The Octagon
Tags: revenge, murder, violence, flashback

Plot synopsis:
A martial artist (Chuck Norris) must stop a group of terrorists trained in the ninja style by his half-brother (Tadashi Yamashita).
The film opens with a short scene at a terrorist training camp. The main instructor, Katsumoto (Yuki Shimoda) tells the graduating class that all of their actions and whereabouts will be known and that if they do anything to expose or harm the group, they and their families will be killed.
The film then cuts to an assassination of a diplomat by members of the group. One of the terrorists is shot by a bodyguard while the others escape.
We then meet Scott James (Chuck Norris), a retired karate champion, who is at a dance performance. After the performance, he meets one of the dancers named Nancy (Kim Lankford). He takes her out to dinner because he is interested in how she incorporated the martial arts into her routine. She seems distant during the dinner and is more concerned about a recent assassination that took place abroad. She wonders if “an American was killed".
Scott takes Nancy home, and he senses that someone is there. The lights do not work as they enter, and then they are attacked by a group of ninjas. Scott fights them off, but they end up killing Nancy. After he restores power to the house, he finds that the entire family has been killed.
The next day, Scott goes to see an old mercenary friend named McCarn (Lee Van Cleef). Scott asks him if he knows about any ninja activity. However, McCarn tells him, “If you are seeing ninja, you are seeing ghosts.” McCarn tries to recruit Scott to join his cause in eliminating terrorists, but Scott declines.
On his way back from McCarn’s place, Scott encounters a rich lady named Justine (Karen Carlson), who managed to get her car stuck on the side of the road. She asks Scott for help, and after he helps her, she takes his keys, forcing him to walk back to her place to get them.
Scott goes back to Justine’s house to get his keys, and she pretends to find them in her purse. She offers to drive him back since “It would be the only decent thing to do.” Scott agrees, only on the condition that this time, he drives.
On their way back, Scott and Justine are chased by two cars. Scott and Justine manage to evade their pursuers. After Scott gets back to his car, Justine identifies one of the cars as being “her bodyguards.” Scott then asks her out to dinner since she has now become “an object of concern".
Before their date, Scott goes back to McCarn’s and notices that the car that was chasing them belonged to McCarn. He confronts Justine, and she confesses that she hired McCarn to be her bodyguard because McCarn told her that Scott would not accept her offer of employment. She also wants him to kill a man named Seikura (Tadashi Yamashita). She confesses that her father was killed by terrorists and that she has since been on a crusade to eliminate them. She has managed to help “retire” two of the three main terrorist leaders, but Seikura remains. Scott is insulted by her actions, and he promptly declines her offer and leaves.
Scott’s friend, A.J. (Art Hindle) is a karate champion and feels frustrated by the recent terrorist attacks that have taken place both abroad and on Nancy. He decides to start going after terrorists himself. He tries to find a German terrorist, but that terrorist is killed by McCarn’s men before A.J. can catch him. McCarn then fills A.J. in on just who he is and his relationship to Scott. He also tells A.J. that it was Nancy’s brother who was killed in the terrorist attack abroad and that she was killed in retaliation. A. J. decides to join McCarn’s cause.
We see a flashback where Scott remembers training with his half brother Seikura. He and his brother are seen running through an obstacle course to obtain a sword. Scott stumbles at the end but still manages to get the sword. However, his enraged brother grabs the sword and declares it to be his. Scott’s adoptive father (John Fujioka), then berates Seikura and disowns him. He tells Scott that Seikura is now his enemy for life.
The movie cuts to a scene at the Octagon training camp where a new group of recruits has graduated. One recruit, Aura (Carol Bagdasarian) has reservations about what she is doing but leaves the camp to report to a terrorist dispatcher named “Doggo” (Kurt Grayson).
Scott realizes that A.J. and McCarn are right, so he signs up and attends a mercenary recruiting camp in an attempt to be recruited so he can get to Seikura. He gets interviewed at Doggo’s camp, but Doggo knows his true identity, and he refuses his services. Scott then has to fight his way out of Doggo’s facility, defeating “Longlegs” (Richard Norton) and “Hatband” (Aaron Norris) and returns to his hotel.
