In 2019 I observed “Ninjanuary” by writing a series of articles and reviews on ninjas in pop culture. As part of that series I wrote about Enter the Ninja and Revenge of the Ninja, two of the Cannon films produced by Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus that kickstarted the ninja craze in America in the 1980s. I mentioned that there was a third Golan-Globus ninja movie, but I didn’t have a copy for reference so I put off reviewing it; since it stars a female ninja (sort of), I also referred to it when writing about the “lady ninja” subgenre. Now, with a copy of Scream Factory’s Blu-ray edition in hand, I am able to complete the Cannon ninja trilogy with a belated Ninjanuary look at Ninja III: The Domination.

Ninja III begins with a Japanese assassin (David Chung) attacking a golfer–we later learn the victim was an important scientist–and his entourage early in the morning. First wiping out the victim’s bodyguards and then the victim himself, the ninja is unable to make his escape before more police arrive on motorcycles, in squad cars, and even in a helicopter. He takes them all on, and like the cold opening of Enter the Ninja, this nearly fifteen-minute sequence shows off all of the ninja’s skills and tricks, from mastery of stealth, martial arts, and the deadly blade to more fantastical feats: after crushing a golf ball in his bare hand to warn off one of the bodyguards, the ninja fires a dart directly into the barrel of a gun being pointed at him, causing it to explode in his attacker’s hand! The ninja climbs trees and attacks from the air; he kills the pilot of a helicopter and jumps into a lake before the craft crashes; then he lies in wait under the surface of the water, breathing through a bamboo tube until he is discovered by one of the cops, whom he promptly kills by turning the tube into a blowgun! Eventually, the ninja is surrounded, and even then he kills a bunch more cops before enough men with guns circle around him to riddle him with bullets. Seemingly beaten, he has one more trick: he throws down a smoke grenade and disappears! Only after the police have split up to continue their search does the ninja emerge from the ground where he had quickly buried himself.

Finally free of the police but mortally wounded, the ninja wanders through the desert outside the golf course until he comes across the only living soul he sees: Christie Ryder (Lucinda Dickey), a telephone line worker. He accosts her and, seeming to hypnotize her with the sound of his voice and penetrating gaze, gives her his blood-stained sword before dying. Cut to the police station, where Christie has reported finding the body, but seems to have no memory of the encounter. It’s not until later, when she breaks up an attempted gang-rape using high-kicking martial arts moves, that she suspects something has changed. She starts experiencing blackouts, not knowing that during her missing hours she is an entirely different person, recovering the dead ninja’s equipment and hunting down the surviving police officers who killed him, taking them out one by one. One of those men is her new boyfriend, officer Billy Secord (Jordan Bennett)–will she kill him, too, or will her love overpower the spirit that has taken possession of her?

Ninja III was directed by Sam Firstenberg, who also helmed Revenge of the Ninja, which had been a sizeable hit (helped by Cannon’s distribution deal with MGM). In looking for a novel twist on the format to follow up Revenge (and keeping with the unconnected narratives of the previous installments), Firstenberg and the producers hit upon the idea of a female ninja, inspired by the recent smash hit Flashdance. (Cannon was famous for exploiting popular trends: Breakin’, about the then-current fad for hip-hop break dancing, was filmed after Ninja III, but it was made and released so quickly that it actually came out before it in 1984, “introducing” star Lucinda Dickey to the public and making Ninja III her follow-up.)

Instead of drawing on the kunoichi or “lady ninja” subgenre, mostly unknown in America, they constructed a story (scripted by James R. Silke) in which an ordinary woman, a beautiful blue-collar telephone linewoman and part-time aerobics instructor–someone you would meet on the street every day, in other words–was possessed by the spirit of an evil ninja, introducing supernatural imagery in the vein of The Exorcist and Poltergeist (including lasers and fog pouring out of open doors, a glowing sword floating in mid-air, and a full-fledged exorcism scene). Most of the crazy things that happen in this film are rooted in the cinematic need for spectacle and novelty rather than a particular take on Japanese martial arts or the mythology of the ninja, but it is worth noting that in Eric Van Lustbader’s popular novel The Ninja, which I wrote about last year, a woman is hypnotized and turned into a killer by the evil ninja, and in The Domination the same forbidden technique, the “nine-hands-cutting,” is even referenced by the exorcist who recognizes the presence of the ninja’s spirit.

