WHITE PHANTOM (1987)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *uncanny*, 
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *sociological*                                                                                                                                                   In my review of SAKURA KILLERS, I could only guess as to the connection of that film and this same year ninja-movie, and if asked could not have even proved which film came first. Happily, IMDB provided a link to the apparently archived site NINJAS ALL THE WAY DOWN, where site-runner CJ Lines not only reviewed the film here, he also tracked down and interviewed PHANTOM's writer-director Dusty Nelson, and recorded the interview for posterity here, on the site DEN OF GEEK. Nelson specifies that while he lived in Pittsburgh, he made contact with a company that had access to raw Taiwanese footage about ninjas and gangsters, and that he Nelson was asked to edit the footage and add in enough new scenes to cobble together a movie for VHS release. Once that task was accomplished, the same company rustled up enough capital for Nelson to write and direct WHITE PHANTOM. Nelson states that it was the idea of someone in the production company to link PHANTOM with SAKURA by using the same villains and one supporting character. Incidentally, Lines misremembers an IMDB detail: the site attributes the Taiwanese footage to a fellow named "Wang Yu," but does not claim that this is the same as international one-armed wonder "Jimmy Wang Yu."                                                         

  So Nelson and his people went to Taiwan with three American actors-- star Jay Roberts Jr, leading lady Page Leong, and "name actor/supporting player" Bo Svenson-- and made PHANTOM. Svenson's character is some sort of Interpol-like commander who's supposed to be the same as SAKURA's Chuck Connors. The previous character was just named "The Colonel," while PHANTOM gives him the full name of "Colonel Slater." Slater's trying to get a lead on what the Sakura ninja-clan did with a stash of stolen plutonium. Though the Sakura clan is led by a mysterious man whose face is never seen, Slater tries to get intel from the clan leader's heir apparent Hanzo. The colonel blackmails an exotic dancer named Mei Lin (Leong) to get close to Hanzo and pump him for information, if she can manage to avoid getting pumped full of lead or anything else undesirable.               

A wild card then deals himself in. Known only as "Willi" (Roberts), this duster-clad American seems content to bop around Taiwan (or whatever place in Asia Taiwan is pretending to be), playing basketball and boffing prostitutes. However, he keeps turning up and messing with Sakura gangsters when they shake down average citizens for protection money. When not confounding gangbangers with his laid-back martial talents-- sort of like a "drunk-fu" practitioner-- he pays court to Mei Lin. This infuriates Hanzo and aggravates both Slater and Mei Lin, though in time the dancer is won over by Willi's raffish charms. One scene suggests that Slater recognizes Willi from some previous contact, but the script is not consistent on this point. Hanzo complains to his dad about the "white ninja" interfering with Sakura's protection racket-- a term used long before Willi actually dons white ninja-gear-- and Masked Dad thinks Willi represents some extinct clan, implicitly one with which Sakura had issues. As I recall, everyone pretty much forgets about finding the plutonium stash.                                                         

  
 Like most ninja-movies, the action is episodic until the narrative reaches the (pretty decent) end-fight between Willi and Hanzo. But Nelson works in a fair number of character-moments, mostly between Willi and Mei Lin-- so that there's some mild sadness when Mei Lin gets sacrificed by this war of ninja-clans. Roberts does credible kung-fu stunts-- a particular standout is the way he flummoxes a bouncer by pretending to "accidentally" block him or hit him-- and I liked that he's a bit of a rogue, not just a flat goodguy. I'm guessing that Roberts, who retired from filmmaking years ago, remembered his first big role fondly. In my review of one of his last movies, 1990's AFTERSHOCK, I noticed that Roberts' central character was named "Willi" like the hero in PHANTOM, and that a support-character is named "Colonel Slater." It seems likely to me that Roberts chatted up the scriptwriter and simply asked him to interpolate the names of two PHANTOM characters for AFTERSHOCK characters that originally had no connection. Since Roberts plays the two characters substantially the same, one could imagine that AFTERSHOCK tells the story of Willi and Slater after they survive a sci-fi apocalypse.