Make Mine An American Ninja

Holy Shit! Michael Dudikoff has a fucking website! You can check out the awesomeness here.

While that marinates, I'll tell you that I loved American Ninja as a kid. Apparently, what made it so awesome to me (and probably to the people who made it as well) was that I was oblivious to the idea that ninja are supposed to be stealthy. I mean, the whole concept of a ninja is NOT to be seen and the first thing these ninja do is ambush an army convoy in the middle of the day!

The film centers around a amnesiac super ninja who joins the Army in order drive a truck (doesn't the Army have any skill assessment tests?) and ends up saving a colonel's daughter (so, Hugo Chavez here has the US Army at his disposal?) from a guy named Black Star Ninja (pictured). No, he isn't the most metal band name that you've ever heard, but rather a super fucking badass ninja general who has a fucking laser on his arm (no kidding).

This film is like Rambo 2 if it had been written by A Rebel Without a Cause and sponsored by Blockbuster Video. Apparently, Chuck Norris was originally cast in the lead role, but once he realized that his beard would be covered up in the ninja outfit, he wisely declined in favor of Missing in Action 2: The Beginning. Unlike that film, this one is something my older brother would have written when he was 9, in-between ordering ninja-stars out of magazines.

A few questions that arise while viewing this masterpiece: Would it really be necessary to tell your driver to "follow him" when you're chasing someone? Why don't I have a portrait that depicts John Wayne's disembodied head floating over a desert landscape? Why can't "ninja magic" solve more of life's problems? And most importantly, why would a younger me love this film quite so much?

Rated "R" movies that I couldn't watch when I was too young seem especially quaint now. The idea that there was a time, a me, that wasn't allowed to watch a movie where the worst fight choreographers in the world were gathered together in order to convince the audience that a guy who didn't even know martial arts was the top dog ninja of the land and killed other ninjas with his shinobi-tastic moves is just strange. It's a weird connection to the past that brings on an eerie nostalgia for the days when Nightmare on Elm Street was scary and the only thing to do with a frisbee was to play Tron with it. That link to the days when the bad guys in most movies had an uzi reminds me that things have changed a lot since the days of Reagan, but Ninja will always be cool.

UPDATE 4/7/10: Apparently, Michael Dudikoff's web page has been shut down for failure to pay web-hosting fees, so as a replacement, I give you this. (There's even a phone number?)