Later that day, Aura grabs Scott’s file and defects from Doggo’s camp. Meanwhile, Justine manages to recruit A.J. to find Seikura. As Scott goes back to his room, he encounters Aura, and she tells him that she regrets what she has done and that she can lead him to Seikura’s camp. Justine then comes by to try once more to get Scott to help her, but she gives up after seeing Aura and decides to get Seikura herself. As she goes out of the hotel with A.J., she is hit with a poisoned dart from one of Doggo’s men and dies. A.J. then leaves to find Seikura’s place while McCarn stays behind to watch Scott. A few hours later, several ninja are seen scaling the hotel. They attack Scott and Aura but are defeated—the last shot by one of McCarn’s men as he is descending the hotel. A firefight then erupts between McCarn’s men and Doggo’s men, and all of Doggo’s men are killed. Scott and Aura then depart to Mexico for Seikura’s terrorist camp.
A.J. is then shown finding Seikura’s place (located in Mexico or an unnamed Central American nation) the hard way, and he is eventually captured and taken prisoner. Aura gets Scott to the compound, and Scott infiltrates the camp. He is eventually discovered and led to an area known as “The Octagon” (a building filled with treacherous paths and enemies). Scott fights his way through and ends up fighting Seikura’s “enforcer” named “Kyo” (again, played by Richard Norton). Scott defeats Kyo, and as a result, Seikura kills A.J. by slitting his throat. Scott and Seikura fight, but Seikura escapes the compound. Meanwhile, Aura infiltrates the compound and recruits several of her fellow former trainees to fight back and burn the compound to the ground. They end up destroying the entire camp, but only Aura manages to survive. She then goes after Scott and Seikura. As the sun is coming up, she sees Seikura attack Scott from behind. However, Scott stabs Seikura with his sword and the movie ends with Scott standing over Seikura’s body.

Review: Can you go wrong with ninjas, Chuck Norris and Lee Van Cleef?.
Scott James a retired martial arts champion gets caught up in a complicated web involving a wealthy heiress trying to hire him for an assassination job that includes an international terrorist group of ninjas and their training ground called 'The Octagon'.
Along the way he gets help from an old friend/work buddy McCarn.Whenever you got a ninja problem, Chuck Norris is your man.
I never thought I'll be saying this about a Norris film, but it has too much going on in the story and this makes it feel rather drawn out when its not shoving in those crackerjack martial art sequences.
Making up the rest of the performances is the wittily badass Lee Van Cleef (who steals the few scenes he's in) as the sneaky underhand McCern who feeds Scott with information he needs.
Norris is Scott James, a man haunted by memories of his growing up and rivalry with his former martial art brother Seikura, who now heads a Ninja training camp and is teaching international terrorists the ways of the Ninja.
James must stop the organization and face off, once and for all, with his former brother.There's little in the way of story, and sadly the film takes it's time in getting to the point where Norris finally takes out the Ninja trash.
Like a lot of his movies, the lack of much plot means the film moves pretty slowly between the action.
Lee Van Cleef and Richard Norton pop up in small roles, Richard Norton actually has a few different roles here.I would have rated it an 8 out of 10 if there was a bit more action in the middle half of the film.
For the most part, only Chuck Norris and ninja fans will get the most out of THE OCTAGON (1980).Overall worth watching..7 out of 10.
The production is very cheap (to the point that you can barely see anything during the night scenes), and the plot is pretty vague (Is Chuck Norris playing a mercenary?
I just can't see this as a review excerpt - it wouldn't draw a lot of viewers - but it sums up "The Octagon" pretty well.I actually would have rated this movie much lower, but the final 20 minutes, where Chuck invades the Ninja training camp and confronts his 'brother' almost saves the film.
ALMOST.Aside from Lee Van Clief, Chuck Norris is the best actor in the film, which ought to set off warning bells in your head.
(One thing you can say for Norris, he did improve somewhat as an actor, and by the time 'Code Of Silence' appeared some years after this, he was considerably more expressive.) However, the screenwriter and director apparently never passed Screen Writing 101, because they make poor Chuck narrate almost every scene with intrusive whispered voice-overs (in a layered echo effect, no less) where he endlessly explains his moral dilemmas and his anguish and anger at his estranged brother...to HIMSELF...over and over again.
