Reviewed by

Christopher Armstead

Akira Saito (Sho Kosugi) is a peaceful man, living in his home of Japan working as a grocery executive while taking care of his wife Aiko (Donna K. Benz) and their boys Takeshi (Shane Kosugi) and Tomoya (Kane Kosugi). Alas all of this joy isn’t enough for Aiko who desires to go back home to America. Akira isn’t so sure about this because America is one violent ass place but Aiko assures him that he just watches too much television. If Akira wants to do one thing it would be make his lady happy and so it is off to America. Besides, if anything happens to Aiko or the boys the perpetrators of this crime had best ‘Pray for Death’.

Before he jumps on that Jet Plane, Akira who is secretly like the greatest Ninja ever, has to consult with his sensei (Robert Ito) who warns him of holding on to the past because it will kill him. When Akira nods in agreement and Sensei attempts to give Akira a ninja gift, Akira politely refuses attempting to leave the past behind. Sensei THEN says something like ‘you can’t step away from the shadows’ or something. What is it Sensei? Do I forget the past or do I embrace the past? Make up your mind. Worst Sensei Ever.

So the Saito’s arrive in the worst neighborhood in America’s worst city. I don’t know if they ever told us where this is, but let’s go with Los Angeles. Since the Saito’s are Asian and since they are in America, what do they do? They open a restaurant of course. The problem with this restaurant is that there is a back room that the previous owner never bothered with that criminals use to keep illegal goods to transfer to one another. It’s stupid, but this is what they do. Today’s transferable illegal good is the legendary Van Adder Necklace. The cop that stole this necklace was supposed to put in the location, but he decided to keep it for himself and then feigned ignorance when the bad people quizzed him about it.

This does not make big-time mobster Mr. Newman (Michael Constantine) or his right hand man Limehouse Willie (Robert Booth) very happy. At first they figured the old man who sold the Saito’s the restaurant stole it. But after Limehouse Willie beat him with a crowbar and set him on fire and he still had no answers, they figure it wasn’t him. Then they surmise that the Saito’s stole it. After they kidnap one kid, slice up

Akira, rundown the same kid and the wife with a pickup and he still had no answers, they figure it wasn’t him either. Still gotta die though. Mainly because he’s a ‘slant-eyed bastard’, ‘chink’, ‘yellow bellied sap sucker’ or any other derogatory term that can be used against Asians. Saito, now back in Full Ninja Mode, warned Limehouse Willie not to screw with him or his family or he will be Praying for Death, but Limehouse Willie didn’t hear any of that. Limehouse Willie heard just the opposite of that. Aiko and the little boy are laid up in the hospital under full police protection. Worst. Cops. Ever. Actually the cops in ‘Ninja III: Domination’ are the worst cops ever, but these are a close second.

This is not a good turn of events. The cop in charge warns the grieving husband ‘Not to do anything Stupid!’ Akira didn’t hear any of that. He heard just the opposite of that. In fact Akira is pretty much dead now with only Death Ninja remaining. He retreats to the hideout, forges himself some Hanzo Steel, and gets ready to kill everybody. Except for Limehouse Willie who surprisingly is a tough out. Still, he eventually ended up praying for death. Seriously.

We have an awful lot Ninja films on this little site with ‘Pray for Death’ falling somewhere in the middle of the pack. It’s not as good as the recently released Ninja and is scads better than ‘Ninja Mission’, arguably the worst Ninja movie ever made, but there are some things in this Ninja flick which did make it enjoyable to watch.

First there’s the late James Booth who took his character of Limehouse Willie to the depths of hell while at the same time going completely over the top. That’s not easy to do. This cat burnt an old man to death, raped and murdered a helpless woman, punched a little kid dead square in the grill, shot a cop in broad daylight in a crowded restaurant and gave the world’s greatest ninja everything he could handle. In the beginning of this movie we saw this alleged great Ninja beat a ninja relatively easily who was supposed to be his equal, his brother no less, but this stiff moving old man with his axes and chainsaws and various mannequin appendages nearly beat this dude damn near to death.

When the movie wasn’t absolutely side splittingly funny, like watching Shane Kosugi and his jerryrigged ninja bike, which was awesome, or watching the dojo battle where a six foot, sixteen year old black belt beats the living hell out a six year old kid wearing a white belt via ‘demonstration’… what’s up with that… we enjoyed watching Sho Kosugi kill everybody. He even killed pickup trucks.

Sure the movie was consistently stupid and we would like to know how a man can look at a piece of thread and know that a person is left-handed, weighs around 220, has a moustache and visits his mother on every third Thursday. I don’t care if he is a ninja, he shouldn’t know all that from a piece of thread. Some of the fight scenes are suspect since it looked as if some of the non-martial artist involved were more concerned with not getting hurt than anything else, but the action was plentiful, the comedy was high and James Booth was off the chain. Limehouse Willie. Arguably the most reprehensible movie villain ever.