Ninja Busters and Trailer Trauma on Blu-ray!
Stephen Romano
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Any exploitation film fans out there?
Good, because Ninja Busters is that kind of party.
So is Trailer Trauma.
These are the first two kick-ass releases from a new outfit called Garagehouse Pictures. Keep a close watch on these guys. I have a feeling they will soon join the ranks of king-hell video restoration titans like Vinegar Syndrome, Code Red and even Scorpion Releasing as some of the frontrunners in this type of grindhouse nostalgia preservation. We live in a really amazing DIY era—where fans-come-of-age and devoted videophilles are using every scrap of modern technology available to trot out the VHS rarities of yesteryear and present them as they’ve never been presented before. We’re talking about devoted professional preservationists who range from high profile celebrities like Nicolas Winding Refin and Quentin Tarantino to relatively obscure collectors with vast libraries of original 35mm film prints that sometimes number in the thousands. The evidence that movies were once shot on film and that those cans of film were sent all over the world on storied and often perilous paths, making their appearances at theaters and drive ins, has been mostly left scattered to the four winds for time and obsolete technology. In some cases, these motion pictures did their death rattles way early in the game, betrayed by their own distributors and quickly forgotten, or hung out to dry after a few minor regional screenings.
Now, me, I live in Austin, where we have the Alamo Drafthouse and Fantastic Fest, where obscure and fascinating exploitation films like The Miami Connection are resuscitated, restored and treated like real art (because they are) at raucous public screenings. The Alamo is the key curator of the American Genre Film Archive, which contains over three thousand rare and vintage 35 millimeter prints of horror, science fiction, action and other exploitation flicks. I still keep my own 35mm print of Lucio Fulci’s Zombie in that archive. There’s a lot that gets discovered along the way when you get deep into these elephant graveyards.
Ninja Busters was one of those unlucky films that, like The Miami Connection, died fast and sunk into complete obscurity. It was discovered almost 30 years after it was made in an abandoned film vault by stalwart film collector Harry Guerro, who personally owns a library of near a thousand films and probably twice as many trailers. He’s one of these real devoted guys with an actual 35mm screening room in his garage. He absolutely walks it like he motherfucking talks it. He and his nutty Exhumed Pictures gang are responsible for bringing us the unfettered awesomeness that is Ninja Busters—a film so utterly berserk that it might never have been believed, were the fossil remains not staring us right in the eye. This is not something where they were able to strike a new video master from the original negative—no sir, not that kind of party. Only one theatrical print of Ninja Busters actually exists. One. Harry and his boys found it. And after the film’s first public screenings, where it went over like gangbusters, Harry decided he was starting his own damn video label to distribute the film. He’d also be issuing an end-all-and-be-all collection of original theatrical film previews from his own archives called Trailer Trauma. He did this with his own money. He did it “for the fun of it.” I fucking love these guys.
The full story of the re-discovery and restoration of these miles and miles of lost celluloid, which is also very impressive, even by the most rigid standards for this type of Blu-ray release, can be had on the liner notes and special features of the disc itself.
What YOU want to know is real simple. Is it any good?
Well, hell yes.
So long you understand it’s that kind of party.
Me, I can’t get enough of this stuff. What’s not to like about a film so deliriously batshit that nearly every single line uttered by anyone in the cast is a zinger? What’s not totally awesome about a film so low budget that you can practically hear the producers screaming in the background to call it a day before the light runs out, and yet the whole movie is beautifully lensed in anamorphic widescreen? What’s not absolutely cool about a motion picture so obviously lost in time that it’s practically made in a foreign language? Plus, there’s lots of kung-fu fighting. (The slug line says it all: THESE GUYS WILL KICK YOUR ASS.) Plus, you’ll find something else in Ninja Busters. Something less dark than stuff like The Miami Connection. Oh sure, you’ll get everything you love here. The fighting. The action. The actors who can hardly remember their lines. But no severed heads, folks. Ninja Busters is sort of a family picture in a strange way. It’s gleefully sincere. A film about friendship. I officially guarantee that you’ve probably never seen anything quite like it.
And, full disclosure, I did the film’s first-ever poster, which also serves as the Blu-ray cover. I was pressed into service because a proper do-it-up-right one-sheet was never actually made for this film. (I did the Trailer Trauma art also.) In case any of you are wondering, Harry told me he wanted to pay homage the look of the classic one-sheet for William Lustig’s Vigilante. Only, you know, with ninjas.
Think we got it right?
The film is available now, exclusively at Dilabolik Video. Go treat yourself to an early Christmas present and support this awesome endeavor. In the end, it’s the fans who keep this kind of thing going, and it’s the fans who reap the sweetest fruits from the deal. Keep a lookout for Trailer Trauma, too. There’s a lot of sweet fruit in that baby, too.
Peace.
S
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