Even the early scenes set in the ninja terrorist training camp, which were probably meant to engage the viewer and keep the interest up, bog down in stupid inane dialog and exposition.But, as other reviewers have mentioned, things perk up considerably in the last bit, which actually has suspense, atmosphere, and drama.
Too bad the whole movie couldn't have been like this, but I suppose that watching 2 hours of Chuck Norris infiltrating a Ninja camp would have been like playing "Metal Gear Solid" without a controller.3.5 stars out of 10..
The Octagon on the surface is just another in a long line of not-so-great Chuck Norris karate pictures.
The most entertaining aspect of the film is Chuck Norris' voice over narration of his thoughts.
Chuck Norris show with a lot of noisy action , thrills , intrigue and violent combats.
In a world of choices, for one man there is no choice , a hero named Scott James/Chuck Norris must face The Octagon .
A martial artist expert (Chuck Norris who sports a bushy mustache in this fourth starring role in a cinema movie of action) must defeat a plan by ninjas to create a worldwide training camp for terrorists .
At the end takes place a breathtaking combat in arena , an "octagonal training compound of the Ninja cult, a school for terrorists of all types" (the set had a 12' foot perimeter wall and was built north of Los Angeles at a location known as Indian Dunes and spanned the size of an American football field) .
Action star Chuck Norris in this exciting picture filled with thrills , tension , suspense and violent as well as spectacular fights with high Body Count : 40 .
The movie displays a plethora of martial arts fights , as Norris cleans up the nasty fighters by means of punches , kicks , bounds and leaps with struggles certainly slick .
Fighting Stars Magazine ranked the climactic fight between Chuck Norris and Tadashi Yamashita as #13 on their list of the 25 greatest fight scenes of all time .
A few years after this film was made and released, the word 'Octagon' later became in 1983 the name of a caged enclosure used by mixed martial arts matches and the Ultimate Fighting Championship .
This was debut theatrical feature film directed by Karson , an expert on thrillers and action movies .
Norris isn't exactly the best martial arts actor, he hasn't got any spectacular moves and I get a little tired watching him wear the same type of jeans in almost every movie.
Chuck Norris stars as the only martial artist alive who can take down a ninja clan, (led by his adopted brother) in this very dull ninja movie which earns a couple points for the inspired performance of Lee Van Cleef.
Chuck Norris made only one ninja movie in his career (I think because I don't remember any others) but somehow The Octagon is a surprisingly plot driven ninja movie which isn't a very good thing since well ninja movies need to be swift.
Chuck Norris fans and martial art film fans in general will love The Octagon.
competition with young Norris kicked him out.Now the ninja school is being used to train mercenaries and terrorists and the
Has a more complicated plot than most of his films, with more subplots than usual gradually merging together, and an effective inter-cutting between Norris and the Ninja training camp.
However, Lee Van Cleef brings a certain authority to his scenes, and Norris delivers a better performance than usual.
It literally takes 90-minutes to get to the actual Octagon and then when the fights start they are choreographed in a fairly dull manner (as is common when Chuck and Aaron handled all the fight scene choreography).
A movie with ninjas needs more flash and better use of weapons and...well...ninja skills.Still, this is Chuck Norris so if I complain too much he'll find me.The podcast Don and his Amazing Friend (www.donandhisamazingfriend.com) just did a thorough review of this movie...so thorough their podcast is almost longer than the actual movie.
It's true that it may not appeal to martial arts movie lovers across the board because it actually has quite an involved, twisty plot and is going to be too slowly paced for some.
What lends "The Octagon" a high amount of unintentional hilarity is Chuck's overdone internal dialogue, all done with an exaggerated echo effect.Chuck stars as Scott James, a former fighter with bad memories, particularly of growing up with a hostile adoptive brother, Seikura (Tadashi Yamashita), who as an adult is now running a training camp for terrorists.
B movie legend Richard Norton makes his film debut in two credited roles and several uncredited ones as faceless ninjas.
