Leonard Miller (Michael Todd) created Robot Ninja, a comic book that makes lots of money for his publisher Stanley Kane (Burt Ward) - named for two men who did the exact same to artists, Stan Lee and Bob Kane - but none for him. They even turn his violent comic book into a cartoon for kids.

As he grows depressed, he witnesses several crimes. When he tries to stop one, he's put into the hospital, which leads him to seek out a way to become his creation in real life.

Directed and written by J. R. Bookwalter (The Dead Next Door, Ozone), the story finds Leonard going to Dr. Goodknight (Bogdan Pecic) for weapons and powers, then going out into the world and acting like a 80s grim and gritty black and white comics explosion vigilante hero - think Tim Vigil's Grips, shout out to Matty Budrewicz for calling out how this is similar to Vigil's layouts in his article on the essential The Schlock Pit - along with tons of gore and violence.

This was produced by Dave DeCouteau, who it seems like is behind nearly every other movie that I watch. He was able to get Linnea Quigley for this.

I knew a dude in art school that spent some time trying to police his old high school, somewhere in the suburbs of Pittsburgh, wearing a Batman costume under his street clothes, waiting for the time when he was needed. He'd broken up with his girlfriend and had what I only figure was a break with our world and went into his own. I asked him why he told me his origin story, as I wondered if what if I was his arch enemy and he'd told me exactly what I needed to know to strike at his loved ones. He tried to throw me against a wall like he was Frank Miller Batman, except that, well, he didn't have any training or strength. I just laughed, to be honest. I thought that this was really funny at the time, but today that I'm older and look back on my younger days with a mixture of sadness and headshaking cringe, I feel very upset for him. If you stay away from reality and think that comics - or movies - are real, this is what happens.

Unless you decide to become a Robot Ninja.

That's totally fine.

Let's just make this clear: you might think a movie like Robot Ninja would be one of those transcendent B-movies that's good despite its non-existent budget, or that, failing that, it would be so bad and goofy that it would end up being hysterically funny and therefore a good time to be had by all.

But if you thought that, you'd be wrong. Dead wrong. Because watching the entirety of Robot Ninja will annihilate your very soul. I mean, I like camp as much as the next guy, but what I DON'T like is an hour and a half of pure torture, and there's simply no other way to describe this tenth circle of Hell. The only, only way I would ever recommend it is if you need to build up your tolerance for the worst movies of all time, so that you might be able to watch, say, Voodoo Academy without dying of lack-of-ambition poisoning, or Teenage Barbarians without succumbing to a fatal case of cultural shame. Other than that, stay far, far away.

In conclusion, Robot Ninja is the devil.

In the career of indie cult director J.R. Bookwalter, ROBOT NINJA stands out purely for its own ineptitude. It's an entirely cheap, ridiculous little affair about a comic book writer who creates the titular character and has to embody him to fight crime. The story's not bad per se, but the execution is appallingly cheap, the acting quite rubbish, and the effects non-existent. A "film" which could barely be described as such, in fact.