Joe Armstrong, an orphaned drifter will little respect for much other than martial arts, finds himself on an American Army base in The Philippines after a judge gives him a choice of enlistment or prison. On one of his first missions driving a convoy, his platoon is attacked by a group of rebels who try to steal the weapons the platoon is transporting and kidnap Patricia, the base colonel's daughter, who happens to be along for the ride. Joe rescues Patricia and gets her safely back to the base, but everyone else in the platoon is killed, leading his superiors to conclude that Joe is guilty of cowardice, collaboration or simple incompetence. At the same time, the rebel leader vows revenge against the serviceman who disrupted his plans, and sends an army of ninjas to assassinate him and bring back Patricia. If he wants to survive and save the girl, Joe's going to have to draw on every last ounce of his training.

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American Ninja on IMDB

American Ninja on Wikipedia

10 Fun Facts on American Ninja

Hello, everybody. Welcome back to the podcast Retro Life for you. My name is Chris Adams, host of the show, and with me off to the right of my screen here is none other than oh, yeah, but himself. I mean, I mean, Travis Rollins himself.

Yeah, buddy. What's happening?

Not a lot is really going on. I mean, I'm still recovering from last week's episode, man.

Oh, yeah.

Last week. We did Sin City. So I'm still recovering from all that black and white screen going on and all that killing.

And I had Babe. Awesomeness.

It was so much, so much black and white movie, and it felt like I was back in the only black and white movie I want to see. Part of is wizard of Oz.

You don't watch it in Technicolor?

Well, it starts out in black and white and then it jumps to the color.

That's true. That's true. Anyway, sometimes I turn the color on my TV all the way down just to watch a movie in black and white for nostalgia.

I think you're lying.

I might be.

I think you're lying just a bit because I want to see the TV that allows you to turn your color all the way down.

You know why I think black and white? Doesn't bother me too bad, to be honest. At not 1615. So from the ages of about twelve to 14, I got my own TV. But it was a Handmedown from grandma's house, and it was the old dial. Click, click.

And it was black and white.

It was black and white, baby.

Hey, I'm right there with you.

I had to play my Super Nintendo. First video game I ever bought and paid for myself. First one I ever had, I bought and paid for myself because Nintendo's was Sega's was expensive, but I could plug my Super Nintendo into it. So three more months of saving and I got me a little color.

Know, my first TV was black and white as well. You're talking about the dials. You turn the old dials and everything. So I watched whatever I watched in my room on the black and white screen for probably the first six months or so that I had a television. And then my birthday been coming up, so I was like, for my birthday, I want a color TV. And so it was still a small 13 inch TV.

Yeah, absolutely.

Because back then you were lucky if you got a TV at all as a kid in your room, much less anything else. So 13 inch screen was just the acceptable thing. That's what you got.

No doubt.

Yeah, I remember with you on all that.

What was funny, too, my mom would punish me and she didn't realize that I was the electronautical genius that I am. So she'd come in and do mean stuff. Like instead of taking my VCR and my TV, she took the cord to it, the little coaxial cable.

Yeah.

All right. For all you musician children out there, little life hack used to take guitar string and just stick a piece of the guitar string from one end to the other. You don't need the outside. That's just shielding. So as long as you put the guitar string inside the center of the coaxle, there you go. The rest of it's just shielding for outside interference.

All right, jokes on you, mom.

Can't stop me. I was like, Macklemore, they can't hold us down.

That's right. They always thought we were just the dumb old kids, didn't they?

She didn't realize I was a ninja with it.

That's right. And ninjas survive. That's what the rock group Europe used to sing. Had a song they had a song called Ninja. And it was like, Ninja survive. I forget the words, too, but that was the whole aspect of it.

Ninja, motorcycles. Hey, you know how many ninjas it takes to change it? Where'd that light bulb come from?

Oh, my God. You guys can't see this, but if we ever decide to release videos, this dupus over here has got a name under his name. It's, of course. Travis but it says underneath redheaded ninja. You mean ginger.

Ginger. Yeah. That's the box where I'm supposed to put my email or something like that.

But I like stuff in there. He got to be creative, right?

That's right.

It's okay. I don't blame you at all. I say go for it, man. Go for it.

Yeah. I wonder what? Is there any good Ninja movies from the you think?

That's an excellent question because in the 80s, ninjas was a big thing for a little bit. I think early as 1980, you seen the Octagon and Enter the Ninja. And then it started going from there. And in 1985, Sam Furstenberg brings us American Ninja.

American Ninja.

American Ninja.

