PRAY FOR DEATH (1985)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *uncanny*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *sociological*

Despite a cool title, PRAY FOR DEATH is at best a middling follow-up to the thrills of REVENGE OF THE NINJA, as well as an inverted anticipation of 1988's COMING TO AMERICA.

Akira Sato (Sho Kosugi) is a modern-day ninja, but he's retired from whatever duties he once had to become a settled family man with wife Aiko (Donna Kei Benz) and sons Takeshi and Tomoya (Kosugi's sons Kane and Shane). However, unlike Akira, Aiko is an American citizen, and she talks Akira into moving to Los Angeles and starting a Japanese restaurant there. 

The first half-hour successfully puts across the family's desire to enjoy "the American dream." Naturally, one expects by the nature of the genre that this dream will turn into a nightmare, as the immigrants encounter the scourge of L.A. criminality.

In contrast to many similar eighties action-films, though, the Sato family is only victimized by bad luck. Because the site of the restaurant has been closed for some time, a gang of thieves decided to hide a priceless stolen necklace in the building's storeroom, presumably until they're ready to fence the item. However, one of the crooks returns and rips off the necklace. Gang-boss Newman (Michael Constantine) and his enforcer Willie (James Booth) convince themselves that the new residents ripped off their loot, and so the rest of the film concerns the crooks' attempts to terrorize the utterly bewildered family. Eventually Not So Slick Willie kills a member of Akira's family, and at last the aggrieved Asian dons his ninja gear and decimates Newman's whole gang, using only smoke bombs and archaic weaponry-- easily the movie's best scene.

The film's biggest deficit is that even though Evil Willie is Sato's most dogged assailant, and the guy whom Sato will cause to "pray for death," James Booth is just not that impressive in this role. I suspect he got the role as part of a package deal for having wrote the script. Director Gordon Hessler produces an adequate thriller but here he's a long way from horror films like CRY OF THE BANSEE and MURDERS IN THE RUE MORGUE.