Les Tueurs noirs de l'empereur fou

First time i saw it i didn't like it,since that time i was a kid who was into Kung Fu movies where there are fighting all the time which in this film there aren't so much hand to hand fighting scenes(just a few).

But years later i digged this movie just to watch it again since it was long time ago and i experienced a great film with nice story and nice stunts and Henry Sanada is great in that movie,seeing him is like seeing Bruce Lee.

Please see it its great,japanese ninja films rules!

How can you go wrong with Sonny Chiba and Hiroyuki Sanada in one movie. Both are great martial artists with quite good acting abilities. In "Shogun's ninja" however they forgot to act. They are just there. It could be that there are different versions available. The version I saw was dubbed in English and had a very seventies musical score. I know that for a seventies production some of the stunts are incredible. Now it just looks horrible. Most of the martial arts scenes are poorly executed or badly edited. This wouldn't be much of a problem if the martial arts was good! To be honest the fights were below average and not that interesting. The ninja's in this movie do have some special abilities. But in comparison with other ninja movies made in the seventies these ninja's don't cut it. These ninja's don't seem to be very powerful and mysterious. For me that is an important factor. I considered that this movie could be meant as a parody. But for that to work the action scenes had to be more exciting. I wanted to like this movie but just couldn't.

It ain't Kurosawa (or even Hideo Gosha), but "Shogun's Ninja" wasn't aimed at that sort of audience. This film is a wacky, blood-spurting, action-packed feast for the eyes, and on its own terms it works beautifully. While reference is made to real historical figures and events, the emphasis is on over-the-top fighting (mostly with weapons, but there's the occasional empty-hand confrontation, too). The tone of the film is completely unreal: it may look like feudal Japan, but the setting is actually some alternate dimension in which fighters can do everything but fly, where warring ninja clans wage their battles in the treetops of lush enchanted forests, and where it doesn't seem even remotely odd when Hiroyuki Sanada, grieving over the deaths of his comrades, suddenly breaks into a torch-twirling interpretive dance. This kind of unbridled goofiness would become commonplace in action films of the '80s, and in "Shogun's Ninja" you can see the new, extravagant aesthetic taking shape as the decade began.

Sanada is a credible hero, Chiba mostly plays it straight as the villain (just as he had the previous year in Gosha's "Hunter in the Dark"), and Etsuko Shihomi is her usual winsome, martially astute self. Six and a half stars.

It seems that CHIBA was acting as a mentor to the star (just as in ROARING FIRE) and taking a back seat too much, didn't work for me. Of course some of the fight-scenes in this movie are very good, utilizing slow-mo (as in KILLING MACHINE) and some excellent wire work (the spider ninja's moved quite naturally) and the other notable thing is the off-beat jazz/sax/porn music (that despite sometimes not catching the mood of the scene, certainly puts it in a league of it's own) The bottom line is, CHIBA doesn't fight enough, the hero (at one point) dances rather camp-like (whilst training) round a fire (hilarious!) and like most movies of this ilk, the plot can confuse/drag on a little

Excellent fight scenes and score, though

6 out of 10

After watching Shogun's Ninja, I must conclude that this is the strangest movie I've ever seen, and I say this after watching numerous Ching Siu Tung movies. This movie is just straight-up weird.

The plot takes place during the reign of Emperor Hideyoshi and there are historical references throughout (Ieyasu, the attempt to invade Korea, etc.) The conflict exists between the last survivors of the Momochi clan led by Henry Sanada (that Japanese guy from Royal Warriors with Michelle Yeoh) and Shogun (Sonny Chiba from the infamous Streetfighter series) and his ninja army. Sanada learns Chinese kung fu and comes back to avenge his clan, does some fighting, learns Japanese ninjitsu, and does some more fighting. The movie ends with a large battle between Chiba and his warriors (which are many) and Sanada and his pals (which are few).

The fighting in this movie is pretty good sometimes, and unexciting other times. Sanada is fairly impressive, he is one of the few characters that actually does any hand-to-combat (everyone else uses swords, guns, or other weapons). His kicks are fairly fun to watch. Sometimes, the swordplay is done bad in the sense that no excitement exists in watching them swing swords clumsily at each other. Unfortunately, Sonny Chiba doesn't do anything too interesting. Neither does Sue Shiomi (she appeared in Sister Street Fighter I believe). There was a female Chinese fighter who could bust out a good boot and the nunchaku, though.

When I say this movie is strange, I don't mean the strange in the Ching Siu Tung-style of bombard the viewer with bizarre, yet beautiful visual image style of being strange. This movie is strange in the sense that its level of camp is off the charts. For one thing, with the exception of some flute playing, most of the music in the movie is of the contemporary jazz/1970's elevator music variety with the occasional Japanese pop tune thrown in. The sounds effects are silly to the point where I wonder if this movie was actually a spoof. There are underground ninja, spider-like ninja (you can see the wires), and a nice little army of ninja at the end (although the third group doesn't do anything). There is a fair amount of wire-work in this, although none of it is really imaginative. Some of the stunts in this movie is just straight-up screwy (watch Sanada block the archers). Well, whether or not one enjoys this depends on his/her tolerance to high-camp.