An American. What is it? Nagasaki Clan. Nagamaki. Nagamuko. There's some famous Ninja clan over there right now. It's like the only Ninja clan that still exists. And they're like the Nagasaki clan. Nagamaki. Nagamuki something know.

I have no earthly idea what you're talking about.

Yes.

You say mean, the first thing comes to mind is a wrestler kindo Nagasaki back from the that's that's what I think. I want to hear that. Or, I mean, I don't know. Wasn't it also a motorcycle? I'm not sure.

Might have been. That might have been. It was a Nagasaki. The Kawasaki. That was like the off brand Kawasaki.

The Nagasaki 2000. Guaranteed a slice and dice, the competition.

Right.

Anyway, Sam Furstenberg brings us American Ninja 1985. And for this movie, they went through 2000 people. Sam Furstenberg and others, they auditioned 2000 different guys to narrow it down to 200. And they were looking for something specific. And they ended up bringing in Michael Dudeikov to take the role. At the time, he had his James Dean look going to him. And they kind of liked the fact that he had know, James Dean look, he was kind of quiet, had like a chip on the shoulder kind of feel. And that's how they presented their character, Joe armstrong as American ninja. And they say it was perfect for it. One of the people that recommended him to I think was Minahem Golan. I think it's how you say his name, golan, golan. Golan. But he said, you got to get that dudekov kid. And so they talked with him and they had a screening with him and some other girl. And in another room they had a screening with Chad McQueen and Judy Aronson. And they ended up taking Michael Dudikov and Judy Aronson, but not Chad McQueen and the other girl, Kurt McKinney. Do you know who Kurt McKinney is, by the way?

I don't.

Kurt McKinney, if you've ever seen no Retreat, No Surrender, that's another one that's.

Been years on top of years.

Yeah, it was one of Van Damme's earliest movies. He was a bad guy, played a bad guy Russian fighter that was brought in.

Hair slick back, black.

Yeah, yeah, that's the one. So Kurt McKinney is the kid that plays Jason stillwell in it. He auditioned for the role of American Ninja, but they said he just looked too young.

Okay.

Wasn't quite where they wanted him. Guess. You know, for those who don't know what the American Ninja movie is about, based on a character, Joe Armstrong, who is an orphaned drifter, and he finds himself in some trouble, which they don't really show you this it's? Told later on in the movie. But he had found himself in trouble with the law and he got choices of either going to prison or enlisting in the army. He enlisted in the army and goes forward from there. But he has had trouble with memory over the years. He was in an explosion as a teenager, lost his memory of who he was, where he came from and all this stuff. So he went through a rough patch of years, I guess you would say, due to that. And of course being back in army, everything starts coming, everything comes back around. Ultimately it's in place.

I would just want to say, too that the opening of this movie, I absolutely love it. It felt like the beginning of this movie. The first thing I noticed, like, dude, it had such an at vibe. Like that first opening where they were in the car, and then the guerrilla mercenaries or war army or whatever. It was the military unit, and they were escorting the girl or whatever, but that opening shot where they pulled the tractor around and that felt like I was like, oh, boy, this is going to be fun to rewatch this, man. Because it just gave me such a team feelings, right.

The way they started it off. Kind of set the pace for the movie, too, because you kind of get an introduction to what the Joe Armstrong character is. He doesn't speak for the first 14 minutes of the movie, I don't think. Yeah, so, I mean, you get a feel for him. He's a loner kind of guy. He's standing by himself up against one of the trucks, the truck he's going to be driving, I guess, in this convoy thing. And he's just sitting there flipping a butterfly knife over and over, opening it, closing it, opening it, closing it. That's all he's doing. You got some other people off to the side. One of the characters named Charlie who's got a bit role in the movie, they're doing hacky Sack. And Charlie comes over and says, hey, I'm great at this. Let me show you how it's done. Back in California, where I'm from, we do this all the so they all have this thing against the quiet guess, right? You know, the quiet kid's always a weird kid. So since Joe's always know, they're always messing with him. So they kick the hacky sack ball over toward him and they want him to throw it back. And he won't do it. He just ignores them and stares at them. So it kind of sets the pace in a way with that of what kind of character he is to start with. And then you get into, like you said, straight into the action. The convoy is going, there's a roadblock, and they're there to steal whatever they've.

Got on the yeah. And yeah, I loved it, man, because it was so funny, too, because I was like after the Sin City thing last week. So we've got a running thing with Chris and I now. And it started with Summer Rental. So I was like, you know what? I'm going to get on here. I'm going to watch this movie and I'm going to come back. Even though I love 80s cheese, I was going to come back and start dogging on the movie, just mess with Chris. But I'm telling you, I cannot dog on this movie. This movie is good. It really is. I was expecting it to be more of that good old 80s cheese I love than what it is. It's legit, man. It's a really good movie. I liked everything about it.

