The movie begins with a huge fight scene in which an evil Ninja (played by Chung) assassinates a scientist and his security team on a golf course. Police respond and end up mortally wounding him. He manages to escape and transfer his spirit into the body of a telephone company worker named Christie (played by Lucinda Dickey) to take revenge on the cops. She begins dating one of the cops (who was hidden from the Ninja's view), and when she sees one of the other officers who shot the Ninja, his spirit takes over her body, and she kills them. Kosugi plays Yamata, a good ninja from Japan who comes to stop the evil ninja, and when he discovers his spirit has possessed Christie, he tries to get it out of her and into his own body so he can stop the evil ninja for good.
The 4k set is a two-disc set containing a UHD disc and a standard Blu-Ray. The A/V quality of the UHD disc is outstanding. There are two audio tracks: a 2.0-channel track and a 5.1-channel track. The 2.0 track may not play on some sound systems, but switching to the 5.1-channel track will. However, even if you select the 5.1-channel track in the menu, the movie will play the 2.0-channel track, so you will need to switch the audio on your remote to get the sound to play correctly. There are two commentary tracks for the film, each available on the UHD disc and the standard Blu-Ray. The first is a director's commentary featuring Firstenberg and stunt coordinator Steven Lambert. It is much like their track on Revenge of the Ninja, which breaks down various scenes and discusses the film's production. The second plays the movie with a score over the dialogue and features interviews with the composer and production designer. Unfortunately, unlike the 4k releases of Enter the Ninja and Revenge of the Ninja, there is no commentary track by film critics Mike Leeder and Arne Venema. The other bonus features include a 19-minute interview with Lucinda Dickey, an 11-minute interview with Jordan Bennet, and a 12-minute interview with producer and stuntman Alan Amiel, which were carryovers from the 2018 blu-ray release of the film. The same trailers that were on the Enter and Revenge discs are here as well.
There are good and bad things about the movie. There was much more action in this movie than in the first two, but the plot was much worse than in Revenge of the Ninja. This movie blends genres and is basically a mash-up of 1970s and early 80s films like Flashdance, Poltergeist, and The Exorcist combined with a martial arts movie. In fact, in the commentary, Firstenberg states that the film was heavily influenced by Poltergeist. However, it seemed that everyone thought it was silly, and Kosugi was unhappy about being relegated to a secondary character. One interesting fact is that this was actually Dickey's first movie. She went from filming this to filming the movie Breakin, which became a minor hit. Breakin, however, was released before Ninja III, and her career took a hit as she was seen as having star potential, only to flop with her second movie. Ultimately, you have to take the movie as it is. It is a low-budget ninja movie that is totally unrealistic (it gives ninjas superhuman strength and supernatural abilities) and can be a bit silly. That said, the action is good, and if you do not overthink it, it is entertaining. For those who were fans as a kid and collect physical media, it is worth adding to your collection.
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