Good start, but then it gets ruined

One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.

I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

Blistering performances.

(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, i hear many of you comparing this movie to many bad movies, but try to remember, this is not a movie made for the dense or the immature (and if any of you take offense to that comment i apologize) to me this was a wonderfully made(if not technically bad)movie, and i say this because i loved the beauty of it, the scenes when we first see jotaro and kagaribi are done with vision and heart, this may not appeal to some, but it did to me, after a few times watching this film, the plot did not confuse me one bit, well, that's because i pick up very fast, but overall, the cheesiness is overshadowed by the sheer beauty and depth of the scenes, when ukyo and jotaro emerge from the smoking building the smoke twists and forms to make beautiful images, then the smoke clears a bit and you see jotaro stepping out, this to me was amazing, some of this movie was badly done, but the imagery is what impressed me so much, actually, the camera work was amazing, the shots were done with precision in order to convey the emotion necessary for the scene, the sounds were amazing, the dubbing was bad though, of course, i don't like dubbed that much, the movements of the characters was more of a dance than acting, i would recommend this movie to those who wish to see vision, artistic ability is overlooked much today, and very rarely do you find so much visual beauty in a movie, this movie is full of subtlety in more than the acting, well, i hope this review made some of you curious enough to check this movie out, beauty is so hard to find, and when its found it should be kept alive!

There are some movies that try so hard to hit a certain target that they miss by a mile. This movie is one of them. It tries so hard to be a martial arts epic that it kills itself in the praxes.The basic plot of the film is that anyone who would marry Princess Ukyo would rule the world. She is already married to Lord Hanzo (ok, so why isn't he ruling the world?) A rival, Lord Danjo, enlists the help of an evil wizard named Kashin to help him win the hand of Ukyo. So Kashin sends his aides to kidnap the Princess' twin sister Kagaribi, whose tears are required to make a "love potion." That really pisses off the fiancée of Kagaribi, Jotaro, who vows bloody revenge. The rest of the story is too hard to explain.A movie needs more than a intricate plot to be an epic. Ninja Wars accomplishes nothing. It is too confusing to entertain, and too schizophrenic to have any meaning to it at all.

I couldn't decide whether to give this movie a 1 or a 10.Back in high school, some friends of mine and I used to watch this almost every week. A couple years ago, one of them e-mailed me out of the blue with a link to a website discussing it, complete with audio clips. I ran to ebay and ordered a used VHS right away. Now my wife is hooked on it, and we've started showing it to our friends.I can't post spoilers, because as many times as I've seen it, I still never know what to expect next. I think some of the scenes might be out of order.If you were amused by the flying and running up vertical surfaces in Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, wait until you see this. And the baffling endings of Strangelove and 2001 scarcely hold a candle to the sudden tacked-on weirdness here.I know this film as "Ninja Wars", but maybe it's available under some of it's other titles. The Ninja Wars VHS version features crazy dubbing with poor translations and silly voices. Wouldn't be the same without it.