(He's joked that he must have died a total of eight times in this movie.) And keep an eye out for people such as Brian Libby (whose next screen role was as Chuck's psycho nemesis in "Silent Rage"), Jack Carter, Ernie Hudson, Chuck's son Mike who plays Scott as a teenager, and an uncredited Tracey Walter.Good production design (by James L.
Chuck Norris, in the prime of his fighting days, plays some type of Karate exhibitionist/merc/counter terrorist who is recruited by a wealthy woman to defeat an army of ninjas being trained at a secret camp.
This is a shame because though it is under-lit, the action is still very rousing.Maybe it was also the forced plot line of having the man in charge of training the ninjas also be Chuck's long lost brother?
This is a good, all-around movie featuring Chuck Norris.
Like I said: In general, this is a good all-around martial-arts movie.
I live in San Jose, and I actually saw Chuck Norris in person at an MMA (mixed martial arts) event in San Jose on March 10 (2006), and it would have been nice to have him sign my DVD disk of The Octagon if it had been available..
Chuck Norris "action" star..
If it wasn't for the stunt work and brief appearance of Aussie Kung-Fu star Richard Norton this would have received a one.Chuck Norris plays a dude who tries to infiltrate a secret fighting society called THE OCTAGON.
The Octagon is the Chuck Norris attempt at making a Ninja movie.
Too bad for Norris that this is one of the worst American martial arts films ever made.First, the acting is possibly the worst I have ever seen on film.
When Chuck Norris is pretty much the best actor in the movie, you really have a problem with your cast.
The only actor with skill in the whole thing was Lee Van Cleef, and he didn't get enough screen time to really give the film much help.Second, I have no idea what happened, but Norris's end of the martial arts combat in this was just plain sloppy.
The Octagon sees martial arts legend Chuck Norris taking on an organisation of ninjas, which should be awesome, but isn't.Thanks to loads of drawn-out, talkative exposition before the inevitable showdown in the ninjas' South American terrorist training camp (the Octagon of the title?), the majority of this early Norris vehicle is, to put it simply, very boring.As martial artist Scott James, Chuck is given nowhere near enough fighting to do, the character spending most of his time chatting to attractive heiress Justine (Karen Carlson), best pal A.J.
(Art Hindle), and mercenary McCarn (Lee Van Cleef), while revealing his innermost thoughts to the viewer as reverberating whispers (a silly gimmick that quickly becomes very irritating).Avid martial arts movie fans will likely get a kick from the sight of genre regular Richard Norton's really bad hair, and the closing moments feature a reasonably choreographed fight between Norris and a hooded, hissing ninja, but the rest of the film is a major disappointment..
I'm definitely a sucker for 70's and 80's martial arts and action flicks (particlarly the output of Cannon films) and this blends both of them into one pretty awesome movie.
The fight sequences are excellent, which is pretty much the only reason someone would watch this movie anyway.
If you some fat goofy ten year old growing up in the early 80ies, seeing Chuck Norris fighting evil ninjas was just brilliant.
On those merits I would give it a solid 4, but screw that, it is a 10 because it is what it is, a cheesy Ninja vs Chuck Norris movie that if you were a little kid at the time seeing it you would have been in complete awe..
The fight scene inside the Octagon between Scott James (Norris) and Kyo the Enforcer (Norton) is one of the most impressive and best choreographed fight scenes I have ever seen in any martial arts flick.
A martial artist (Chuck Norris) must defeat a plan by ninjas to create a worldwide training camp for terrorists.Art Hindle's hair is the star of this film.
and here his hair is pretty epic.But I suppose Chuck Norris is alright (even if his hair is also a bit off in this film, and he looks awkward with a mustache).
A film that could be easily summed up as simply ninja terrorists and the sexual allure of Chuck Norris' hairy mammoth-chest, The Octagon is a standard martial arts actioner, involving a conspiratorial group of, well, ninja terrorists.
Chuck Norris is Scott James (although I was convinced after Norris stated his character name that he was in fact Scotch Eggs), a martial artist who stumbles upon the organisation that is secretly training a hard-core team of terrorists in a camp of unknown location.
From Lee Van Cleef's mercenary to Art Hindle's young martial artist with a case of premature penetration (that's not supposed to be euphemistic), but of course, as suggested by the appearance of his fur covered chest, one flash of this (in almost any Norris vehicle) sends the women giddy.
