Kunoichi ninpô-chô: Ninja tsukikage-shô

What critical standards do you apply to a movie where one of the villians is despatched by a female ninja machine gunning a stream of ping pong balls from her vagina and another has his testicles inflated to the size of basketballs and exploded? The only sensible reaction is to treat it as slapstick comedy and judge accordingly.

By that standard, this movie is a hoot. The plot is some ridiculous palaver about saving the Shogun's honor, but the action moves along at a brisk clip with a steady stream of cheesy special effects, comically over the top violence, gratuitous nudity and lashings of sex, both straight and kinky. The cast chew the scenery (and occasionally each other).

Don't take it seriously. Just laugh along.

Authentic costumes and sets with top-rate photography give this production higher marks than it deserves. It's a tale of old Japan when the Shogun in a time of austerity lives a salacious life with his seven mistresses now rejected from his household.

In order to destabilise the Shogun political opponents hope to expose him and his life of lust. Aware of this he declares that the remaining three women will be annihilated before they can spread gossip about the sexual romps. The female ninja are then called upon to use their magical powers of destruction.

The film exploits all the supernatural trickery which the ninja use against their foes. Some amusing but impossible stunts are performed including the "third leg hell", "ball bag lanterns", "milk of kindness" and topping the lot "the balls of five colours". While very original these scenes are an excuse to display female nudity in some strange antics.

While the costumes are clourful the characters are mere two-dimensional figures in a series of violent scenes where the ninja sword play is prominent with the sound of clashing steel. One character remarks "We are ninja....we must not show sympathy". That is evident as opponents are quickly despatched...even the Witch of the West who has a large crucifix emblazoned on her forehead.

Amongst all the nonsense the quality of the photography is quite remarkable and exciting. It is best in the scenes where mist drifts among the forest trees at night.

A weird formulaic sexploitation actioner. The object seems to be to get the clothes off some lovely gals at every excuse, then alternate with smouldering looks, dirty deals and action.

The result is quite an entertaining soft-porn actioner. There's just enough wackiness to keep things from getting dull, too. The main subplot is basically girl ninjas vs guy ninjas. For every trick the male ninjas pull (e.g. third leg torture, the dick stick), the girls have a reply (e.g. balloon blow up).

Things could have been better, though. The producers missed many extra opportunities to get the girls naked and, unfortunately, although they appear completely unclothed, they are never shown full frontal.

Overall, there's just enough outfit-dropping, sword-slashing and double-dealing to keep things going, and a bit extra. Worth a look.