fair amount of both intentional and unintentional humor to the movie, but I tried to take the project seriously and be respectful to the original source material as well as other movies from the same time period.

Spieler commissioned the Detroit band Voyag3r to create the score, and hired actors including

and

to record new dialogue, which was dubbed over the footage. The reconstructed version of ''New York Ninja'' premiered at Beyond Fest in California in October 2021. It was released on

Blu-ray The Blu-ray Disc (BD), often known simply as Blu-ray, is a digital optical disc data storage format. It was invented and developed in 2005 and released on June 20, 2006 worldwide. It is designed to supersede the DVD format, and capable of sto ...

by Vinegar Syndrome in November 2021.

Critical reception

Rotten Tomatoes Rotten Tomatoes is an American review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee, and Stephen Wang ...

, the film has an approval rating of 96% based on 23 reviews, with an average rating of 7.3/10. Josiah Teal of ''

Film Threat ''Film Threat'' is an online film review publication, and earlier, a national magazine that focused primarily on independent film, although it also reviewed videos and DVDs of mainstream films, as well as Hollywood movies in theaters. It first ...

'' called the film "rewatchable, quotable, and perfect for a ''

Samurai Cop ''Samurai Cop'' is a 1991 American direct-to-video action film written, coproduced and directed by Amir Shervan and starring Robert Z'Dar, Matt Hannon and Mark Frazer. It has attained a cult following. Plot When a renegade Japanese gang known as ...

'' or

Bruceploitation Bruceploitation (a portmanteau of "Bruce Lee" and "exploitation") is an exploitation film subgenre that emerged after the death of martial arts film star Bruce Lee in 1973, where filmmakers from Hong Kong, Taiwan and South Korea cast Bruce Lee l ...

double-feature", and wrote that "Vinegar Syndrome has found/created a fantastic

cult classic A cult following refers to a group of fans who are highly dedicated to some person, idea, object, movement, or work, often an artist, in particular a performing artist, or an artwork in some medium. The lattermost is often called a cult classic. ...

". J. Hurtado of ''

Screen Anarchy Screen Anarchy, previously known as Twitch Film or Twitch, is a Canadian English-language website featuring news and reviews of mainly international, independent and cult films. The website was founded in 2004 by Todd Brown. In addition to films, ...

'' called the film "the kind of gem that demands viewing with a crowd", writing: "As downright goofy as ''New York Ninja'' is, it's the genuine heart of the original production that really makes the whole thing work. Liu may not have been a high-minded artiste, but he knew what he wanted, and what he wanted was to bring the high-octane, high-

camp Camp may refer to: Outdoor accommodation and recreation * Campsite or campground, a recreational outdoor sleeping and eating site * a temporary settlement for nomads * Camp, a term used in New England, Northern Ontario and New Brunswick to descri ...

action of late '70s Hong Kong to the streets of New York."

References

External links