Pray for Death (1986)    TransWorld/Action    RT: 92 minutes    Rated R (violence and language)    Director: Gordon Hessler    Screenplay: James Booth    Music: Thomas Chase    Cinematography: Roy H. Wagner    Release date: February 28, 1986 (US)    Cast: Sho Kosugi, James Booth, Donna K. Benz, Norman Burton, Kane Kosugi, Shane Kosugi, Matthew Faison, Parley Baer, Robert Ito, Michael Constantine, Alan Amiel, Woody Watson, Charles Gruber, Nik Hagler, Chris Wycliff.    Box Office: N/A

Rating: ***

 I felt a brief wave of nostalgia as I watched the opening credits sequence of the martial arts actioner Pray for Death. It shows star Sho Kosugi (Revenge of the Ninja) giving a demonstration of his best ninja moves in anticipation of the action to come. Many martial arts movies of the 70s opened the exact same way, the Bruceploitation ones in particular. Since ninja movies largely replaced kung fu flicks in the 80s, it’s only fitting they pay homage to their forbearers.

 Since I can’t seem to find an official designation for the cycle of ninja movies that were immensely popular with 80s teens, I’ll come up with one myself. Let’s call Pray for Death and others like it “ninjutsploitation” (ninjutsu + exploitation). It has a nice ring to it, don’t you think? For the record, I was one of those 80s teens.

 Directed by Gordon Hessler (Scream and Scream Again), the plot of Pray for Death is simplicity itself. A Japanese businessman, Akira Saito (Kosugi), haunted by his past moves his family to America because he and his half-American wife Aiko (Benz, The Challenge) want to give their sons (Sho’s real-life sons Kane and Shane) a better life. They purchase property in the worst part of some unnamed city (New York or L.A., I’m not sure) and open a restaurant. They almost immediately run afoul of an Irish mob enforcer named Limehouse Willie (Booth, Avenging Force) who thinks Akira stole a valuable necklace from him, one that he stole himself. He keeps pushing and pushing until he pushes Akira too far. At that point, Akira strikes back at his enemy in full ninja gear. Oh, did I forget to mention he’s secretly a ninja? Well, he is.

 Okay, so Pray for Death isn’t exactly Shakespeare. Who cares? In all candor, if given the choice between King Lear and a ninja movie, I’ll go with the latter. With all due respect to the Bard, ninjas are cooler than a crazy old man. I write this knowing that if any of my lit professors from university happen to read this review, they’ll rescind my degree. Can they retroactively change my grades to Fs?

 If you were a teenage boy in the 80s, you undoubtedly know who Sho Kosugi is. He’s the Bruce Lee of ninja movies. He made a number of them including bad movie gem 9 Deaths of the Ninja. He can’t act worth a damn. He has the emotional range of a marble statue. He delivers his lines in a manner that’s nowhere near convincing. It’s in a different time zone altogether. He almost makes Chuck Norris look like a master thespian. HOWEVER, when Sho (who also does the fight choreography) shifts into ninja mode, he ROCKS! This man has serious skills with knives, swords, throwing stars and other pointed weapons. He’s pretty good with his fists and feet too. If they gave out Oscars for this sort of thing, he’d have at least three or four golden statuettes on his mantle.

 Booth, who also wrote the screenplay, hams it up nicely as the main heavy. Unlike Sho’s foes in his other movies, he has no martial arts skills. He’s just an unhinged psychotic who takes great delight in killing helpless old men just for the hell of it. Judging by his actions against Akira’s family, he’s also one of the biggest idiots in the world. Helpful hint, when a masked Japanese guy sneaks up on you and tells you to back off or else pray for death, BACK THE F*** OFF! Michael Constantine (My Big Fat Greek Wedding) is sufficiently menacing as the mob boss who never leaves his mansion. Why should he when he has a guy like Limehouse Willie to do his bidding?

 For lack of a better descriptive term, Pray for Death is cool, crazy cool. True, much of it is rehash of Revenge of the Ninja and the necklace is nothing more than a McGuffin. Did you really expect anything more in terms of plot? It falls on the lower end of the IQ spectrum. It’s not even good filmmaking. It’s cheap-looking, badly acted and haphazardly put together. Technically, Pray for Death is a bad movie, but that’s only if you apply the usual standards of film. It’s NOT a normal movie; it’s a ninja flick. If you go by that, it’s pretty good. It has a lot of wild ninja action with Sho flipping over moving trucks and taking out an entire crime syndicate single-handedly with a sword he makes himself. That’s right, he makes his own sword. It’s part of the ritual he conducts to signal his return to the ways of the ninja. Just when he thought he was out…. oh, you know the rest.

 His oldest son Shane is no slouch either. He outfits his bicycle with a smoke machine and tripping bars to help Dad fight the bad guys when they come calling in the finale. Earlier, he beats the tar out of a gang of bullies that make the mistake of picking on his little brother. This is one cool kid.

 I’m not sure what else there is to say about Pray for Death. I like the title a lot. It’s perfectly fitting for what’s essentially a revenge movie. Sho amasses a nice body count. It’s a fun little B-movie if taken on its own terms. By that, I mean don’t go expecting the Citizen Kane of ninja movies. That would be Revenge of the Ninja. Come on, everybody knows that.