It's got some good action to it, some good action sequences, some good fight sequences.

Early on, I guess I look at it as a B rated film, like a B movie. But after watching it again, this isn't a B movie.

I used to think of it as a B rated movie with an A movie feel. Yeah, truly. Because B movies were usually filmed in a certain way to where even the way the camera filmed it, the camera style, it just looked like a cheap movie.

Right?

This didn't give it the appearance or a feel of a cheap movie, although it only had a $1 million budget for the movie.

And the fight scenes weren't terrible for the day either.

No. Michael Dudeikov, coming into the movie had had no martial arts experience.

Right.

He learned some things on set now. He eventually went on to earn a black belt. And I want to say it's in jiu jitsu, if I'm not wonder if.

You'D learn that Gracie style.

I don't remember what kind of I think it was Jiu Jitsu, though. I'd have to look that up completely. It's not on the trivia part on IMDb that I was looking at earlier. But I know that he'd learn and got a black belt in something. And there was some on screen angst between him and Steve James because Steve James did know some martial arts going in and Dudeikov was afraid that that would overshadow him, make him look bad. So they filmed a lot of their scenes on separate parts of the place, location they were at, so they didn't have to see one or the other.

I think that was because James actually had a martial arts background.

Yes, he had a martial arts background in it.

Yeah. He wasn't very happy about all that. I don't know, about halfway through filming, they kind of got together and you know what I mean? Made friendly, I guess.

Yeah. Well, they kind of, for lack of better terms, kissed and made up without the kiss, I guess. Right. But they got over their stuff, I guess. They talked things out and got over things, and it was good. The main people in this movie. Michael Dudeikov, steve James, judy Aronson. The guy that played the opposing ninja was Tadashi Yamashita. And he was in a couple of other great things also in the were ninja related or martial arts related?

I loved when he went full on naruto there at the end and put his hands together and then disappeared.

No, that's not Tadashi Yamashida. No, that's John Fujioka. He was the one that you find out later on was the master, I guess, for Shinjuki. He's the one that does that. And then he disappeared. Well, disappears and reappears out in front.

Of him, I couldn't tell.

Tadasi Yamashida was the black star ninja, the main villain.

He was the one that had the red writing down the left side of.

His yeah, of course, then you had a couple of side characters. Don Stewart as Ortega and John LAMATA as Ronaldo. Ronaldo, I think, was the no, no, that was Ortega. Wasn't sergeant Ortega was a sergeant. Sergeant Ortega, I believe.

Oh, yeah, yeah.

And then Ronaldo was the guy, I guess, who was trying know, sell the.

Arms and stuff like I don't you know what? I like Jackson's character.

It is fun character. And he's more fun in American Ninja Two, the follow up, if you ever get a chance to watch it, go ahead and take a look at it. But it's nothing to rush after. But he is a better overall character in the second one, I think.

Right.

You're just getting to know him in the first one, because him and other guys, they go strictly by the book on things, and they're a close knit group of guys. And then Joe kind of stands out from Know. Of course, now you started off talking about the convoy being hijacked and everything. That's where you get your first real feel of what Joe Armstrong's character is like. I mean, he's not giving up. He's not giving up his truck or anything. He doesn't think that they should be taking the hijacking so easily, like, so he he initiates the fight back.

Well, he pretty much complied until old boy slapped a girl and tried to throw her in the back of the car.

Right.

He was pretty much being a good.

Boy, but then decided he wasn't going to be a good boy anymore.

No, you don't put your hands on a woman in Merca.

That's right. And they wasn't even in Merca. They was in the Philippines.

That's right.

That's where the base was, philippines.

He was like using that shovel when he stuck the shovel in her face and stopped the arrow with it.

That was really cool. When I first seen this movie the first time, that was very cool at the beginning of it. Set the pace for his abilities and everything. Not only was he doing the fights where even little things like he threw a screwdriver, like a throwing knife, he threw the four way lug wrench at the one guy, him in the face and all that.

I'm glad you said that, because while I was watching I just rewatched this today, and I didn't get to see all of it. I missed about the last, I say quarter of the movie. But then I went and YouTube the final scene, so I'd at least have that much in my memory banks because I remember watching this when I was a kid, but I don't remember it well. But dude, I hope after talking to Diane a few weeks back, I really hope that that was not a real four way glove wrench, because can you imagine getting a full catching a four way lug wrench to the jaw and throat?

No, I can't hit him with it either.

He threw it like he like a ninja star.

