Customer Reviews

The Octagon

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Ever wonder where all the ninja movies of the 1980s came from?

They all came about as a result of The Octagon. It was the first ninja movie made in the U.S. It was a huge hit and it single-handedly created the ninja-mania of the '80s.

I am a huge Chuck Norris fan and I rank The Octagon as the VEYR BEST movie he has made to date. Not only did the movie make a ton of money at the box office (his most profitable film to date) but it demonstrates Chuck's best karate skills.

Watching this movie, you can really see Chuck's skilled martial arts technique and see what he is capable of doing. YOU SEE WHY THIS GUY WAS UNDEFEATED WORLD KARATE CHAMPION SIX TIMES IN A ROW. This movie doesn't require a bunch of cheesy MTV jump-cut edits to deliver good martial arts action like today's cheesy martial arts movies.

Here's an FYI: the more camera edits you have during kicks and punches, the less skilled the actor is at doing them. The Octagon shows that Norris doesn't need camera edits to execute triple spinning-back-kicks. He does them one right after another, all right in front of your eyes, from one camera angle (!!!)

This movie also features the great Richard Norton in a hidden role as the main masked ninja heavy that Chuck takes on in the final scene.

I am so glad to see that this movie is now out on DVD and with some excellent behind the scenes back-features. Two well-produced over 30-minute long documentaries on The Octagon and American Cinema, as well as trailers and 5.1 and surround sound (!!!)

After The Octagon, Chuck went on to make An Eye for an Eye, another great Chuck flick. But, to me, The Octagon will always be No. 1. If you want to see what Chuck Norris is capagle of doing in peak form. What him kick some serious ninja butt in this one - the ORIGINAL NINJA MOVIE!

I am conflicted and truly felt cognitive dissonance when I reviewed this movie. Anyone who knows me is aware that I am huge Chuck Norris fan. However, this movie is so totally ludicrous and for the most part moot. So this review was hard for me to write. Nevertheless, I still love Chuck Norris and this movie is entertaining but perhaps for all the wrong reasons.

This movie released in 1980 (more than likely shot in 1979) has this total retro feel to it, which as far as I am concerned is a good thing. However, this movie had so many loop holes in it the Millennium Falcon would have no problem flying through them in order to jump into hyper-drive.

I would try to explain the story of this film, yet I didn't understand it myself. What I will say is that Chuck Norris is tormented by flashbacks of his childhood and of ninjas (evil). He discovers that his adopted brother (can we say Lego hair) is the leader of an underground ninja crime movement. These ninjas are training in an octagon, hence the title of the movie. The former is really the best description of the movie I can provide. The movie should have been dubbed in French it might have made more sense to me despite the fact I cannot speak French. As for the fighting, it wasn't bad, usually Chuck Norris fair.

Another strange thing in this movie was Chuck Norris' intern-monologue; it has this whispering echo thing going on. For the most part, I didn't understand any of Chuck's thoughts. Then there was the character of A.J.: was he Chuck's friend, business partner, brother, an X-File, I don't know. Then there was this older man played by Lee Van Cleef. He was always accompanied by two other men and they always were able to aid Chuck. Again, I don't know who he was, why he was there and how he knew Chuck. All I knew is that he hated ninjas. I have never met a ninja so I can't share this aversion. Oh you will also see a very young Ernie Hudson in this movie.

Chuck also has three different "encounters" or "relationships" with women in this movie. The first woman is sort of ditzy and is accosted by ninjas. The second woman Chuck calls a whore. Finally, the third looks like a girl I use to date. I am not sure if any of this information means anything.

In retrospect I look at "The Octagon" in two perspectives. The first perspective is a movie that is so bad it makes one wonder why it was made and what events in one's life resulted in viewing this film. The second perspective is a movie that is just random scenes and the only continuity being the characters and location. Under the assumption the viewer surrenders to the latter, they might really enjoy this movie. Sadly this movie seems very thrown together and didn't know what it wanted to do with itself.

