![franco nero enter the ninja franco nero enter the ninja](https://cache.moviestillsdb.com/i/500x/7g2d6kdh/enter-the-ninja-lg.jpg)
To make it even better, there’s a twist at the end! Just when you’re dizzy and awestruck, thinking “this is the most badass dude I have ever seen in my life” another ninja dressed in white appears out of nowhere and jump-kicks the black ninja off into the darkness. It’s immense and dangerous and beautiful.
![franco nero enter the ninja franco nero enter the ninja](https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/-aQAAOSw9eVXUwsR/s-l1600.jpg)
Exotic percussion thunders across the soundtrack. The credits – in a stark white oriental font – flash next to him as he stares out from under the hood with eyes of trademark rage. It was the first time audiences got to see Sho Kosugi onscreen, posed against a plain black background, dressed in the deadly black ninja suit, performing an array of incomprehensible weapons tricks. I can’t even imagine what it must’ve been like to see it in cinemas back then. If you’ve seen the movie, you’ll remember one thing most vividly: the credits sequence, an unforgettable Shaw-Bros-Meets-James-Bond spectacle that plays like a wordless religious mantra and is jaw-dropping even now. Their grandiosely retitled Enter The Ninja dropkickstarted a genre that would dominate 1980s action cinema. With Fox snapping up the rights to Lustbader’s lyrical potboiler (which, ironically, got shelved and still hasn’t been made to this day), Cannon decided to shoot their own cheaper, scrappier version from a script called Dance Of Death by stuntman/martial artist Mike Stone.ĭespite these tawdry beginnings, something special grew. Ninja, the Eric van Lustbader novel, had recently been published to enormous success and there was public appetite for the mystical power of ninjutsu, especially – it seemed – when wielded by a white guy. Some of its success is down to the timing. While Enter The Ninja (1981) is by no means the first appearance of the ninja in western cinema, it’s arguably the most impactful one and commonly referred to as “The Grandaddy Ninja” (which, I’m sure, isn’t just a reference to Franco Nero’s advancing age at the time of filming).