Kunoichi ninpô-chô: Yagyû gaiden

There are so many movies about Ninjas out there in a day and age when obtaining them is the easiest it has ever been. There are dozens upon dozens of flicks with just the word "Ninja" in the title alone, which only makes it more of a daunting task to actually find one that is worth your time. The good news? Not only does this movie feel like you are watching a live- action anime like Ninja Scroll, with all the over- the-top sword induced blood geysers raining across your screen but Lady Ninja (1998) actually stars an eye patch rocking Jubei Yagyu, the protagonist from the anime and novels. So for all you Ninja Scroll, Samurai Reincarnation, Reborn From Hell fans, you might want to check this out for the Jubei action alone. Based on the novel,'Yagyū Ninpōchō'(1964) by Futaro Yamada, the basic plot of the movie centres around legendary real life butt-kicker Jubei (portrayed by Hitoshi Ozawa, who also directs) as he leads the seven female survivors of the Hori clan on a revenge mission against the Seven Spears, acting as their demon protector and donning a gnarly oni mask to conceal his secret identity from the bad guys like a samurai Spiderman.

The quickest way to find out if this movie is for you or not is to ask yourself these three questions;

"Did I like the classic 90's anime Ninja Scroll?"

"Do I like ninja movies in general?"

"Would I like to see a movie where someone has the superpower to be able to absorb a Dragonball Z type energy blast up their who-ha and regurgitate it out of their mouth?"

You now have your answer. You're welcome.

PROS

• Sexy Ninja Magic!

• LOTS of blood (possibly the most I've ever seen in a Ninja flick since the 1983 flick Duel to the Death)

• Starts with the action right away (literally one of the best openers I've seen) and keeps a good pace all the way until the end credits.

• Some very inventive bad guys ("Eyeball Minions" Ninja was a favorite)

CONS

• Possibly TOO SEXY Ninja Magic (a 10 on the creepy raunchy meter sometimes - so a warning to those more sensitive)

• Weird wound logic. Somebody will get sliced one time and multiple blood fountains will pour out from random parts of the body that couldn't possibly have been hit with one swipe of the sword. Or could it?!?

• Confusing subplots. At some point one of the leads starts channeling the spirit of a blind swordsman Zatoichi type character and it is never fully explained why the bad guys can't tell it's this famous person with just their eyes closed pretending to be blind. Worse than Superman simply removing his glasses and slicking his hair back

FINAL SCORE

3/10 stars if you are an average movie goer but if you answered yes to all three questions like myself, Lady Ninja is an easy-

7/10 stars

The other review hit the major points. A screaming howler of a bad movie. The version I saw was subtitled in English. I really wished I knew Japanese because I'm sure plenty of "entertainment" was lost in translation.

I'm not a Ninja movie fan, and the fight sequences are poorly shot - edited - directed, so I found it funny that during fight sequences you just had to wait to the end to see who would loose body parts. The high pressure misting blood was classic! C'mon! The shear goofyness was bizarre! This was based on a story and I kept wondering who made more trips to the Opium Den? The original story writer, the one who adapted it to the screen, or the Director? In one scene a hero & heroine fall through a trap door into a slime pit rife with the remnants of others. As they think on how to escape our heroine mentions the hero will need a sharp blade upon their escape. Wouldn't you know a virgin's blood would be just the trick. Let the fornication begin! The nasty bad guy is appalled they would have the gall to have sex in his Pit O' Death and starts shooting arrows at the copulating couple. Our hero dances and parries about with his good woman still mounted. His sword slicing each arrow. Cut to an extreme close up of the shining blade deftly held for one drop of blood to sing the blade electric! Now that's "Bad Cinema" at it's best and there is plenty more.

A bunch of lady ninjas must kill a bunch of demons for some reason. It is suspect but I think Kunoichi: The Lady Ninja is a very loose remake of 1983 film Legend Of The 8 Samurai or maybe a straight adaption of some Japanese novel called 8 Dog Chronicles. I don't know and I don't care. Kunoichi is a frantic action fantasy film. This film is caulked full of bizarre crap like weird characters with weird mystical techniques like lightning hooters and some broad who can absorb magic through her c··· and spit out fireballs. There is also some of eroticism with drug induced (?) orgies and rape. Yay. The action is reminiscent of early to mid 90s Hong Kong Wuxia Pian added lots of dismemberment and gore which is happy fun. Though the pacing is brisk, the story is disjointed as all hell which only adds to this films lunacy. It's a messy, incoherent movie but it's insanely fun with enough crackhead s··· to choke an elephant.

This is trash but it's somewhat entertaining. Young Lady Ninjas on a revenge trip with lots of strange special effects and cuts that make you dizzy. You guess there is a fight but you can't see what's happening until the fight ends and a huge blood fountain gushes out of one of the fighters. I only saw this movie because I was too early for the film I really wanted to see and that was the only choice. It wasn't boring but I wouldn't recommend this film to anybody.(4/10)

KONOICHI LADY NINJA came out in the U. S. in 2002 105 minutes on DVD from Media Blasters/ Tokyo Shock line of releases.