While Christie and Billy try to get to the bottom of her blackouts (including the visit to the aforementioned exorcist, played by the ubiquitous James Hong), another ninja is on her trail: Yamada, played by Sho Kosugi (star of the previous installments in the trilogy), arrives from Japan, summoned by the monks from a local temple. Yamada has a history with the “black ninja,” having lost his eye to him in an encounter shown in flashback. Yamada wears as an eyepatch a tsuba, the removable guard from a Japanese sword; it’s a cool look. Interestingly, in the Blu-ray commentary, Firstenberg describes Yamada as the bad guy, but I didn’t see him that way. The black ninja is his quarry, not Christie; the question remains whether he will be able to defeat the black ninja without killing his unwilling host, but that doesn’t make him a villain.

Or maybe I’m supposed to have been rooting for the black ninja all along? Obviously, there’s a vicarious thrill in watching Christie stalk and kill the cops (every time she recognizes one of her targets, there’s a flashback to the black ninja dancing in slow motion as he is cut down by bullets, with the recognition that this or that cop was there, pulling the trigger). And she uses her new powers for good at least once, when she beats up the would-be rapists. For all I know, the scientist killed at the beginning of the movie was conducting germ warfare experiments on orphans and he deserved it. But the rest of the film is framed as a possession story, with Christie terrified by her blackouts and the weird visions she experiences in her apartment.  Yamada is a frightening, intense presence, but he’s also her best hope of getting her life back. (If anything, the film suggests that it’s the black ninja who’s lucky to be Lucinda Dickey for a while, especially a scene in which she drowns one of the cops, along with his two girlfriends, after sexing him up in a hot tub: there’s that Cannon magic!)

But never mind. It’s clear that real-world logic doesn’t apply, so it’s best not to get hung up on details. There’s no point in observing that it seems to be business-as-usual at the police station the same day that dozens of officers were killed in a single incident. Similarly, the rape attempt I’ve alluded to occurs in broad daylight (and in full view of a crowd, including a police officer) right outside the doors of the gym, apparently the assailants’ regular workout place. In fact, after Christie saves the day, Billy Secord arrests her, and this is apparently the moment that changes her mind from rejecting his advances to inviting him home for a hot scene involving V-8 juice (par for the course for this bonkers movie, both Firstenberg and Bennett claim that they came up with this bit of business)! (But again, maybe it was the black ninja who wanted to jump Billy’s bones.) Cannon films in general followed the “rule of cool” when it came to story logic, so if you’re left unsatisfied with one scene, another one is coming up that might please you more.

Actually, the ending is probably the weakest part of the film, although the climactic fight between Yamada and Christie-as-the-black-ninja is quite intense. Perhaps it’s that as the action narrows down, it becomes more predictable, without the odd details that make the rest of the movie so much fun. Or maybe it’s that the infectious synth-pop songs that form the soundtrack of the first part of the film (it could almost be a musical in the first act) give way to more generic action music. In any case, there is more than enough going on in this movie to consider it one of the most ridiculous action movies of the decade (and that’s saying something). It’s held together by committed performances from Dickey (a former Solid Gold dancer in her first acting role) and Bennett; in interviews, both leads describe the making of Ninja III as a challenging but positive experience (considering some of the horror stories related in the Cannon documentary Electric Boogaloo, they got off easy). Stunt coordinator Steve Lambert and his crew were young men with a lot to prove, delivering one action set piece after another; amazingly, there were no serious injuries according to Lambert. And of course, Sho Kosugi had previously worked with Firstenberg and the two of them had worked out how to make the best use of Kosugi’s talents on screen.

It’s all fantasy, of course, more than most movies of this kind, but the kind of fantasy that doesn’t get too bogged down in its own mythology, and it’s serious about delivering action and thrills even if the story isn’t very serious at all. As an amusing postscript, in the second-season episode of DC’s Legends of Tomorrow, “Shogun,” the time-traveling superheroes end up in medieval Japan. Mick Rory, the roughneck character played by Dominic Purcell, knows one thing about Japan–ninjas–and everything he knows about ninjas he learned from the movies, including Ninja III: The Domination. It’s a funny gag, but it’s even funnier if you’ve seen the movie.