{"id":6623,"date":"2024-10-25T11:56:32","date_gmt":"2024-10-25T15:56:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/?p=6623"},"modified":"2024-10-25T11:56:49","modified_gmt":"2024-10-25T15:56:49","slug":"pray-for-death","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/2024\/10\/25\/pray-for-death\/","title":{"rendered":"Pray for Death"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Pray for Death <\/strong>(1986)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 TransWorld\/Action\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 92 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated R (violence and language)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Gordon Hessler\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: James Booth\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Thomas Chase\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Roy H. Wagner\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: February 28, 1986 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 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.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Box Office: N\/A<\/p>\n

Rating<\/strong>: ***<\/p>\n

\u00a0I felt a brief wave of nostalgia as I watched the opening credits sequence of the martial arts actioner Pray for Death<\/strong>. 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\u2019s only fitting they pay homage to their forbearers.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Since I can\u2019t seem to find an official designation for the cycle of ninja movies that were immensely popular with 80s teens, I\u2019ll come up with one myself. Let\u2019s call Pray for Death <\/strong>and others like it \u201cninjutsploitation\u201d (ninjutsu + exploitation). It has a nice ring to it, don\u2019t you think? For the record, I was one of those 80s teens.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Directed by Gordon Hessler (Scream and Scream Again), the plot of Pray for Death <\/strong>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\u2019s 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\u2019m 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\u2019s secretly a ninja? Well, he is.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Okay, so Pray for Death <\/strong>isn\u2019t exactly Shakespeare. Who cares? In all candor, if given the choice between King Lear and a ninja movie, I\u2019ll 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\u2019ll rescind my degree. Can they retroactively change my grades to Fs?<\/p>\n

\u00a0If you were a teenage boy in the 80s, you undoubtedly know who Sho Kosugi is. He\u2019s the Bruce Lee of ninja movies. He made a number of them including bad movie gem 9 Deaths of the Ninja. He can\u2019t act worth a damn. He has the emotional range of a marble statue. He delivers his lines in a manner that\u2019s nowhere near convincing. It\u2019s 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\u2019s pretty good with his fists and feet too. If they gave out Oscars for this sort of thing, he\u2019d have at least three or four golden statuettes on his mantle.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Booth, who also wrote the screenplay, hams it up nicely as the main heavy. Unlike Sho\u2019s foes in his other movies, he has no martial arts skills. He\u2019s 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\u2019s family, he\u2019s 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?<\/p>\n

\u00a0For lack of a better descriptive term, Pray for Death<\/strong> 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\u2019s not even good filmmaking. It\u2019s cheap-looking, badly acted and haphazardly put together. Technically, Pray for Death<\/strong> is a bad movie, but that\u2019s only if you apply the usual standards of film. It\u2019s NOT a normal movie; it\u2019s a ninja flick. If you go by that, it\u2019s 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\u2019s right, he makes his own sword. It\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

\u00a0His 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.<\/p>\n

\u00a0I\u2019m not sure what else there is to say about Pray for Death<\/strong>. I like the title a lot. It\u2019s perfectly fitting for what\u2019s essentially a revenge movie. Sho amasses a nice body count. It\u2019s a fun little B-movie if taken on its own terms. By that, I mean don\u2019t go expecting the Citizen Kane of ninja movies. That would be Revenge of the Ninja. Come on, everybody knows that.<\/p>\n

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Pray for Death (1986)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 TransWorld\/Action\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 92 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated R (violence and language)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Gordon Hessler\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: James Booth\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Thomas Chase\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Roy H. Wagner\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: February 28, 1986 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Sho Kosugi, James Booth, Donna K. Benz, Norman Burton, Kane Kosugi, Shane Kosugi, Matthew Faison, Parley Baer, Robert Ito, Michael Constantine, Alan […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":7368,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[27,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6623","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-b-movies","category-kick-ass-actioners"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/10\/Pray-for-Death-PIC.jpg?fit=620%2C348&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6623","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6623"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6623\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7370,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6623\/revisions\/7370"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7368"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6623"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6623"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6623"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}