One from the Vaults: 'Robot Ninja' (1989)

"I am the Robot Ninja, and I kick ass!" 

 

Now, just look at the preceding line of dialogue for a minute. Read it over a couple of times, just to ensure that your poor overworked brain, which would probably rather be watching The Biggest Loser re-runs than reading yet another review of a movie you've never heard of, can fathom the staggering amount of cheesiness contained in J.R. Bookwalter's second feature film. On the Barlow Scale of Cinematic Fromage, Robot Ninja ranks somewhere in the Limburger stratum, meaning that it really reeks, and you know you're gonna end up with a tummy ache if you try it, but damn it, you're determined to eat the nasty stuff anyway. 

 

Along the same lines, it would probably be wise to open this article with a disclaimer that any film that actually contains the line "I am the Robot Ninja, and I kick ass!" is probably not going to be Shakespearean drama of the highest caliber. And it's not. Heck, it's not even Jackie Chan of a mediocre caliber. We're talking Uwe Boll of a gleefully-scraping-the-bottom-of-the-barrel caliber here... and friends, I wouldn't have it any other way. 

 

In the world of this movie, Robot Ninja is a phenomenally successful, if undeniably campy, superhero TV show, not unlike the Adam West incarnation of Batman. But Leonard Miller (Michael Todd), the comic book artist who created the character, is displeased by the compromising of his original vision. In order to bring his creation back to its gritty indie roots, Leonard hires a local inventor named Dr. Hubert Goodknight (Bogdan Pierce) to construct a "real" Robot Ninja suit. As a PR move, Leonard dons the costume and attempts to play superhero for real. But things soon get ugly when he tangles with a tough gang of murderers and rapists who prove more than a match for our incompetent, whiny "hero." And, in a clever plot twist, our title character is soon accused of many of the crimes he's been trying to prevent. The rest of the story involves Leonard's quest to bump off the members of the gang before the police, represented by the solitary Officer Hickox (Floyd Ewing Jr.), catch up to him. 

 

For the first half of the story, director Bookwalter, best known for the zombie splatter flick The Dead Next Door, keeps his movie firmly entrenched in the realm of screwball camp and comedy. These scenes, replete as they are with non-existent sets, wretched dialogue, so-bad-it's-hysterical acting, a brief-but-amusing appearance by Evil Dead II co-writer Scott Spiegel as an aspiring author, and even a genuine Washed-Up Celebrity Cameo (Burt Ward, aka Robin from the '60s Batman TV series), are pure joy for any b-movie fan. 

 

Heck, Bookwalter even manages to make it look easy; a lack of style has never been one of the director's shortcomings, and Robot Ninja is no exception. The film contains some great visual moments (the lighting is often lovely, despite the grainy 16mm photography), the score (composed by Bookwalter himself) lends tension to the fight scenes, and there's even one truly effective scare, involving the sudden appearance of the creepy James L. Edwards outside a car window. These are the moments in which the movie steamrolls over its obvious budgetary limitations, and the audience gets lost in blessed silliness. (And anyone who thinks a low budget necessarily translates to a tedious viewing experience is encouraged to check out Ozone and Polymorph, two zero-budget Bookwalter flicks that kick a plethora of patootie and take names as they do so.) 

 

But something unpleasant happens approximately halfway through this film, when the story switches from an amiably goofy camp-fest into a Reservoir Dogs-like ballet of blood and bullets. The dialogue still retains its cheesy charm right up to the end, but the movie loses its sense of fun, the only thing that managed to hold the proceedings together. The gore quotient ramps up to an almost unwatchable level: there's a particularly disturbing scene in which Leonard, for no reason I could discern, digs around inside his wounds with what looks like a razor blade. The story, having apparently exhausted its allocation of twists, soon becomes repetitive, and even the campy moments which had earlier seemed so charming actually become annoying. (Leonard, for instance, spends a fair amount of Robot Ninja's second half searching for the good doctor, which means we have to endure what feels like 18 hours of our "hero" repeatedly screaming "Goodknight!? Goodknight!? GOODKNIGHT!?" as we watch him skulk through a succession of dark rooms. Say it aloud a couple of times, and you'll begin to understand why I eventually started shouting "SO GO TO BED ALREADY!" at my TV whenever Leonard opened his mouth.)

 

And it all leads up to the most nihilistic ending I think I've ever seen, with just about everyone dying a horrible death... but that's okay, the movie assures us, because it'll push the value of the final issue of Robot Ninja way up, thereby allowing the local comic book store owner to live happily ever after. Gee, I'm glad everything worked out okay. 

 

In some ways, perhaps, Bookwalter was simply ahead of his time. It could be said that Leonard Miller is simply the spiritual forerunner of Ben Affleck's character in Chasing Amy; clearly the two share the same devotion to the integrity of their work. And although Leonard doesn't bed any lesbians over the course of Robot Ninja's 80-minute running time, he does manage to get his ass kicked by Gody Sanchez (Maria Markovic), who certainly looks the part, at least in terms of Hollywood stereotypes. (Remember Vasquez, from Aliens? Gody's a lot like that, only less cuddly.) 

 

But I don't want to sound more critical than necessary, because there are things the film gets right. I love movies that reveal the passions of their creators, and it's clear that comic books are, or at least were, a passion to J.R. Bookwalter when he wrote the screenplay. Although I don't share this infatuation, I always admire a movie that tries to bring me into a world I know little or nothing about, rather than merely recycling the same generic set-pieces from movie to movie. (Check out the ultra-cool comic-book style transitions Bookwalter uses to link locales together! It's a technique he'd recycle a few years later in Polymorph as well.)

 

Robot Ninja is by no means a good film, but it manages, at least in its opening half, to show an uncommon amount of reverence for both itself and its subject matter. Kudos for that, if nothing else.

 

Robot Ninja is only available on VHS. Good luck finding a copy, though.