By John Seal

April 18, 2003

If you take a look at the picture to the right of this paragraph, you'll see stacks of white tubs. This is a portion of my decades old video collection (otherwise known as The Bane of Lexy's Existence) which resides cheek by jowl with the water heater in the family basement. Inside those tubs are hundreds of forgotten films: spaghetti westerns, black action flicks, horror movies, martial arts epics, art-house oddities, Eurotrash effluvia, and exploitation films of all varieties. These are the films that TV used to fill the wee hours with before infomercials squeezed them out. The video boom of the 1980s briefly kept them in the public eye, but now they lie neglected, no longer fit even for Blockbuster, Sam Goody, or Hollywood Video. This column will try to rekindle some memories whilst focusing some attention on films that deserve a better fate than to simply disintegrate on rapidly decaying magnetic tape. It's my belief that even the worst films need to be preserved in the best condition possible, and with that in mind I will also discuss the possibilities of DVD rehabilitation for each featured title. And with no further ado, let's dip into the archives…

37 Ninja Kids (1983 HK) The story: The children of Shao Lin Temple are descendents of the glorious Ming Clan and are under threat from the notorious and ambitious Ching Clan. They must learn the ways of the Buddha and battle the Chings to a standstill.

The film: Why were so many low-budget Asian kung fu movies dubbed for the American market? The films certainly didn't get many theatrical play dates - well, maybe a few on 42nd St in pre-Giuliani New York City - undoubtedly going straight to a glutted video market filled with countless similar works. 37 Ninja Kids is a fairly pedestrian entry in the flying fists sweepstakes and doesn't even live up to its title: none of the kids are ninjas! The film begins, typically, with an assortment of floor exercises as the children of the Temple practice for their master. Cartwheels, crab-walking, and a bizarre maneuver called the Centipede occupy the kids during the daylight hours and are followed by prayers to Buddha and a spartan existence at night. The boys also engage in interesting variations of household chores, including high-speed dishwashing in a large wooden tub followed by drying and stacking using the old spinning plate trick. Their idyllic proto-boot camp existence is, of course, threatened by the goons of the Ching Clan, two of whom are bald giants who follow the orders of their eye-patched evil overlord, Wu Chan, who has an extremely lengthy beard and a pair of eyebrows that Colin Farrell would die for. Other characters include a young girl masquerading as a boy (she's obviously a girl from the get go), a helpful deaf mute who is neither deaf nor mute, and a bad guy with one of the largest and hairiest moles ever committed to celluloid.

The action is fairly muted until the final twenty minutes when the proceedings pick up somewhat. There's a reasonably bloody finale featuring a nice eye gouge by a metallic hand as well as a lot of footstool fu. If you're unfamiliar with this style of fighting, you'll learn all you need to know about it from 37 Ninja Kids, as each boy is armed with a concrete footstool with which to bash bad guys and perform impressive acrobatic feats. The highlight of the film features the final appearance of the evil Wu Chan, who appears in a bizarre flying metal cylinder with protruding knives. He boldy announces, "This cave will be the burial ground for you all today. Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha!" and proceeds to kill the boys' teacher, but the resourceful young lads pool their talents and ultimately triumph in a scene with overtones of Busby Berkeley. The film concludes abruptly with a mournful graveyard scene as the boys and their formerly deaf mute friend bid their mentor a fond farewell. There's an annoyingly upbeat and repetitive score that is guaranteed to keep you humming all night long.

The crew: Who cares? Certainly not the good folks at video label Vids 'R' Us, whose box art lists absolutely no credits. Nor does the print itself. IMDb lists the director as Jung Fa Sun, but it could just as easily be Kim Jong Il. If Jung Fa Sun actually exists, this was his only film credit. In addition, Sonny Yu is listed as cast, but this also is Sonny's only screen credit, so he, too, may be the chimerical product of an over imaginative film fan with too much time on their hands. That's it: there's no other information anywhere about this film, not even in John Charles' Hong Kong Filmography: 1977-1997.

Nostalgia value: For those who grew up watching lots of late night Kung Fu Theatre, such as the films that played in the San Francisco area on TV-20, this will probably spark some happy memories of 2:00 a.m. sojourns in front of the boob tube.

The print: Pretty terrible. Like most martial arts films, the film was shot wide-screen, and the pan and scan work badly compromises the action sequences on this print. Vids 'R' Us seems to have been the lowest of low budget labels and clearly didn't put much effort into this tape, though the dubbing is adequate. Colors bleed and appear faded, and I'm sure the abrupt ending was originally followed by a credit sequence that would have introduced us to the fine folks who worked on this flick. Additionally, the synopsis on the box is blatantly false, claiming that "the seven ninja kids join with thirty of their friends to defend their royal birthright and their lives". For the record, the film isn't related to the film Seven Ninja Kids, which was released in 1989 - six years AFTER this film was produced, but only a year before the video release date on the box. Hmmm.

DVD Prognosis: It's hard to tell how "good" this film actually is based on this print. Perhaps proper framing, subtitles, and digital restoration would lead to the rediscovery of a lost gem. That seems unlikely, but the folks at Tai Seng might be able to pull it off.

Ratings:

Print: C-. Blech.

DVD worthiness: D+ to C+, depending on what we're not seeing here.