Bad Movie Club: Robot Ninja

1989 melancholy action movie

Bad Movie Rating: 4/5 (Fred: 1/5; Josh: 4/5; Johnny: 1/5; Jeremy: did not finish)

Rating: 3/20

Plot: A comic book artist decides to actually become the hero he draws adventures for, a hero who is neither a robot or a ninja. He meets his match once he encounters an overweight woman with a bandanna though.

"I am the robot ninja, and I kick ass."

You might think that poster up there looks pretty bad, but the movie actually might be worse. You ever watch an action movie and think it has comic relief but then realize that you're unsure whether or not it's actually supposed to be comic relief? That's what happened to me here. I mean, "Good night, Goodknight." Maybe that's supposed to be funny, but I really couldn't be sure and I couldn't get to sleep afterward as I tried to figure it all out. And you keep thinking that this movie can't be as bad as it seems to be since Burt Ward wouldn't be associated with anything bad. Or David Decoteau who produced this and apparently had himself a cameo. My favorite thing about the entire movie is the song, a slab of 80's electro-inspired funk that details the entire plot of the movie. It plays over the credits just in case anybody who watched this was confused by the complex plot about a guy dressing up as a robot ninja and getting beaten up by rapists. This movie was obnoxiously gruesome, especially one scene where the main character--following a rough battle with the main villain. She's played by Maria Markovic, a woman of indeterminate sexuality who loves her puns as much as she loves raping and her bandanna. It's not a good performance, and if you made a list of every single comic book villain ever, she'd likely wind up at the bottom of the list. Strangely, this movie kind of anticipates Kick Ass, but you have to squint pretty hard and tilt your head to one side to see the similarities. Back to that ultraviolence--this not only hurls all this ridiculously cheap and gross imagery at you, but it adds more squelching sounds than you're likely to hear in a movie. This movie might be--pound for pound--more squelchy than any movie ever, and that includes pornography. Violence is rarely as funny as it is here. Gun barrels pierce clayish heads, hands are lopped off, a woman who is shot in the back several times swan-dives herself forward in a ridiculous death scene, and a dude is stabbed several times, shot a few times, and then finally kicked to death. Along with the violence, the writer of this--J.R. Bookwalter--went out of his way to insert a lot of curse words to ensure that this would receive an R-rating. He didn't need to because the sight of Maria Markovic was probably enough.

Scott Spiegel, a "Fake Shemp" in Evil Dead II, plays a character named Marty Coleslaw. Marty Coleslaw--let that sink in for a minute.

Original BMC Jockass Fred says this is the second worst movie we've seen together behind the painful Curse of Bigfoot. I think, based on his rating, that he didn't mean this as a positive thing.