The only reason I gave this movie two stars is because after about forty minutes I just started laughing. Once this transpired, I started to lose the oxygen going to my brain and began enjoying the nonsense that is "The Octagon". This behavior continued up forty-eight hours after the movie ended. I will never look at a "stop sign" the same way again.

The actual title for this film is `The' Octagon (1980)...Amazon seems to have left off the `The' part, and it's a minor distinction, but that's how I've always known this film, as The Octagon, rather than just Octagon (the DVD case has it correctly)...for some reason it annoyed me, but I've since gotten over it...it's just that I can't help get the feeling that in terms of Chuck Norris and these DVD releases of his earlier films, there seems to be something of a lack of respect...mislabeled titles on seller sites, and often, the DVDs themselves are rarely presented in the original aspect ratio...perhaps there is a conspiracy...anyway, The Octagon was co-written by Leigh Chapman, who was not only responsible for the atrocious Octaman (1971)...(is there an `Octa' theme here?), but also wrote the classic exploitation film Dirty Mary Crazy Larry (1974), which I've been patiently waiting for release to DVD. Directing the film is Eric Karson, whose credits also include Dirt (1979) and Opposing Force (1986) and starring is Chuck Norris (A Force of One) in a role we would become accustom to seeing him in as the reluctant hero (I won't fight unless I have to!). Also appearing is Karen Carlson (The Candidate), Art Hindle (Black Christmas, Porky's), Richard Norton (The Blood of Heroes), Jack Carter (Alligator), Ernie Hudson (The Crow), Tracey Walter (Repo Man, Conan the Destroyer), and Lee Van Cleef (Escape from New York).

Norris plays Scott James, an ex-martial artist who gets drawn into the world of international terrorism after the death of his would be girlfriend and her family at the hands of a ninja death squad, trained by someone who James has familial ties with...sounds pretty simple, doesn't it? Well, that's the short and skinny of it...the plot is actually much more involved and convoluted (i.e. confusing) as the story is swimming with all kinds of extraneous characters and plot threads including, but not limited to, a publishing heiress threatened by the same death squad, opposing mercenary groups, one lead by Van Cleef (his acts more in the capacity of bodyguards/anti-terrorists, while the other is involved in terrorism), a ninja training camp, and a girl who was once a trainee in the aforementioned camp, but now wants out. Sounds kinda messy, doesn't it? Well it is...

Okay, first of all, let me start with the story...it is too long and drawn out, featuring way too many characters and subplots (and let's not forget the numerous flashbacks). All these unnecessary complications only served to drag the pace of the film down, and this is highlighted by the fact there's only one fight scene in the first 50 minutes of the film. Sometimes I gripe about the lack of character development in a film, but here, there was way too much as the writer tries to tie so many characters together with often the loosest of circumstances. When I see a Chuck Norris film, I wanna see some action, and there is some here, but not until much later. Had they cut the number of characters by half (and subsequently the useless plot threads), they could have shaved about 20 to 30 minutes off the bloated run time of 103 minutes, and had a much better film. What was the point of Van Cleef's character? His group was presented as an elite team of bodyguards, but they seemed hardly worth their price, as their clientele would usually end up dead. Hardly good for business, I must say... Something else that annoyed me about this film was Norris' character would regularly have this creepy, whispery, echoic, inner monologue that was often hard to discern, and offered nothing of use, only the fact that he liked to continually state the obvious to himself in his own mind. And the concept of a ninja training camp is cool, but it lost a bit of credibility once I saw the trainees as many of them were hardly what I would deem `ninja' quality, many being overweight, out of shape, and lacking the necessary discipline to even be admitted...I guess secret terrorist organizations have to take what they can get. The real action begins about 15 or 20 minutes before the film ends, as Norris infiltrates the ninja training camp, which is supposedly located somewhere in South America. Chuck takes on a whole load of enemies, using hand to hand combat as well as various weapons. The fight scenes here are excellent, and almost make up for the rest of the film. As far as the acting goes, I think a few did alright, but they were obviously hampered by a lame script, and were probably as confused as I was about what the hell was going on in the film. As I stated before, had they excised about half the characters, gotten rid of a lot of the `touchy feely' junk, spread some more action around, and removed any number of pointless plot threads, I think this could have been an outstanding action flick, rather than a overly long drudge with nearly all the action stacked at the end. To be fair, I'm pretty sure this film did very well when it came out, and a lot of people enjoyed it, but I would hardly call this Chuck's best film.

