(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.

The sorcerer Mikio Narita speaks a prophecy: whoso marries the Princess Noriko Watanabe will rule the world. This makes her very popular with the warlords. Narita and his five disciples hire out to Lord Jun Miho, with the plan to make a love potion to make her fall in love with the lord. Fortunately, she has an identical twin whom people don't know about, who has been raised by ninjas. She and fellow ninja Hiroyuki Sanada. A love potion can be made from her tears, so the disciples kidnap her, rape her, torture her and eventually swaps heads with the female disciple. Now the creature with the disciple's head and Narita's heart tells Sanada this, and dies. So he goes to protect the Princess.

Would it be wrong to write "Same old same old"? Magical ninjas, magical pots, gallant, acrobatic ninjas, evil warlords, a bit of death pornography, and evil wizards who spew deadly projectile vomit onto their victims: the amount of baggage that ninjas carry around sounds rather oppressive. Even so, this one chugs right along, thanks to some beautiful camerawork by Fujio Morita, actors who sound like they mean it, and some great set design by Norimichi Igawa and Kazuyoshi Sonoda. I could have done without the vomit, though.

When you think of Japanese cinema, there are three things that immediately spring to mind. The first is the big, green rubber suited Godzilla. The second is Akira Kurosawa. And the third? Why, the ninja film of course! However, despite its misleading title, NINJA WARS has very little to do with actual ninjas. One gets killed in a tree at the beginning, but that's about it. Instead what we have is a very weird little movie, full of cheesy special effects, bad taste, and a kind of see-saw effect where numerous uninteresting scenes of exposition are counterbalanced by some of the wildest moments of cinema you'll see in a while. Wanna see the inspiration for that death scene in KILL BILL where the guy's neck sprays blood for five minutes? Check out NINJA WARS, where the exact same thing happens to a female servant. Except in THIS film, somebody else's head is magically re-attached to her body without her undergoing any particular ill effect!

The story is light and unrealistic as they come. Hiroyuki Sanada is the clean-cut dashing hero, whose lover dies as a result of black magic. He then swears revenge on a bunch of demon monks, weird guys with big hats who can fly, spray acid vomit from their mouths, and shoot needles from their hands in many wild and wacky moments. Truly, the sight of one of them spraying orange vomit at our hero and knocking him out of a tree is tremendous, as is the vengeance when Sanada bumps them off one by one in various gory ways – I love the blind monk who returns as a zombie, and the huge guy he fights in the canyon! I'd also swear that one of them is played by the silent bodyguard guy from THE LAST SAMURAI! The film has plenty of action and also tons of nudity, making it a real exploitation classic. The only let down is the ending, which is exceptionally weird and unsatisfying.

Sonny Chiba's name appears prominently on the box, but alas, he is rarely to be seen in this movie, except at beginning and end. Instead Sanada is the handsome, young and heroic lead (at 21 years) adding yet another string to his bow of classic if cheesy Japanese action films. Noriko Watanabe manages to be very fragile as the ill-fated princess and, although Jackie Chan is rumoured to appear in a cameo appearance, he's nowhere here (why would he go to Japan to make a cameo appearance with his schedule at that time anyway??). To sum it up, this is typically intense Japanese cinema with some very powerful moments, and some very cheesy ones.