Yeah, like a giant throwing star or something.

Dude. Oh, my God, I got another pun. Can I throw this four way lug wrench like a ninja star? Sure can.

Sure can.

Sure can. But, dude, you all see why I.

Keep him around every week. You see why he is rather humorous when he wants to be sometimes.

Yeah, that was sucked, though. But I tell you what was funny, though, was when he pulled that arrow out of the shovel handle and he looked at him and he snapped it. And it was just a moment for me where I was like, this whole scene was so awesome until that, because it looked like a bamboo sprig pulled up out of the ground. Like it was so tiny.

But it was a cool scene, though. I mean, he fights the guy. You see the ninjas are getting ready to fire on him. As soon as he puts the guy down, he falls back on that pickaxe. He has the shovel handle in hand, and you see the Blackstar ninja signal him to fire. He just smacks the two arrows out of the way. And then the third one catches it with the handle, stops it with the handle catching it, and then pulls it off and looks at him and just snaps it at him like, you know what? You ain't nothing, dude.

Yeah. I was like, okay, this movie is going to be pretty good. I feel like in the sequence of shooting scenes in the movie, I feel like that 1 may be a little bit earlier than some of the other stuff that I saw, because I like how they strategically kind of cut away or chopped it up to where when he actually was throwing kicks, you didn't really get to see him throw a kick. You say you didn't get to see his horrible form or anything at that time, I'm sure. You know what I mean? He got better.

Yeah. I think they actually refer to stuff like that as, like, studio fighting because it's more camera angle and camera work than it is fighting skills in any way. There's a lot of people out there that can't throw a good kick or couldn't throw a good kick even at the time and maybe learn better later. But with the camera angle, the way it turns, it looks like they're about to turn into, like a roundhouse kick, but they don't. And the next camera angle on the chest yeah, the next camera wrangle is the foot on the chest. Exactly. It looks like they're turning around and the next thing you see is the foot in the chest them flying back or something. Yeah.

And it works, though. That's what I thought was cool about it. I was like, okay, but I saw why they were doing it through knowing that he didn't have the background when he started the movie. You know what I mean? I thought that was a really cool Hollywood trick.

Then. So the next big scene for me at that point was where Jackson confronts him about what happened at that little thing there. He said, we lost a lot of good friends because of what she was doing. And he told, you know, we left glory boys like you back in Nam because Glory Boys like you get people said, you know, are you like a glory boy or something like that? Whatever he called him.

Yeah, he was doing that. If I'm not mistaken, he did that because he rushed in to save the girl that they slapped. So Jackson was saying that he was a loner wanting to do things his way, not thinking about the team.

Right. So then they had this little confrontation between the two. And Jackson is supposed to be the real baddie of the he can he can box, he can do the judo and all this other stuff in karate. And so they get in, he doesn't lay a hand on Armstrong. And all Armstrong does to him is just keep tossing him, flipping know, whatever you do. And then he gives him one big chance. At the end of it, he hands him a big I don't know if it was a shovel handle or whatever it was, and he puts a pail on his head, a bucket that he would be carrying water around in, and he puts it over his head where he can't see. And he's kneeled down on one knee, pointing at his head, like, Go ahead, take your shot. And when he comes down with his shot on him, he catches him at the wrist, flips him on over and takes the thing from him and stops like, an inch over his nose.

Look at the flick of a wrist.

And it's like the crowd was turning on him. Jackson yeah. Taunting him toward the end of it.

It was cool, too, though, because back in the day, that's how we did things, man. I loved how he got up at the end and was like, man, you all right? You know what I mean? He said that's enough. And then he was like, You I and then he took up for him when the sergeant came by and everything.

We used to try to make it look like they were given a display or something.

Yeah, stuff like that. We had a problem with swing them bowls, man. And then once it was over with, everything was cool and we was friends back in the day.

Yeah. Today they just pull a gun out and shoot each other. It's a shame. Anything about this movie stand out to you as your favorite? Let me rephrase it before I ask you this question. Were you a big fan of the ninja genre when you were growing up? Did you watch many of the ninja movies?

It wasn't so much the ninja stuff as much as it was just the action and fighting, so you know what I mean? Like, I had seen some of them. I do remember. I think. American Ninja Four. I remember it pretty well.

So that had the Joe Armstrong character's return was in part four. Yeah, he was fighting along with the Sean character. That came in part three, David Bradley played.

And I remember there was like an American samurai movie, but I guess that ain't the same thing. But what was it? Revenge of the ninja. Ninja versus Shaolin. But I didn't watch a whole whole bunch of them.

