A Guerra dos Ninja

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.

When I found a copy of this movie at my local thrift store, I plunked down my dollar to buy it, figuring at the very least I would be getting some good ninja action. But the movie is anything but. If you are looking for a classic ninja portrayal, look elsewhere - there are only a few (very) short appearances of the men in black. They don't get to do much action, and for that matter, neither do the rest of the cast. The action, the few times that it comes, is very short and not the least bit spectacular. That's bad enough, but what's worse is that the drama portion of the movie is next to incomprehensible, and isn't able to win the sympathy of the audience for any of the characters. There are a few unintended laughs, and I will admit some of the production values are not bad, but otherwise this is one sorry "ninja" movie. You'd get a lot more enjoyment from a typical Godfrey Ho ninja movie than from this movie.

This movie is totally ridiculous. Also, the hero has horrible teeth. Looks like they jammed a bunch of marshmallows in there. However, the crazy Devil Monks are pretty entertaining. Why they put an afro on the vomiting monk I'll never know, but I'm glad they did. This is a fairly entertaining movie if you like campy, goofy poorly dubbed ninja movies. The fight scenes are only mediocre, but they clearly spent a decent amount of money on this thing, so the sets and costumes are pretty good. Enjoy. Beware the completely retarded ending though.

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].

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.