This was the first ninja movie I ever saw

And also, the first time I'd ever seen or even heard of ninjas. It was 1982 or 1983 (I was 7 or 8 years old) at my uncle's house; they were watching it on HBO. It was already in progress when we showed up, so I only saw about the last half of it.

I was spellbound by it. This ninja stuff was amazing; even better than the already-awesome karate or kung fu in my mind.

Mom didn't like violent movies and kept trying to make us leave, but Dad wouldn't budge. He wanted to see how it ended just like us kids did.

To add to the intrigue, my much older cousin Phil was there (he was in his early 20s) and he was a karate student (a brown belt at the time). We figured that made him an expert on this sort of thing, and he really played up the ninja lore after the movie was over, making them seem superhuman.

Over the years this movie became a white whale for me, because I wanted to watch it again wicked bad (especially since I never saw the whole movie to begin with), but all my efforts to do so were in vain. There were several video rental places in town, including one that had a huge selection, but none of them had this movie. None of the video store clerks had ever even heard of it. Whenever I asked about it they thought I meant "Enter the Dragon."

In 1992 I was visiting my older brother in Hartford, CT and he lived across the street from a Blockbuster Video. I'd heard for years they would probably have Enter the Ninja, but Blockbuster didn't exist in my area of central Maine. So the first chance I got I went over there and there it was. After a decade I finally got to watch it again.

Unfortunately, it didn't live up to the hype I'd built around it in my mind over the years. Revenge of the Ninja, which I'd seen countless times by that point, was far better, as were a few other ninja movies I'd seen since 1982/1983, such as American Ninja, Ninja III, and Bloodsport.