Aaron1375 This show was made during the mid 1980s, a time when there was a bit of a ninja craze in the country. Granted, not all that super big as there were a few movies here and there and nothing that would really be considered a blockbuster by today's or even back then standards. This was also a time when a plethora of action shows came on the airwaves too. You had shows that were fairly successful like A-team, Knight Rider and Greatest American Hero and then you had a lot of action shows that kind of had like one season like Automan, Manimal and Tales of the Golden Monkey. This show falls in the latter category featuring an old actor in Lee Van Cleef portraying a ninja master and his sidekick pal played by Timothy Van Patton who had a van and a pet gerbil. Not exactly a great formula as Van Cleef had a bit of a gut and was moving around poorly trying to make us think that he was a ninja. They basically had Sho Kosugi in a ninja costume with a Van Cleef voice over whenever a difficult stunt had to be done. The show would feature quite a few older stars in it playing bit parts. They had Dave McCallum, Clu Gulager and even one time James Bond George Lazenby to name a few. Then they had a young Crystal Benard of the show Wings fame and a young Demi Moore as well. So the show had a lot of decent actors, it was just a rather poor concept.I saw this show as two repackaged movies that were lampooned on the show Mystery Science Theater 3000. They were done by that video company that did this often with television shows and older movies where they basically have a completely unrelated opening title sequence before the show, uh, movie begins. The first film titled Master Ninja I, featured I am guessing the first episode of the show for sure. We get introduced to Max (Van Patton) and the master ninja (Van Cleef) as they try and help out a daughter and her father's airport from a corrupt businessman and the local sheriff. Sounds a bit like A-team especially when you factor in the next portion of the show features them trying to help out a man and his two daughters that own a club that is being harassed by a gang. Neither show is really related and the reason the main characters go around from town to town is to search for the master's daughter that he did not know he had.The second movie, Master Ninja II, features about the same premise as Master Ninja I, only without all the introductions. The first portion of the film sees them get involved with a union labor dispute in a cannery and is rather stupid as a union dispute does not really scream ninja in any way, shape or form. Yet, Max and the master probably had more trouble with these standard goons than they did with the ninjas that terrorized the club or the businessman who had local law enforcement under his command! The second portion of this film, was comprised of a terrorist type organization kidnapping some people at a party and the master must go in to rescue them! He had less trouble with these gun wielding assassins than he did just some guys who worked at a cannery also, go figure.So both of these 'movies' made for funny episodes of MST3K, but then I always enjoy the television movies that they did during their run. The first one sort of blended together okay, though it was obvious it was two unrelated plots, but the second 'film' just did not go together in any shape or form. You go from helping a girl set up a union to terrorist raiding a party and taking hostages. You can tell they tried with the show, but the ninja craze was not really big enough to warrant a whole show, just a spot movie here or there would have sufficed. It basically uses the same formula as the A-team, with the main characters going from town to town and doing good deeds, but did not quite have the scale of the more known and popular show. Though I wonder if the master ever found his daughter or if it was another case of a show being cancelled with the central premise never being resolved?

parachute-4 Top stuff. I've only ever seen episode 1 but I'm always on the lookout for the others. I loved the bit where Van Patten tried to use the approved "sleeper touch" technique to subdoo a baddie, and it didn't work !Van Cleef's arrow-catching stunt was very impressive, and he handled that scene and a lot of other equally unlikely frames like the true pro that he was. Keeping a straight face through the takes must have been hard work at times for a guy who had worked with directors the caliber of Fred Zinnemann and Sergio Leone.Demi Moore would likely prefer that her appearance in this B-grader remained largely forgotten, but we all have to start somewhere, and the show was probably a lot of fun to make. R. B.

Diana I liked this show when I was about twelve, it was a pleasant memory. Then I re-watched it as the MST3K episode Master Ninja 1, in which they slammed together three or four of the episodes to make a horrible movie. I admit, I was tearing up more than laughing watching it, because i really did like this goofy show when i was a kid.Lee Van Cleef as a ninja was just sad. They had better stunt doubles in Power Rangers, when the girls were clearly played by much shorter men. I mean, you could clearly see that Lee hadn't studied any kind of martial arts, which is kind of like those 70's sword swinger b-movies where the actor would just randomly swing his or her sword and 'kill' people. The fight choreography was obviously done by Stevie Wonder while he was heavily medicated. The Master's 'student', played by the gratingly annoying Timothy Van Patten, is a total idiot who drives around in a van randomly. No real ninja would take this guy on as a student. He'd just slit his throat and be done with it, a few moments after meeting this twerp. He certainly wouldn't enlist his 'help' in finding his daughter or anything else, for that matter. The movie dragged off, since it was made from t.v. episodes so they couldn't have any kind of real denouement. I am not looking forward to Master Ninja II, and in fact may avoid it altogether. Another pleasurable childhood memory down the drain.

Gideon40 I've recently picked up the habit of downloading MST3K episodes, (since they never showed them here) and I have to say Master Ninja is the worst of the 6 mst3k episodes I have. Not that the commentary was bad, but the movie itself. The acting was just atrocious, even deathstalker 3 had better acting than this! The music, was simply painful to hear. Watching two ninjas fight while cheesy 80s synthsizer tunes played in the BG was unbearable. There was this one scene (SPOILER) where 3 ninjas try to kill the master. Instead of prowling on his roof or doing anything remotely stealthy, the ninjas got into these stupid poses and walked right into the master's front door where he was just standing there looking. To give you an idea, imagine 3 ninjas walking behind a paper wall so you can only see their shadows. Then imagine while they're walking, they're in these crane stances like the one in karate kid. It is dumb I know. Thankfully Joel and the Bots made this movie very funny to watch, they always do a good job of that.