Jin yi wei

The movie starts with exposition from a narrator setting up the historical context of the fall of the last Chinese dynasty and the Japanese. Chang Yi plays the corrupt eunuch who misappropriates tribute from the Japanese meant for the emperor. Yueh Hua and Chan Muk-Chuen play Japanese martial arts experts. The original title "A Pretended Rebel" is a bit of a spoiler as to what is really going on.

The alternate titles with "wolf" or "ninja" are obvious bait for the old VHS rental business that kept so many of these old martial arts movies from vanishing into film dust particles. My copy is a digital file from an Ocean Shores VHS. It is English dubbed. Some of these 1970s movies were actually made unwatchable by horrible voice actors. This movie used the "A team" of voice actors though I don't know their names I recognize their voices.

The movie runs long at over one hour and fifty one minutes and could easily have been trimmed down to ninety minutes just by cutting out a lot of walking across the frame. The pacing of the action also suffers and worse the action is just not good enough for 1979 standards. The characters are also unlikeable with too much focus on the bad deeds. Overall I rate it below average and only suitable for hard core completists.