And it's funny, you get these three movies enter the Ninja, Revenge of the Ninja and Ninja Three, the domination.

Yeah.

That sounds like a trilogy of ninja movies, right?

It does.

One has nothing to do with the other. The only thing it's like Highlander, right? Has nothing to do with the previous films. The only thing that's the same in these three movies is Shokasugi. He's the bad guy in the first one, and he's the good guy in the second and third one. Different characters played by the same person. I mean, just different stories and everything. It's crazy, right? So I had something for you on American ninja here. I told you before, it's $1 million budget estimated, this great b movie with an a feel. How much money do you think it made to box office gross worldwide?

Shoot, if it came out so it came out of box. What was the budget on it?

$1 million estimated.

12 million.

You're actually close 10 million. 499. 694.

Really?

Yeah.

Well, I mean, when were you talking about millions? In 1985. $9 million. Don't sound that bad. Like that bad of a profit.

Opening weekend, us. And Canada, 3.2 million, september 2, 1985. Now, I don't know what it opened up against or anything. I don't know if that had something to do with it or not, but I don't think this was a movie that was ever destined to do well to box office, to be honest with you. It was a good movie, a good action movie. And guys love a good action movie, right? And it took a life of its own when it hit VHS, like a lot of other things did, and it found its little audience of people that liked it and everything, right.

Became a cult classic, right.

Worked well in its favor. Then there's another movie that I like a lot. We're not going to really discuss it, but I just want to bring it up in case anybody wants to watch it. Of course, there was American Ninja Two that he did, but if you haven't seen it yet, look up Avenging Force. I think you'll like avenging force for a Michael Dudekoff film. It's a good action movie. Back in that time.

Michael Dude.

That American samurai movie you were talking about, I just caught a glimpse of it. Yeah, it looks like it's got David Bradley in it. And Mark dacoscus. Mark Dacoscus, if y'all aren't familiar with him, he's from only the Strong. And he had a role in that TV series, the remake of Hawai 50.

They did see, we had Mark Duce dukoscus. Dukoscus.

Michael mark Dukoskis.

Then we have now. I can't remember the guy's actual name that I messed up.

Michael, I told you I was going to bring this up. I told you I was going to bring this up.

Michael, how long ago?

This was in our first season. I can't remember.

Oh, it's been a while.

A long while. We were talking about different movies and everything, and I brought up Michael Dudeikoff. I didn't say his name yet, but I was bringing up some movies he was in, and this goober over here was like, that Michael Decakus guy. Yeah, maybe we get Michael Decakus to come on or something. And I'm like, who. I'm like who? And he's know. Did I say it wrong? Did I say something else? I said, did you say, like yeah. And I was like, the guy that ran for president.

I don't know, the politician.

I said, look, it's dudeikov, man. Dudekov. We're never going to get dudeikov to come on the show now. Thanks a lot, Travis. Thanks a lot.

Hilarious.

I was actually holding off on this movie, Travis, for the longest time, or else I think we may have done this a long time ago.

Right.

I was holding off on this movie because I had high hopes of getting Michael dudeikov to reaching out to him and see if I could get him to come on the show. Like, we have some people in the past, right, to talk about this movie and Avenging Force both, but no such luck on it. So I finally gave in.

Oh, well.

Yeah. Well, what can you mean?

You know, we get Lance and Catherine. They're friends of the I'm. If we don't make no more friends, I'll be happy. But you put Lori and Diane and Lord have mercy how we've had it. We've had some great, great interviews. So you're missing out. Michael, not us.

And once again, now he hears you say that, he definitely won't come on this show. He'd be like, no, Travis, you're missing out, sir.

You didn't hear what I just said. I said we'd still love to have you on the show.

We'll still love to have you on the show. For sure, though. Don't worry, Laurie, if you're listening, we won't tell him that story you told on him. We won't tell him or anything.

There you go.

We'll keep it quiet. We'll keep it quiet. Did you know who they originally wanted to play the role of American ninja?

I do. They wanted Chucky baby himself.

That's right.

Yeah. But they were afraid if he shaved his beard off, then the fist that's under there instead of a chin wouldn't fit in the mask.

I don't think he had a beard at the time.

Chuck didn't?

Well, I don't know. This is 85. He may have yeah, he did 85. I think he did.

He had a beard since Delta Force, didn't he?

Yeah, that's what I'm saying. I think in 85 he had one for sure. That's a good point. I mean, maybe the beard wouldn't fit under the mask. It would be so powerful that it would be trying to punch and kick its way out the mask every couple of minutes. It would look funny on him or something.

100%.

