Ninja Powerforce
(aka Ninja Power Force, Ninja Operation 4, Thunderbolt Angels)
1986; directed by Joseph Lai

For Ninja Powerforce, cut-and-paste director Joseph Lai took a bit of footage from Ninja: The Protector -- one of the few movies in his company IFD Films' oeuvre that actually used all original footage -- and spliced it into Cheung Chi-Chiu's dull and pedestrian Taiwanese gangster potboiler The Return. The results, as you might expect, are anything but spectacular. Even if you're normally a fan of IFD Film's demented output, there's probably not enough neon-swaddled ninjas present here to make a viewing worth your while.

Ninja Powerforce's star, Richard Harrison, became one of the faces associated with IFD Films. In fact, to many people, even though he appeared in well over one hundred movies during his long career, he's most known for his appearances in various IFD releases. Harrison never intentioned to be remembered for ninja pictures and only thought he was going to appear in a couple of films. But true to IFD Films' modus operandi, directors like Joseph Lai and Godfrey Ho took the footage Harrison originally shot for Ninja: The Protector and spliced it into at least a dozen other movies, which were then quickly put out to foreign distributors, who were desperate to fill video rental store shelves with any and all sort of product, regardless of quality.

For those of you that have never seen an IFD ninja film before, there is a definite WTF moment in seeing this sort of representation of ninjas. Ninjas are supposed to be stealthy, so why are they wearing neon headbands? And why do they say "NINJA" on them? Are there a lot of people that might confuse them with something else? These are the sorts of queries Ninja Powerforce puts forth towards the viewer, but, sadly, never delivers any sort of answer, or, really any sort of coherent, much less enjoyable, cinematic experience.

Ninja Powerforce could have delivered at least some sort of Mystery Science Theatre-esque fun via the schizophrenic ninja proceedings. But there's really not all that much in the way of ninja shenanigans going on. Richard Harrison pops in for a couple of scenes, but, otherwise, most of the footage here comes from The Return, which is this release's main downfall. The Return is simply an extremely boring movie that even neon-colored ninjas can't liven up.

RATING: 3

This movie is available from Amazon.