TRAILER: http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=3Urnzz-eXO8

Retro review time boys. Yes, in my crusade to make a digital library of all my classic childhood memories I went and bought the TMNT movie trilogy.

Yep, I went and did what few others dare and had a turtle weekend.

So how do the memories hold up? The first movie is dark actually. Strange to call a turtle film dark, but even though this was made in the early nineties it has somewhat of an 80s vibe to it. The turtles live in new york which is portrayed as a dark city overcome by a crimewave of young thieves, murderers and muggers. In this enviroment the turtles in this movie actually somewhat live up to the ninja moniker, deftly moving in and out of the shadows. It helps a hell of a lot with plausibility when those turtle costumes are mainly shrouded in a dark colour palette. The story goes that 15 years in the past Hamato Yoshi was betrayed by the Shredder and his love was killed. His pet rat somehow came to new york to live in poverty in the sewers where it was exposed to a toxic mutagen and thus Splinter and the turtles were born.

It actually holds up as a pretty good movie, with suprisingly good martial arts in it. The film was produced by Golden Harvest, the company responsible for many Hong Kong action movies.

The second movie drops any pretence at trying to establish the turtles as plausible and goes all out as a silly kids movie. I dont know if its even worth reviewing it except to say that it's entertainingly crap. However it does have a hilarious part at the end where the turtles defeat the shredder by exploding a large speaker next to him.

In Turtles 3, the turtles are thrust back in time to feudal japan. Actually again it's pretty crap but still entertaining.