Unwatchable #46: “3 Ninjas: High Noon at Mega Mountain”

Posted by Scott Von Doviak

Our fearless – and quite possibly senseless – movie janitor is watching every movie on the IMDb Bottom 100 list. Join us now for another installment of Unwatchable.

Our unprecedented weeklong survey of Unwatchability comes to a merciful close with what I was astounded to discover is the FOURTH movie in the 3 Ninjas series. These are, after all, movies about kids, the smallest of whom can’t be more than eight years old in High Noon at Mega Mountain. How could they possibly have had three movies worth of adventures already?

Well, for one thing, the three ninjas have been recast for the fourth installment – in fact, two of them have been recast for the second time. It’s the Menudo principle at work, ensuring a long and glorious reign for the 3 Ninjas franchise. Since these kids are no-names, however, we need an actual trio of big stars to headline the picture. I have placed the names of 732,891 members of the Screen Actors Guild into this hat. Please choose three. Let’s see…Loni Anderson…Jim “Ernest” Varney…and Hulk Hogan! Perfect!

Anderson, clad in flattering skintight leather, her face spackled with great greezy globs of makeup, is Medusa, a sad man’s Catwoman. Along with henchman Lothar (Varney), she plans to blackmail the owner of Mega Mountain by taking over the amusement park and sabotaging the rides. Her plan provides a useful opportunity for young children to practice their logic skills, in that it relies on the amusement park having a central control room, from which you can make all the rides do all manner of unsafe things. Would an actual amusement park have such a control room? Discuss.

Another thing you might do if you were the wealthy owner of Mega Mountain is send a few of your employees around the park with signs saying the rides are closed. But no, crowds of people continue to wait in line for rides they can clearly see are running too fast or stopping with their passengers hanging upside down. Please, encourage your children to be skeptical about the events portrayed on the screen. It will only help them later in life.

Anyway, who can stop the dread Medusa? Only the three ninjas: Rocky, Colt and Tum Tum. That’s right, Tum Tum. If you need an explanation, please consult Wikipedia, which has insanely detailed plot descriptions of the first couple of 3 Ninjas movies. All I can tell you is that they were apparently trained in a heavily Three Stooges-influenced form of martial arts by their grandfather, who is Japanese for some reason. They are aided and abetted by martial arts TV star Dave Dragon, played by Hogan in an unfortunate blonde hairpiece/red leotard combo that makes him look like he should be working the door at the Glory Hole.

Cheesy slapstick and corny one-liners ensue, until order is finally restored and little Tum Tum gets his birthday cake. Despite the quote on the poster from Rex Reed proclaiming “The kids will love it!” – and who better than Reed to decide such a thing? – my inner child slept through most of this particular 3 Ninjas adventure. I’m sure the other ones are really good, though.