Kung fu fights on roller skates! A former CIA plutonium killer who can peel off his face! A battalion of kid ninjas! The promise of Dolemite himself, Rudy Ray Moore, to a police detective spitting insults!
In 1984, audiences had never seen anything like the low-budget epic ‘New York Ninja’, in which Taiwanese kung fu performer John Liu stages himself as a man of sound who avenge the death of his wife.
And despite the scary “Coming Soon” advertisements in trade magazines (“WHEN YOU TURN A TIGER INTO A CORNER, IT COMES OUT IN A FIGHT!”), The public never got to see it in 1985. Or 1986. Or all three. decades that followed.
“It was one of those things that was on my resume for years, but I never thought it would see the light of day,” special effects artist Carl Morano said of “New York City. Ninja, ”who went missing after his distribution company, 21st. Century, filed for bankruptcy and sold its assets.
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There was only one set of film reels left with six to eight hours of footage. No sound. No credits or call sheets. No storyboard. Not even a script to explain who exactly the New York Ninja was fighting and why, let alone how roller skates came into play.
These reels eventually ended up in the vaults of film distribution company Vinegar Syndrome, known for such unsavory titles as “Christmas Evil” and “Don’t Answer the Phone!” It took a two-year resuscitation effort for Vinegar Syndrome to bring “New York Ninja” to life. The result was released on Blu-ray earlier this month after a few boisterous appearances at genre film festivals, and a theatrical release is slated for early 2022.
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Much of the rebuilding went to Kurtis M. Spieler, who is credited as the “re-director” and editor of the new iteration. “What I tried to do was do the thing as consistent as possible with the footage I had,” said Spieler, who spent evenings and weekends putting together a workable edit, then write a new script to match its cut.
It took some effort considering the source material. “They had no resources,” said Morano, who spent most of his estimated $ 100 special effects budget on the plutonium killer’s molten face. “Different people showed up on different days. We would meet every morning at the Howard Johnson where John was staying, then take a van to get there.
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