Questions about Lee Van Cleef The Master (Ninja)
 

I recently purchased the R1 DVD of the first couple of episodes of The Master. The quality is pretty poor (it's obvious they just bought somebodys bootleg off DVD and mastered it off that but that's ok cos I'd rather spend £4 on an official release than £10 to fill some bootleggers wallet) but I'm not really bothered as I loved the show.

My questions are :

1) Have any more been released on DVD besides Max and Out Of Time-Step? I see the VHS tapes and bootleg DVD's all over eBay but I'm looking for official DVD's.

2) Was there a show on during the same period that was similar? I seem to remember there being flashbacks to Lee Van Cleefs characters childhood and ninja training but didn't notice them in the episode. Specific instances are the grandfather making a cat walk across a porch and him telling the little kid to study the cat to learn silent walking, and another scene where the grandfather chucks him in a lake to see if he'll try and swim to the side, testing his survival instinct type thing. I could have sworn that the chucking in a lake scene was in the pilot episode.

3) Was it originally called The Ninja?

Cheers folks!

Wow, a show I watched religiously but can't remember anything about other than Lee Van Cleef, Sho Kosugi and Salami from White Shadow.

(Off topic) I don't remember ever seeing White Shadow. Just looked it up and it sounds pretty interesting, now there's another damn TV show for me to find and check out! Thanks... ;) (On topic)

I watched it religiously as well, was gutted as a kid when they cancelled it. I thought I'd got lucky when I moved to the UK later and it premiered on TV not long after. Got all excited, sat down and watched, got really angry when I found that they removed references to ninja weapons (shuriken etc) and kind of dubbed the word ninja every time it was said with the word master. It used to be a real no-no in the UK to have Ninja in a movie title or TV title so I should've saw it coming really.

(sorry for the following) I'm actually tempted to buy one of the homemade bootleg jobbies off of eBay just because it might be the only way to get the series on DVD. I would never normally support bootleggers but dammit I want the series! Would it be wrong to download the series if it's the only way to see it without making criminals richer?

I don't really agree with the downloading of TV series except in cases like this where it's not out anywhere officially. Well apart from Season 3+ DVD boxsets of Married With Children. Then it should be illegal NOT to download the TV rips. Damn Sony and their royalty free music!

How the heck do you remove references to ninja weapons? I distincly remember an episode where they needed to disable a truck by throwing shuriken at it's tires. I also remember a training sequence where he made Salami balance on a chain. It was shown here on NBC and I believe it was called the master. It came out right after Revenge of the Ninja (or was it Ninja III: The Domination?) did some decent box office business for Golan/Globus. It was during the mid-80's ninja craze with the Sho Kosugi & Michael Dudikoff movies.

Yeah, it came out just after Ninja 3:The Domination. Another one I wish was out on DVD, cheesy and crap I know but I've never seen another hybrid disco/ninja/horror movie! I've got the R2 Enter The Ninja but it's pretty heavily cut so I'm wating on a R1 release, don't see it coming tho. Got Revenge of the Ninja R1 as well. Shame it's FS but otherwise a decent enough release considering the type of movie.

The references in the master were removed by not showing close-ups of the little stealth weapons. Swords were alright but shurikens were a definate no-no. For example if he used a shuriken they'd show him throw something and a tire burst but you wouldn't see him pull the weapon out before hand to throw.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0453538/

Thought anyone interested in The Master might find this worth a look. A new Sho Kosugi Ninja movie!

I know this show strictly from its appearance on MST3K.

The Master is on DVD now? (Non-MST3K version, that is)

Yeah, from what I can find only the first 2 episodes are available so far and it's split into the proper TV episodes rather than joined up like a movie like the MST3K version. If you're into a Equalizer meets Enter The Ninja and then shakes hands with The A-Team style shows then it's good! I totally loved it watching it as a teen and rewatching the first couple of eps wasn't a bad experience!