He did say, though, that he didn't want to do a movie that would cover his face up, though. Yeah, that was the reason. Why he turned it down. Do it as me. Got to do it as me.

And then as a prank I think I said this before as a prank. He peed in the gas tank of a transfer truck and Optimus Prime was born.

That's what I've heard. You know what else I've heard?

What's that?

I've heard that he once swam around the Virgin Islands twice without taking a break.

Yeah.

And now they just call it the islands.

Oh, yeah. There you go. You know, he can dry his clothes.

Really?

Yeah. No, no. Doubt. Doubt.

That's amazing, man. I wonder what all Michael dudeikov can do.

Oh, man, I probably wouldn't mess with him either. Michael's been in some michael's awesome. He's a know.

I mean, he can't run for president. Like, I mean, he could it's still.

Semi free for a little while longer, maybe.

I don't know.

We'll see where it goes.

Oh, my God. I'm sure you've probably read this, but everybody else that may not know this, in an interview with German media in 2012, michael Dudeikov revealed to them that he sweated so much during the later fight scenes because he had malaria.

Them skeeters got a hold of him.

I mean, how tough are you that you're going to keep filming a movie after you've contracted malaria?

No doubt.

I mean, I give him mad props for that. That's pretty impressive right there. I would think that would keep the average person oh, yeah, absolutely. I would have to say.

So I want to know, was Steve James I can't remember his name. Was it lucky? No. Was Steve James the dude in Weird Science that gave what's the name, the hat when they went to the club?

Yeah. I was going to tell you that Steve James and Judy Aronson were both in Weird Science together, but never in a scene together. Whenever Lisa takes Wyatt and Gary when they take him to the club, then that's where Steve James he's one of the guys in the club.

Yeah, because he gave Gary his.

In. That the guy who directed the movie, though. I'm going to save this one for in a minute. I'm going to get back to the movie for a second before we give any more little freebies or not freebie but trivia things out here. So we got to where you got armstrong and Jackson are friendly at this point and everything. Armstrong has also taken a liking to the girl that he saved early on, which turns out is none other than the general's daughter. Probably a bad thing if you're a private there to be. Trying to date the general's daughter. Not the smartest move for your career, right?

Not.

But she's into him, too, though.

Now we saw what happened when my man stole a burrito for that girl. What movie was that?

Oh, my gosh. That was Battleship.

Was it Battleship?

Yeah.

Battleship running out with the burrito.

Yeah, Battleship. That was something. Judy aronson, I absolutely love. She's great. Follow her on Instagram. She puts up some fun things on there sometimes. I've never had a conversation with her, but there's been a couple of one or two word things back and forth on a post or something. She follows she follows our instagram. She follows our instagram.

Good enough.

Yeah. And I do appreciate her for that, though. She's a very nice lady. I have tried to get her on before, but she's been so busy lately with the SAG thing, especially. She's one of the people out there picketing for sure.

Right.

But anyway, back to her again. Her character this is not my favorite character she's played. Yeah, I feel like the character she played at Patricia was really whiny and stuff. And maybe it's because they were trying know she's like the spoiled general's daughter or something. Maybe that's what it is. I don't know. But it's just kind of especially when he's saving her and he's running her through the jungle where he's saving her and he broke the heels off her shoes so she could run better and cut her skirt and tied it around her legs and all this other stuff. And she's being so whiny the whole time and mad. That was annoying. It was a little bit annoying to me.

Yeah.

But I mean, she kind of made up for it at the end, I think, though. So it was a little better. But they send him on kind of a special run. He has figured out something's going on and he don't know who yet, but the Sergeant and the general has got something to do with it and they're talking about what they can do to get rid of him. So they send him on a special run to a warehouse. Right. He's going to lose that truck, but they're hoping to take him out in the process as well, which doesn't happen. He makes it out of that also. But he also hitches a ride with the truck and ends up at the place where all this stuff happens and he gets hooked back up with his master or whatever you want to call him. Lack of better words. So that's where all his memory starts coming back. Everything comes running back to him. All of a sudden. He knows who he is and what he is and what he has to do and all this stuff. Now, I don't want to give too much more away, really. I don't want to just tell the whole movie.

Right.

I think we've probably skipped through it fairly well enough at this point that we can leave it at that. The final battle scene will come up in a little bit and that'll be the end of the movie, which I thought the final battle was good. Do you have any thoughts on the final battle?

