NEW YORK NINJA, which had its world premiere at Beyond Fest earlier this month, is a b-action miracle: a previously unknown and unfinished vigilante ninja vs. street punks film accidentally discovered by just the right people who would know how to treat it like a lost Orson Welles film. Shot but abandoned before completion in 1984, it was an American production starring and directed by Taiwanese-born martial arts star John Liu (SECRET RIVALS, SNUFF BOTTLE CONNECTION).
Luckily, the footage happened to be included in a library acquired by Vinegar Syndrome, the excellent blu-ray label that started out restoring vintage porn movies before becoming one of the premiere curators of cult horror and action (PENITENTIARY I & II, DOLEMITE, MARTIAL LAW I & II, THE BEASTMASTER). According to Re-Enter the New York Ninja, a 48-minute featurette that will be included on physical releases of the movie, when they asked what the reels were they were told they could throw them out if they wanted. Instead they watched them and found a movie you can imagine the company acquiring intentionally, had it previously existed: a pulpy, somewhat campy but very sincere revenge movie with Liu battling cartoonish gangs and a mutated serial killer on the streets of New York (sometimes with noticeably unsuspecting extras). (read the rest of this shit…)
Well holy shit. I’ve taken my sweet time getting to all three of Jamaa Fanaka’s PENITENTIARY movies, but they’ve all lived up to my hopes. If you’re not familiar, they star Leon Isaac Kennedy (
PENITENTIARY II (1982) is that thing we love where a director has been burning it up on the fringes and then they get a little more resources behind them and they really go for it. Still low budget and outside of the mainstream, but more professional than the first 
Not long ago I wrote about director Jamaa Fanaka’s last film, 
