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Ninja III: The Domination (1984)

Lucinda Dickey is a telephone repair woman with a portable tape player. She is possessed by a dying Ninja after a golf-course confrontation between said Ninja and various businessy types, and as a consequence Lucinda goes all ‘oriental’ (i.e. slant-eyed with a yellow tinge. n.b. Heaven forbid there should be racial stereotypes here in Cannon-land, after all this is a Golan-Globus film!). She then uses a floating sword to kill various policeman who were responsible for the Ninja’s death. The big plot twist – was her new policeman boyfriend the ultimate killer of the Ninja? – is, sadly, uninteresting. The martial arts scenes with Lucinda Dickey are, unsurprisingly after witnessing Breakin’ 1 + 2, clumsy. The musical score is very 80s.

The opening sequence, however, is absolutely fantastic in its’ awfulness. It’s a desert island opening, a shoo-in for my top 10. The whole gun blowing up thing, the the helicopter – dear God, the helicopter. And the little bomb type thing that causes the Ninja to disappear – fantastic! Classic moments continue to come thick and fast through the rest of the film, with Lucinda and her boyfriends’ sex scene a highlight. And her flip over the bar outside the dance school is quite simply the slowest flip over a bar outside a dance school that I have ever seen. Although the field is hardly crowded. The pool table scene is also great. And the sword suspended by wires. And the blow-dry effect she gets when she is possessed.