The film is presented in full screen format on this DVD, which is what I was expecting after seeing Trinity Home Entertainment's release of A Force of One (1979), which is also only in full screen format. Why they didn't have access to an original wide screen print I'll never known. I will say the print on this DVD does look very good, and the audio comes through clear available in 5.1 Dolby Digital along with English and Spanish 2.0. There are some extras including The Making of the Octagon (39 minutes). How American Cinema Changed Hollywood Forever (28 minutes), trailers for the film, and an extensive cast and crew biography section.

Cookieman108

I like The Octagon. I remember watching it back in the 80's and I had been waiting for it to come out on dvd. The dvd is great, and the extra's are interesting. However, the production values in this movie are hit and miss, some scenes drag on way long, and the directing could have been better in places. I do like that we can hear Chuck with is thoughts in echoing voice-over and think his performance in the film (in some places anyway) is better than in some other films of his. As a reviewer at IMDB said "The fight scene inside the Octagon between Scott James (Norris) and Kyo the Enforcer (Norton) is one of the most impressive and best choreographed fight scenes I have ever seen in any martial arts flick. No wire works, nor special camera shots...just one fluid scene of swift exchanges of blows combining Katana sword play and hand to hand combat between two badasses."

Keeping in mind when it was made though, The Octagon (1980, released 8-14-1980) is an important film in that as far as I can tell it was the first American film to popularize the Ninja. Revenge Of The Ninja came out a couple of years later (1983, 9-16-1983) and along with other Sho Kosugi films and other Ninja flicks they seem to have done more for the Ninja craze of the 1980's than The Octagon did, but The Octagon was the first. It is an interesting take on the Ninja's in modern times setting, and its interesting to see how it was done before others tried their hand at similar formulas and storylines.

Personally though, my favorite Ninja flick at this point is The Hunted (1995, 2-24-1995) with Christopher Lambert (Not to be confused with another fine film of the same name, The Hunted 2003 with Tommy Lee Jones). Granted, The Hunted (1995) is really a modern Ninja vs. Samurai flick, but I think it stands as the best American made Ninja movie so far. Check it out if you haven't seen it.

For me, The Octagon gets something like two and a half stars out of five.

Like many in my generation I watched all the Chuck Norris movies when they came out, but never thought he was as good as the promise he showed in Return of the Dragon.

Then came The Octagon and I was sure that he was at the tip of a new page of excellence in his career. Unfortunately The Octagon turned out to be the high mark in my estimation, and although I'm sure many will disagree with my take on Chuck's movies, it's hard to argue that he seemed far crisper and at a much higher level when it came to movement and believability of execution during his fight scenes. His ground movements during the initial penetration of the fortress are among my favorites.

For me, someone who has a high degree of respect for Chuck Norris and his accomplishments, this is the one movie to own.

A typical Chuck Norris vehicle that relies on its karate scenes to salvage it. Norris in an early role demonstrates his limited acting range, but makes up for it with some effective fight scenes. While the plot is convoluted and never makes total sense, it takes the back seat to Norris' attempts to get revenge on his "brother" who has gone bad. The supporting cast goes from mediocre (Art Hindle, Lee van Cleef, Carol Bagdasarian) to worse (Karen Carlson, Larry D. Mann, Kurt Grayson). There are annoying narrative voice overs of Norris' conscience that are more annoying with the use of some kind of reverberatory effect. THE OCTAGON is not the best of the Norris library, but you could do worse.

