1987 Directed by Mark Joffe
Robbie and his girlfriend, Amy, are among a group of students who play their private night games in the romantic thriller that catapulted Kidman to center stage. On screen throughout, Kidman discovers what will happen when a friendly game becomes real life ... and real life becomes a deadly game.
Árnyéktánc, Nightmaster, Tomorrow's News: Watch the Shadows Dance, Tanz der Schatten, La danza de las sombras, Az éjszaka mestere, A Dança das Sombras, Królowie nocy
Australia
Australia
Baby Nicole Kidman with her original Aussie accent (!!) starring in an after school special about the dangers of *checks notes* night karate?? No, wait - war veterans who become teachers??
AKA Nightmaster (per my vhs copy), this film left me with more questions than answers: Did this predict DVD players?? Robby pops a cd rom into a small player and a video plays on a tv - wild! Does everyone In Australia live in a warehouse apartment?? Were all Aussie high schoolers this stylish in the 80’s? I want Kidman’s entire wardrobe! The plot was weird as hell and made zero sense but I couldn’t stop watching.
Whereas BMX Bandits and Windrider concerned pushbikes and windsurfing respectively, the closing entry of Nicole's formative bouffy sports trilogy concerns karate.
The coach is a sole survivor from a covert ops past and runs a predawn karate class for school students, to the ire of his ex, a daytime English teacher, who little appreciates the flagging engagement of students in regular classtime during Shakespeare. Having also been privy to the coach's personal demons, she feels uneasy about his growing influence (which includes a paranoia-inducing codeword "deep coup") and takes an interest in lessening their general nightbound bent which regularly skirts with danger. This extracurricular preoccupation principally includes the titular gamesmanship which they collectively compete in each evening, a sort of…
goes from promising emptydead near-future industrial school work, where by day, the students study and goof off but by night they play some increasingly dangerous ninja-tenchu type paintball game(?) and hang out at a new wave neon-steel fixtured nightclub that reminded both of turbo kid and hell comes to frogtown. you even get like 3 almost full songs by the house band? (i also love how australias musical leanings were always a few years behind, like in 1987, no american film would look this new wave, but thats for another discussion on my australian 80s pop obsession)
but the film ends up going into just boring corrupt sports/frankie goes to hollywood "two tribes" looking boxing matches/drug abuse.
nicoles hair is fucking huuuuuuuuuuge in this so, this is one for the Big Hair fans
Being the best isn't always the answer.
-Sonia Spane
I've adored Nicole Kidman for longer then I can remember. Her great movies or shitty movies it doesn't matter, if she's there I will enjoy something out of it. Here the 19 year old Kidman with her glorious huge poofy hair and real Australian accent is a god damn ninja! Great movie or GREATEST MOVIE EVER MADE?!
Ok... she's not really a ninja, in fact no one in the film actually calls themselves a ninja. It's not even a martial arts film. It's a teen drama for the most part that just happens to have teens that train in martial arts and play this game at night in abandoned industrial complexes…
It’s perhaps not widely known but, back in the 80s, long before her well-deserved awards and adulation, Nicole Kidman starred in a ninja movie called Night Master.
What? No, really. It was originally called Watch The Shadows Dance and was made for Australian TV as part of a series of TV movies called Tomorrow’s News. It’s hard to find much info about Tomorrow’s News as a curated concept (any Aussies reading who remember the series, please feel free to drop me a line in the comments below!) but the subject matter of its films suggest it was an attempt to get in touch with youth culture. There’s one about post-apocalyptic pool players (Hard Knuckle), one about demonic holograms and hackers…
In NIGHTMASTER, a group of young men (and one lady) plays a deadly ninja game in an old factory. Whoever can reach the top and ring the bell, becomes the master. But their master is dealing with ptsd and their teacher (yes, these are students!) wants them to get better grades. It's a tough life being a ninja in Australia.
What I watched was a real oddity. Apparently a new "director's cut" version, made by a different director, who also added a bunch of new scenes in which some beautiful ladies dance and talk to each other. It makes no sense, but I guess they wanted to really milk this movie. They even make it look aand sound like Nicole…
Nicole Kidman-athon #3
Probably the weakest film of Nicole's that I've seen. She's the best part of it but unfortunately plays a side character (despite the fact that her face is the biggest part of the poster on here??) It just feels like it's trying to do too much but ends up being incredibly boring.
It's like Karate Kid meets Rumble Fish meets Divergent, which really didn't work. But there were some cool noir-ish elements and the neon lighting was unique.
The acting was really bad, the score was SO grating, and I thought the teacher wanted to bang her student, which was uncomfortable. Her character was weird. This whole movie was just weird.
Oh and the actor who played the main character kind of looked like Tom Holland.
The Future, After school Australian teenagers go to a Ninja Fight Club.
One of these teenagers is a 20 something baby-faced Nicole Kidman.
All theses years I lived this life not knowing this movie existed...
I have a suspicion that the director said to his buddy, "Hey, we have access to a bar, a school, and an abandoned factory next month. Let's make a movie!" and then tried to come up with a plot to fit those locations. I think they needed an extra month on that script.
However...
The movie is so bad and so 80's it's hilarious.
It reminds me of something you would see on MST3K.
The all black and white costuming (except for the English teacher who gets to wear gem tones), the darkwave lounge singer who doesn’t need a mic, the specially formulated dye they use in their ninja game, and the refusal to explain the vaguely post-apocalyptic world of the movie kinda reminds me of Cronenberg tbh. But the game scenes are so darkly lit that the geography is incomprehensible and it’s so hard to tell anyone apart. So half the movie is pretty much unwatchable
