Once upon a time, there were two boys who were passengers in an aeroplane flown by one of the boys' father. As they flew over the Pacific, the other boy revealed himself to be evil and not content with kicking the back of the seat of his supposed friend, proceeded to cut the electronics cable of the aircraft, sending it plummeting towards the water. They washed up on an island, but the evil kid was not done: on crossing a river, after his pal was left safely on the far bank, he made sure to ask the father back to collect him just as a shoal of piranha were swimming by and they ate the man's legs, leaving him with only enough time to bestow on his son his special headband...
There were a few latterly well-known names connected to Tongan Ninja, which is who the good little boy grows up to be, the most famous being Jemaine Clement who made this just before Flight of the Concords made him a celebrity, not just in his native New Zealand but also across the world. Fans of that may be interested to know that not only did he co-star here as Action Fighter, the grown up version of the villainous moppet, but provided the voice of the hero as well as co-writing the songs that popped up occasionally, though not quite as frequently enough to classify this as a fully-fledged musical. In the main, it was a parody of the Bruce Lee classic Way of the Dragon.
Therefore after training with a sensei for a couple of decades, Tongan Ninja makes it to Wellington where he almost immediately gets mixed up in a gangster's plan to take over a local restaurant, you know, like Bruce had done. The difference here was that this took nothing seriously, creating a virtue out of the sheer poverty of the production which generated a good many laughs. If it resembled a home movie more or less throughout, it was one where you were in on the joke and could indulge yourself in the ridiculousness of the whole affair should you have tired of your diet of action flicks with a far higher budget than anything here so much as got a whiff of.
In his only film, the title character was played by Sam Manu, a doughy, amiable figure whose martial arts moves were, shall we say, adequate to what he had been asked to perform. He had a love interest in the owner of the aforementioned restaurant, Linda Tseng, but she too was dubbed - everyone here was, as it was so wanting for funds that they had been forced to shoot it without sound and put the voices on later. This had the fortuitous effect of rendering every scene as a parody of the dubbed Hong Kong movies anyone seeking this out would be familiar with, throwing in the redubbed TV versions of films into the spoof mix to boot whenever the villainous Mr Big opened his mouth to deliver his threats and orders, suddenly not as foul-mouthed as he might have been originally.