"The Octagon" is a peculiar martial arts movie from Chuck Norris' early career. Despite the praises heaped on it in the documentary features that are included, it has a cheesy early 1980s feel that makes it both fun and fun to laugh along with. Don't get me wrong, I think Chuck Norris is a great guy, and he does a good job with the role, but some of the film is more amusing than it is scary (especially the frequently incomprehensible internal mental monologue fed through an echoplex.) The good news is that Chuck does get to use his amazing fighting skills in a truly stunning climax, but the bad news is that it takes a long time to get even the remotest clue what on earth is going on: pacing early in the film is a bit tortuous at times.

Chuck plays Scott James, a former exhibition fighter trained in martial arts from a young age. He is haunted by the accidental death of a competitor, and despite being the best there is adamantly refuses to use force, even when offered exorbitant prices for his services. The film opens with very annoying voiceover work explaining the opaque backstory and scenes of a budget terrorist training camp where stabbing cantaloupes is high on the curriculum. Chuck promptly gets involved with Nancy Bell (Kim Lankford,) a dancer who used to be a courier for terrorists, which is somehow connected to the assassination of a French diplomat. Nancy is quickly dispatched by terrorists, and it's a good thing for the plot too, because Chuck quickly moves on to another woman with even more problems. This introduces one of the chief problems with the film: there are absolutely tons of characters and subplots that go nowhere or are alternately connected only by the most amazingly tenuous and unbelievable coincidences imaginable. Some movies are intellectually challenging and make you think. That's a good thing. "The Octagon" on the other hand frequently just annoys with pointless characters and obscure plotpoints that don't further the story or make the movie more interesting.

Bearing in mind the opening murders of the French diplomat and the dancer, and grasping this is a movie pitting Norris against ninja terrorists, he naturally has to turn to his old chum McCarn (Lee Van Cleef, who is simply stunning in his threatening ascot.) McCarn is the leader of an elite group of bodyguards, though this takes a while to sort out. Soon, both James and McCarn are involved with a beautiful blonde media heiress, Justine (Karen Carlson,) who feeds them the most cockamamie story ever about how her father the publisher was killed, and how she was being threatened by terrorists for her editorial policy. As if this wasn't a ludicrous enough premise it does not help that Carlson is one of the worst actresses in movie history. She turns in a simply appalling over-the-top scenery-chewing performance that is both annoying and amusing (in a B-movie guilty pleasure sort of way.)

It turns out that Seikura (Tadashi Yamashita) is a ninja terrorist leader who has targeted Justine, and who now heads a training camp for the least disciplined ninjas ever (please enjoy the utterly pointless lunch line fight.) Eventually James agrees to infiltrate the terrorist training camp, but this being "The Octagon" there is more to the story. It turns out that Seikura is James' adoptive brother, and both trained together as children until a petulant teenage ninja training incident made them sworn enemies for life. Meanwhile A. J. (Art Hindle,) yet another of James' old chums gets involved after much wistful romantic smarminess. James interviews for a job as a mercenary in a very uncomfortable scene after a brief square dance class (featuring noted square dance caller Fenton Jones) but quickly falls out with this group, which is headed by the repulsive Doggo (Kurt Grayson...just what we needed...more characters.) Doggo's purpose is to supply recruits to Seikura, who runs the advanced terrorist training camp. Not everyone makes it through the curriculum, and Doggo falls out of favor quickly. Mercifully Justine is killed with a blowgun dart to the neck, and the average quality of the acting in the film rises exponentially from that point on. Before he can invade Seikura's compound, the Octagon (a very impressive set,) James must first entangle himself with amoral furrier Tibor (Larry Mann) who introduces an unseemly subplot about fur trading. Before it's over there's an unexpected ninja pillow fight, McCarn appears out of nowhere and slinks back in to the woodwork just as surreptitiously, and finally kitchen utensils are brandished as the junior ninjas mutiny in a ninja versus mercenary brawl that is a bit difficult to comprehend.

