Iga ninpôchô

The sorcerer Mikio Narita speaks a prophecy: whoso marries the Princess Noriko Watanabe will rule the world. This makes her very popular with the warlords. Narita and his five disciples hire out to Lord Jun Miho, with the plan to make a love potion to make her fall in love with the lord. Fortunately, she has an identical twin whom people don't know about, who has been raised by ninjas. She and fellow ninja Hiroyuki Sanada. A love potion can be made from her tears, so the disciples kidnap her, rape her, torture her and eventually swaps heads with the female disciple. Now the creature with the disciple's head and Narita's heart tells Sanada this, and dies. So he goes to protect the Princess.

Would it be wrong to write "Same old same old"? Magical ninjas, magical pots, gallant, acrobatic ninjas, evil warlords, a bit of death pornography, and evil wizards who spew deadly projectile vomit onto their victims: the amount of baggage that ninjas carry around sounds rather oppressive. Even so, this one chugs right along, thanks to some beautiful camerawork by Fujio Morita, actors who sound like they mean it, and some great set design by Norimichi Igawa and Kazuyoshi Sonoda. I could have done without the vomit, though.

I picked this up out of a $5 bin at Wal-Mart. It came with 8 other movies all on DVD. In the last three days, I've watched this three times. In the beginning, I got a little confused as to what was going on with all the black magic being talked about, but I got submerged deep into it soon after. The defining part of this movie is definitely when a girl gets her head cut off and just stands there spraying blood for a minute or two while a bad guy just chills next to it. Sonny Chiba was also great in this. I still haven't found Jackie Chan, but I'm sue I'll find him from watching this over and over. I recommend anybody who sees this movie in a clearance bin or laying around to get it. It's sure to please martial art, action, and b-film hilarity lovers everywhere.

Ok, this movie rules. The dubbing is great and the story is hilarious. The gratuitous use of blood and decapitated bodies is so funny the gore is lost. Besides, what's better than a good vs. evil story involving a spider tea kettle filled with a magic aphrodesiac, and insane emperor and an evil ninja spirit with one of the best laughs I've ever heard. If you can someway find this movie, check it out.

Okay, it's not really a classic. In fact, few people have probably even heard of this movie. And that's probably a good thing. This movie is odd. Really odd and bad. It has so many weird plot twists (two girls, one a virgin ninja, the other a concubine, are beheaded, and their heads are reattached but switched to different bodies) and visual effects (ninjas that vomit great streams of acid, the big fat naked concubine getting it on with the blind, scarred devil monk) that a mere plot summary cannot do the movie justice. That and I'm lazy. So, go rooting around in your local mom'n pop video store's bargain bin (I got my copy from a friend who bought it at Phar-Mor when they were having a big everything must go sale), look for Ninja Wars, watch it, and be amazed.

This is the funniest ninja movie I've seen...and probably the worse I've seen since American Ninja 4. In some scenes lots of women are decapitated, and they stand there for about 30 seconds...blood spurting out of their heads like a fire hydrant! There's a really stupid old man with a staff who laughs really weird, and the evil warlord sounds like Grover from Sesame Street. My favorite part is the "ninja-like" attack methods the lampshade-headed warriors in this film use. As they fight, they spew egg yolk out of their mouths at people. And were supposed to believe thats what real ninjas do??? Overall this is the strangest ninja movie possibly ever made.