NEW YORK NINJA RESTORED LOST FILM FROM 1984

Here is a lost GEM. New York Ninja (1984/2021) – Almost forty years in the can. This isn’t an ‘80s action movie homage like Kung Fury, however. New York Ninja was indeed shot in 1984, but when the distributor went out of business, the film was shelved. Those film reels eventually ended up in the hands of those industrious exploitation film historians at Vinegar Syndrome, however. Working from the six-to-eight hours of footage and no script, credits, or even audio, Kurtis M. Spieler edited the film together into a coherent whole.
That the film is a bizarre, fascinating romp from beginning to end is something of a miracle, however. There is absolutely no reason for a film this bad to be this good, but in the hands of Spieler, New York Ninja oozes goofy ‘80s low-budget charm.
So what’s this one about? Well, it’s basically “Karate Death Wish.” When John (John Liu, but voiced by Don “The Dragon” Wilson) loses his wife to a bunch of method actors pretending to be gang members, he decides to clean up the crime-infested streets of NYC by putting on a cream-colored ninja costume and engaging in awkwardly-choreographed fight scenes with hordes of unnamed extras who are somehow less menacing than the Orphans street gang from The Warriors. Lacking the financial backing of a studio (special effects artists Carl Morano estimated his FX budget at around $100), New York Ninja looks cheap because it was. It’s hokey and amateurish and filled with continuity errors, and I loved every second of it.
New York Ninja is a 2021 American action film written, directed by and starring John Liu. It was shot in 1984, but was not edited or released until 2021, when its footage was discovered and restored by the film preservation and home video distributor Vinegar Syndrome.
New York Ninja was filmed in New York City, and was shelved after its original distribution company went bankrupt. The abandoned footage was eventually acquired by Vinegar Syndrome; without audio, storyboards, or scripts for the film, it was reconstructed by a new director, Kurtis M. Spieler, and dubbed dialogue was recorded by actors including Don "The Dragon" Wilson, Michael Berryman, Cynthia Rothrock, Linnea Quigley, Vince Murdocco, Matt Mitler, Leon Isaac Kennedy, and Ginger Lynn Allen.
Filming for New York Ninja began in late 1984 in New York City. According to the film's special effects artist, Carl Morano, "They had zero resources. Different people showed up on different days. We'd meet every morning at the Howard Johnson's where John [Liu] was staying and then take a van to the location." The film had an estimated special effects budget of $100, most of which Morano reportedly spent on creating the Plutonium Killer's melting face. Despite advertisements for the film appearing in trade magazines in 1984, the footage shot for New York Ninja was shelved after its distribution company, 21st Century Distribution Corporation, went bankrupt and sold its assets.
The footage shot for New York Ninja was stored in film reels, ran about six to eight hours in length and included no actor credits. It was eventually acquired by Vinegar Syndrome, a film preservation and home video distribution company. Without audio, storyboards, or scripts, Kurtis M. Spieler (credited as the film's "re-director" and editor) was tasked with reconstructing the film from the footage alone. The only known surviving script is Morano's shooting script, which alluded to a character named "Detective Dolemite"; the original filmmakers may have intended the character to have been played by Rudy Ray Moore, who appeared in the 1975 film Dolemite.
Spieler suspects that Liu may have been unable to complete filming before the production shut down, saying that "the ending doesn't feel like it was ever finished". Vinegar Syndrome considered filming new scenes, but Spieler decided to work only with the original footage. In an interview with The New York Times, he said: "I asked myself, 'If my job was to have been an editor in the 1980s, what would I have done?'"