Yeah, that was probably really my favorite part of the movie with the build up and everything. And then I thought it was hilarious because it looked like a situation they were in. But it looked like you've got this field full of ninjas out here sword fighting and hand to hand and all this. And then there's one scene or one little shot, I mean, where they show that. But then you see everybody on top of the hill in their suits and everything, like they're just cutting up, laughing, having some kind of cocktail mixer. They were talking back and forth about dealing and all. But that one shot, it was almost like an oops or a goof. Like a movie goof. Yeah, it was like they were taking a break or something all up there cutting up and laughing while all these people are down here fighting in the field.

Ninjas got to have coffee, too.

That's what I'm talking about.

And ninjas are people, too, Travis.

Ninjas are people, too. But that was a great scene. I really like that scene. That scene, to me, was the standout fight scene. I know.

That leads it to the part you were talking about you liked earlier when you talked about the teacher.

Yeah.

Then he disappears and reappears back in front of Joe and takes that knife that the other guy was throwing at.

Yeah. Yeah.

Kind of an impressive scene, though, at that point. Building up to that, he comes up over the hill, like I said, twirling the size around, takes that little pose for a second dashi yamashida's. Black star ninja immediately does a backflip behind the girl and puts a knife up to her neck. This has got to stop. So you see all the ninjas surround him and he's going to take on like what was it, like 1520 ninjas or something? It looked like that.

It was tons of them and he.

Was circling around him. Then a smoke bomb goes off and there's his master there in ninja suit with him, ready to take him on. And they end up taking on all of them and killing all of of. Before that, though, if you remember, this is kind of important because the first movie when Armstrong deflects the arrows and catches the one and breaks it. He is shooting a bow and arrow at the bad guy and it lands right before his feet. The Blackstone ninja stops him and it hits at his feet and he fires the second one, which would have got him square in the chest. But the Blackstone ninja catches it right in front of him and then holds it out and breaks it over his knee right in front of no, no. Breaks the arrow and then Armstrong breaks his bow over his knee.

Yeah.

So it's not long after that, after they have that fight, him and his master, and the master ends up dying. Spoiler alert. Sorry.

That's why I say go in front of it.

I know. Spoiler alert. I'm sorry. He reappears out of nowhere and takes a knife in the chair. Apology, spoiler apology. But at this point, we now have the army coming in. They make their appearance. The general's daughter was taken because he was going to not do the business. He was going to delay the shipment or whatever and not do business at that time they were supposed to. So they take his daughter. So he didn't appreciate that too much and he brought in the calvary. So now we got Jackson making his reappearance. He's on the ninja compound.

Who was the dude he was fighting in like the little hallway. It looked like Bolo Young's little cousin or something.

It does in a way. He's got a Bolo Young appearance to him in a sense. Like maybe he could be related to him.

He is, Jack.

For sure he is. And that was like one of the cheesiest fights, man. They are doing a couple of fights and then a couple of moves. And you see Jackson looks like he shows him his hand. All of a sudden it looks like he goes to uppercut him in the nuts. Instead, he just grabs him and squeezes. He's like, yeah, you like that, numb nuts? You like, huh?

That's hilarious.

And apparently the guy must have liked it because it didn't hurt him or anything because he starts fighting right back on him and kicks him in the groin. And then the overacting for the fight of those two at the end of it when Jackson's doing his little backhand, his elbow and whatever he does, it was just a little bit much overacting on the fight. So just wondering real quick, we'll go ahead and start wrapping this up. Hopefully everybody will check this movie out. They haven't seen it, especially if you like the ninja genre, but you didn't get to see this one back in the day or you just want to. Just a fun one to rewatch.

Yeah, I was just going to say if you don't mind watching stuff that's a little bit older, this is actually I mean, it's a fun watch, no doubt.

I do want to throw some fun trivia, just one fun trivia out that you will like if you haven't read it yet, that you'll get a kick out of. Okay. Because Furtenberg has done more movies than just this. I mean, he did three movies with dudekoff. He did. American ninja. One, two and avenging force. But director Sam Furstenberg has stated in an interview that his two favorites of the films he's directed are this one, the first American Ninja and Breaking Two Electrical.

It had to be.

He said this film has a special quality of innocence, true friendship, love, and youthful idealism. No, it's a bunch of ninjas cutting each other up.

I was going to say didn't break in, come out the year before, too.

This is breaking two.

Well, breaking two, I meant.

I think breaking two was 85.

Was it 85?

I think the first one was 84. 2nd was 85.

Okay, that's what it was.

But let's go ahead. Just out of curiosity, once again. Favorite part of the movie favorite part.

Of the movie is them talking about ninjas and bushido. Because ninjas don't follow Bashido. Bushido is the way of the blade. That's a samurai. Not dictation, but it's a thing that they talk about, not the ninjas.

What were they talking about when he said Kobadetta? The kobadetta.

I don't remember.