Like cigarettes certain DVD boxes should probably warn viewers of certain risks. This one would say WARNING: THIS IS PART SEVEN IN A SERIES OF FILMS AND WILL MAKE NO SENSE AT ALL TO ANYONE WHO HASN'T SEEN ANY OF THE PREVIOUS FILMS, THOUGH WE DON'T WANT TO TELL YOU THAT OR YOU WON'T RENT OR BUY IT.

That said I get the feeling it would still be mostly senseless but that's not to say it's not fun in a Hi Octane wacky Asian way. There is almost never a shortage of ideas in Japanese fantasy films and this one is no exception, but at over 90 minutes and with no sense of story or purpose it's a bit of a trial to get through.

It seems like it will be simple enough when it starts. A group of bad guys, one of whom wears anachronistic glass goggles, attack a convent. One of the bad guys pulls out both his eyes and throws them on the ground so that they can turn into monsters to help in the battle. They kill some people fly around in the air spray blood, not spurt, spray blood in all directions and then leave without finishing the job. Sort of a Pearl Harbor kind of attack, they just make their enemy really mad. It would seem that the rest of the film we be a revenge movie as the female survivors track down the outlandish baddies and kill them real good with more gushering blood and goofy super powers. The group of sisters, Ninja's I guess, are called Konoichi, but like much of what is in this movie that's only a guess. These sisters in their quest for revenge do occasionally bear their very very small breasts, at one point this is done to invoke what they call NINJA MAGIC: NIPPLE SHOCK WAVE!

Sort of like a Power Rangers type thing in the middle of a fight a character will yell out things like, NINJA MAGIC: RED PHOENIX, FLYING BULLET POWER, or ROTTING EGG CURSE, or ENERGY BALL and unconvincing but bizarre powers will suddenly become part of the fight scene. The women to combat the ENERGY BALL thing sit on the ground spread their legs suck the energy balls into their, well you know, and then blow the bad guy into a thousand pieces. After this scene you can pretty much stop watching, it never tops this moment.

Yes, this isn't RASHOMAN that's for sure.

Moments like this will keep you going through the baffling thousand characters with a thousand motivations and special skills and agendas plot. I'm sure if I'd seen at least a few of the other films this would be more involving and less frustrating and by the end tedious. If you think you've seen campy Japanese samurai type screaming in movies before, well, this is the Mount Everest of over the top screaming. The scream however does lack the conviction of the authentic over the top screaming Asian movies. By this point the filmmaker's are camping it up and know they are that robs it of a bit of the fun.

The DVD box should also say something else WARNING: THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE VERSION OF THIS FILM IS PERHAPS THE WORST DUBBING JOB IN HISTORY. It sounds like a SCTV parody of a English dub. It sounds like it was recorded by two guys, and maybe a girl or one of them just using a high voice, who do everthing. One of the characters sounds like John Candy and the other sounds like Joe Flaherty doing a dead on Yoda impersonation. It never matches anyone's lips but it sounds like what it is, two guys sitting in a room rushing half heartedly through the dialogue. It never actually sounds like it's part of the rest of the audio track or on a locations where the film takes place at. It cheapens the film enormously, just check out any scene in the much better Japanese surround mix and compare. The English one is childishly bad. Just for fun it references American action films. The lines MAKE MY DAY, and I'LL BE BACK pop up when you least expect them. Not that this takes away from anything given the nature of the film. Then again trying to make sense of this fast paced goofy story is even harder when trying to watch subtitles and keep up. It's nice they did an English track, I think done specially for this release, pity it's so poor.

The film's soundtrack isn't helped by the tinny, sounds-like-FRANCIS FORD COPPOLA'S DRACULA -done-on-1980's-keyboards music score by Torsten Rasch.

Extras on the disk reveal that certainly the filmmakers' intended much of the film to be funny. The director/ actor Ozawa is a pretty clever and amusing in person, he just needs to be a better film story teller. The extras also feature the sort of random nature that occasionally plagues Media Blaster releases. You never know when some extra will just suddenly start or stop in mid sentence. But you have to wonder, given the still unreleased titles of really classic Japanese horror and fantasy films, that this one would pop up while other more deserving ones remain lost to modern audiences both here and in Japan itself. I don't know perhaps this film is something of a relief from all the deadly serious and equally senseless RING and THE GRUDGE knock offs flooding our DVD shelves.

Best element of the film in terms of a classical look is the cinematography by Shouji Ebara. There are many classy visuals in between the grade school wackiness of the rest of it. Just imagine CROUCHING TIGER HIDDEN DRAGON directed by Lyold Kaufman and you'll have some idea, though Kaufman would have made sure it made a bit more sense and had larger breasts and more of them, and maybe you'd get to see the LESBIAN CANNIBAL HO DOWN video for the 100th time. For me that never grows old.

This is probably best watched as a party tape with some slash metal music playing over the soundtrack and the subtitles turned off. In that context it rates 4 stars.