After much pandemonium the two brothers have the good versus evil fight you knew was coming. It's an amazing fight scene: James brought his sword; Seikura brought his hooks. While all this is going on, the third female lead in the movie, a repentant former terrorist (yes another new character,) Aura (Carol Bagdasarian, a much better actress than the two earlier leading ladies) torches the Octagon in a fiery conclusion. The action in the last twenty minutes of the movie is the payoff for the plodding pace of the first hour or so of the film. Norris fans will definitely not be disappointed.

The film is impenetrable for the first half: new characters come and go and keeping up with it, especially given that many subplots lead nowhere, is a frequently unpleasant chore. I am still unclear on why the characters of A. J. and McCarn were even needed in the film, though their disjointed stories do pad the running time immensely. The acting in the film is inconsistent: Norris is good as is Yamashita, but none of the three female leads is great, though Bagdasarian acquits herself adequately. For me without question the worst element of the film was the use of the echoplex to distort James' inner monologues. The sound quality of the film isn't great to begin with, and this induced distortion is not only annoying, but frequently makes the words indecipherable. In the "Making of 'The Octagon'" director Eric Karson claims the effect "works well." On that issue I must strongly disagree. Among many praiseworthy elements of the production, though, Dann Cahn's editing is top notch, and the cinematography and color are beautiful.

Speaking of extras, there are a surprising number of them. There are the standard trailer and television clips, cast and crew biographies, a very nicely done 40 minute long "Making of" documentary, and a 28 minute film called "How American Cinema Changed Hollywood Forever," which was more interesting that I expected. I was especially interested in the interview segments with Karson, who is a fascinating guy. His explanations of Norris' character and the general discussion of Norris as the "reluctant American" are excellent. Also noteworthy are the interview clips with actor and brilliant martial artist Richard Norton (who appears as both Seikura's Enforcer and Long Legs in Doggo's camp.) His recollections are very interesting, and his discussion of the amazing and incredibly lengthy fight scene he did with Norris in the Octagon is astonishing.

"The Octagon" did well at the box office, and Chuck Norris did well in his role. Though the film has numerous unfortunate distractions, it's an interesting action film that makes you think (though not always in a good way.) I particularly recommend it for Norris fans.

Apparently, there are those who have little experience in martial arts cinema. How this would ever rate 5 stars is beyond me. Granted, it is better than most of the Cannon Ninja films of the 80's, but this is honestly one of two films that, in my lifetime, actually gave me a migraine headache. The other was the over long, barely watchable CONTACT with Jodie Foster. I had high hopes for this when it was released, but suffered through it at a local drive in. I liked the sets, the costumes, the whole ninja mystique, but seriously: the last fight scene is a total let down for what the first three acts were building us up for. Norris defeats the head ninja with one bold move? Come on now! Give us a fight to talk about! Nope. Just a silhouette against a sunrise with Norris stabbing the bad guy. THE END. Uh, nope. Unsatisfactory for the two hours of my life I invested in this. Maybe hard core Norris fans will enjoy this, but to those who have a background in real ninja cinema from Asia, this film is far from exemplary.

Norris, Karen Carlson and Lee Van
Cleef are outstanding in this sort
of Martial Arts / Revenge modern day
tale, which crosses over several genres!
Van Cleef fans will especially love it.
Some dialog is sort of silly in here as
one guy in Martial Arts camp calls an
oriental a 'bleedin' NAZI'?! Dumb line...

People scoff these days because Chuck Norris had a ridiculous 70's mustache. But keep in mind The Octagon was the film that introduced the Ninja to the American public. This was before James Clavelle's Shogun, this was before all the American Ninja movies, Franco Nero (who?) and all that. If it wasn't for this movie, little kids' ninja dolls would have come a little or a lot later.

When I first saw this movie when I was a kid, the Ninja-thing took me by storm. Now that I've recently purchased the re-release DVD, the film still holds up not only as an action flick, but also as a document to a very exciting time in martial arts movies.

Also keep in mind that American Cinema was at the time a cutting-edge independent movie company that set the standard for releasing and marketing niche movies. But you can see all that in the "How American Cinema Changed Hollywood" documentary in the special features.