The says he says something to him. The teacher is saying something to the Armstrong, but he goes, Kobadetta. He goes, ninja magic.

Yeah, ninja magic.

Ninja magic.

Running from a magic. No, I think the end of fight scene truly would be my favorite.

Up.

Till before he jumped on the helicopter.

Yeah. The only thing I don't like about the ending fight scene is the extra gadgets that the Black Star Ninja had. I didn't think that was very true to the form or anything, what they were doing. I mean, for crying out loud, he had a laser on his arm that he used one time. He had the one thing that shot at like it was three bullets that shot off all one to the other, all in a row off his top of his hand. And then the flame thing from under his it was up under his wrist. And I guess he had to hit a button or something to send a flame straight out. And it was like burning the rope into they were climbing up.

Right. Actually, before we swap it over to you, I want to change that. Actually, I want to say that my favorite part of the movie was the opening scene because it got me hyped up and ready to watch it. That opening scene was just so good. Straight to the action. We didn't need no story. We didn't need to know what was going on. We just like, roll a few credits and boom, here we go.

That's what I was going to say. I was going to say it's the opening fight where he decides he doesn't appreciate them going after the girl and he starts to fight back. And then you got all the GIS jumping in with him and they're winning. And he takes off, I guess after the girl, the guy chasing the girl. And then while he's gone, all the ninja come out and take care of the ones that are there. Then you see him come back over. That was awesome. Yeah.

To watch the rest of the movie, too.

It does. I didn't watch this movie coming into this because I've seen this movie, I swear, 50 times.

Right.

I can quote you scenes from the movie. I can tell you the story from beginning to end of it. And you ain't got to watch it. I'll tell you everything that happens in it. But I'd rather you watch it, though. It hypes me right now making me kind of want to go watch it after we get done with this. It's worth it, even though I didn't watch it this week leading up to it. Anyway. Overall grade, you want to give it.

Scale of one to ten?

Yes. As always.

You know what I'm going to say for a ninja movie? I'm going to give it an eight and a half, maybe even a nine. I could say it's a nine because to me, as far as in my mind goes, if I think about a ninja movie, this would be the one that I think about. Even having not seen it in 20 years or more, I'd say probably a nine.

You're probably going to be surprised to me because I'm the one that want to do this movie. I'm the one who brought it up to you, right? You think I'm going to give it the higher rating, but I'm going to give it an eight. And I'm only going to give it an eight. Would have been a nine. I don't like giving perfect scores to something, usually, so ten being perfect, but I would have given it a nine. But it lost a point with me because of how the Black Star Ninja had the extra weird weapons with him as a part of his get up, the laser thing, the bullets, the flamethrower type thing under his wrist that one time. I didn't really like that aspect of it. I like the fact that they switched up weapons during their fight. It wasn't just like sword fighting or hand to hand. When they went hand to hand fighting, they had the claws on their hands, right? At one point, the Blackstar ninja, he had commas and dudeikov pulled out the size to counter. And then you got their sword fight with each other, which was great, which is pretty. So. But the first one, like you said, it gets you hype for the whole movie. And that's what you like. It really gets you going.

No doubt.

Eight for me, nine for you. Not bad. Overall, a highly recommended movie from us to you watching.

That's some good. That'd be living the retro life right there, baby.

That's right.

Where else can we really live the retro life? Do it online?

Well, yeah, you can if you go to the website, because you will find us at www dot retrolife. The number four, the letter U. I.

Messed that up a couple of weeks ago.

You did. But you recover.

You're recovering nicely from you by the number four in the letter U. I.

Love the ninja movies.

There you go. Kermit the ninja here.

Kermit the ninja. Oh, my gosh. Anyway, back to the show. Again, you can catch us on anywhere. You get your podcast at when you listen to the podcast, please make sure you give us a like for the show and you give us a follow. If you're not following us already, you can find us on social media at Instagram and Facebook at retrolife the number four. Y ou email us if you want to retrolife the number four. Y ou@gmail.com give us some ideas for movies you'd like us to watch and talk about based on eighty s and ninety s. And we'll take definitely into consideration. If you got any questions you want to try and stump the expert, mr. Travis Rollins with, send that in and we'll see if we can stump him on the next show.

Yeah, baby.

That being said, Travis been a fun week, man. And do you got something to close us out with this week?

Yeah, I'll make sure y'all hit up all of our socials because I'm going to be campaigning moving forward that we not call the explanation of built up gas farts going to I'm going to call them ninjas. Like, I just ninja it. And if you need the explanation, it's because they're sneaky, they're dangerous, and if you see one, something has gone terribly wrong.