For some bizarre reason, when I sit down to watch any late '70's or '80's standard action film, I seem to believe that I am going to enjoy it.
i rather enjoyed this Chuck Norris vehicle.the fight scenes are pretty well done,and the y are a quite few of them.the acting is is good enough for the genre.the story isn't anything special,but it works for the genre.the one thing that did irk me,though was the stupid echoing voice over whenever we were subjected to Norris's character's inner thoughts.the effect came across as stupid and cheesy in my opinion.it would just take me out of the movie.
I grew up on Chuck Norris movies in the early 80's and the first one I saw was A force of one.
The Second was The Octagon and I was stunned by the action from the blonde man himself.¨ It had everything i wanted from an action movie, suspense, a little romance, good-looking fights, though heroes, badass villains and a great score.
I soon began training Ju-jitsu because I wanted to learn the great technique that Norris used in the fight scenes.
This movie, while cheerfully bad in terms of acting, screenplay, and cinematography, is one of the best examples of Norris in action, and is the best showcase of Moo Duk Kwan Tang Soo Do that I've seen on film.
I was tripping out whenever Chuck Norris' character started thinking to himself in this movie, the whole whisper with a distorted echo thing."Doggo is not the answer...
As a spoiler, if you could spoil this film anymore, all it is is Chuck's brother decides to start ninja training for terrorists and because no-one believes in ninjas anymore thinks he can get away with it.
But that's not why people watch movies like The Octagon.
Not only is he constantly flashing back to his childhood and his initial Martial Arts training (the young Scott is played by Mike Norris), but the voices in his head are overpowering and seem to tell him important things.
While The Octagon contains no cage fighting, or Punchfighting of any kind, it is in fact a reasonable Chuck movie.
As is usual for a Chuck movie, Aaron Norris was stunt coordinator, and besides doing stunts, Richard Norton has a nice appearance as a baddie who gets in a fight with Chuck.Norton's hair and mustache combo look awesome, and his blonde bowl haircut is so bright, it actually lights an entire dark scene all on its own.
Yes, there are movies like "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" , the "American Ninja" series, "3 Ninjas", and even "Beverly Hills Ninja", but "The Octagon" goes deep into the heart of these "ninjas"--mindless silent assassins who use deceptive martial arts in order to kill or maim their victims.This is how Chuck Norris uses his past competitive karate skills (away from the cinema world) to the fullest in the movie.
In the final fight scenes, I realized that the spinning back kick and the roundhouse kick would be his biggest human weapons in the flick.Chuck Norris himself plays a former student and classmate of a ninjitsu school, who turns out to be Seikura.
The hand-to-hand combat in and out of the ring helped make A FORCE OF ONE worth seeing.) Without a doubt, THE OCTAGON is Norris's showpiece: boasting more action (and less acting) than any of his other films, it's the perfect vehicle for the man and is still, after all these years, worth a look..
I think that most Chuck Norris films fall into the mindless martial arts film category, but that doesn't make them bad movies.
The crazy ninja training camp, which looked like a scene from "Hot Shots!
Previously to this film, the only other Chuck Norris movie that I'd viewed from this period had been AN EYE FOR AN EYE.
This was a fast-paced action movie, with lots of martial arts and even the added bonus of having Christopher Lee as a villain.
I automatically assumed this film was a typical early '80s Chuck Norris movie, and that others from the period would be the same.
Van Cleef doesn't even appear in many of this film's action sequences, and his role is a completely extraneous one.
The ending sees Norris infiltrating the enemy base and fighting a hundred or so ninjas.
It had a great chance to deliver some powerful family drama, between Seikura (Tadashi Yamashita) and Scott James (Chuck Norris) Instead, we get some cheap flashbacks of the two with little thought or care, and I didn't care one iota about it.
"Here's a movie that really gets going about 2 minutes before the closing credits." Like I said before, Chuck spends most of the flick whispering to himself in between random conversations with people.
Add to that a predictability factor that only a film like this should have: All the girls want Chuck (Even though the character is about as exciting as paint drying), and he never looses a fight.