The Ninja Wars

(Please note I somehow own a subtitled, widescreen version of this so can't comment on the dubbing)

This is one crazy, and beautiful looking film. A warlord falls in love with a Shogun's daughter, and somehow is approached by a mysterious (and creepy) wizard called Kishon, whom Sonny Chiba finds hiding in a cupboard. Kishon offers to make the warlord (named Danjo) a love potion, so he can win over the girl and rule the land. Chiba warns the warlord that Kishon is evil and storms off, but the warlord's got the hots and agrees, finding himself now joined by five weird magician types. Now these are some weird looking guys. One is blind and shoots nails from his wrists, another can fly, and one can spew acid from his mouth.

Together, they manage to capture the girl's twin sister, who has just completed ninja training with her boyfriend Jitaro (she walks through a bamboo forest cutting the trees with her fingertips!). They are attacked by the magicians and Jitaro receives a faceful of acid for his trouble. Once back at the warlords house, the ninja girl cuts her own head off (again with her fingers), causing one of the magicians to cut the head off a concubine and indulge in a bit of head swapping (and one of the girls ends up with her head on the wrong way).

I'll go no further with the plot, but let's just say Jitaro is out for revenge, and to protect the other twin, which leads to all sorts of showdowns with the magicians (as they are referred to in the subtitle), which includes be-headings, eye gouging, flying through the air, and a lot of stolen identities. Oh, and at one point the blind guy shoots lasers from his eyes.

This is one bonkers film with plenty to enjoy. It seems to have had quite a big budget too, judging by the sets and the gorgeous cinematography, and I wouldn't be remiss in suggesting that Ninja Wars has art house leanings, as there's a lot of eye-popping imagery on view, and it all seems to be about how you can't simulate true love (that's what I got from it anyway). This is one of those Japanese films where, if someone is beheaded, their body sprays blood like a fountain. It's also one of those Japanese films where I felt I wasn't quite picking up on all the cultural references, and reality is kind of played about with (the last third comes across as a bit disjointed).

Still, this is no Godfrey Ho film. This is something else altogether. Recommended at least in the form I viewed it.

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.

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.

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.

Watch this movie and every time someone says "what's that?!", drink a shot of [insert your favorite hard liquor here]. You will be REALLY drunk before the movie ends. You will NEED to be really drunk to make it to the end.

The dialogue scenes in this film are so leadenly directed that it will have you screaming at the TV, "Will somebody PLEASE take less than five whole seconds to respond to someone else's line of dialogue?!" This is clearly not just a matter of bad dubbing (which, granted, in this film it is utterly atrocious), but because the director seems to think that he's Ozu or Kurosawa, forgetting that he's making a ninja movie with Sonny Chiba and Henry Sanada.

Not to sneer at Chiba or Sanada. (I adore the 'Streetfighter' series and have watched nearly all of Sonny's other films.) Nor, for that matter, ninja movies. This is a BADLY MADE ninja movie - and there's the distinction.

Oh, sure, at times the utter goofiness of some of the situation is good for more than a few laughs (acid-spewing 'devil monk'; head-switching virgin/courtesan twin sisters; spider tea kettle), but the plot is awfully convoluted (again, I'd be more than willing to allow that the godawful dubbing has likely obscured any subtleties or nuance) and bewteen the action scenes, when every other line of dialogue seems to be someone responding in amazement "what's that?!" (are you people deaf or something? clean the wax outta your ears!), you keep praying that very soon someone will again be decapitated.

And what's up with that ending? The lovers are whisked off...well, I don't want to spoil it for anyone brave enough to watch this thing, but trust me when I say that at the end of this one you'll either be scratching your head in utter befuddlement or jumping up and down, insanely babbling, "What's that?! What's that?! What's that..?!". Or you'll be passed out from too many shots of [insert favorite hard liquor].