KONOICHI LADY NINJA came out in the U. S. in 2002 105 minutes
on DVD from Media Blasters/ Tokyo Shock line of releases.
Like cigarettes certain DVD boxes should probably warn viewers of certain risks. This one would say WARNING: THIS IS PART SEVEN IN A SERIES OF FILMS AND WILL MAKE NO SENSE AT ALL TO ANYONE WHO HASN'T SEEN ANY OF THE PREVIOUS FILMS, THOUGH WE DON'T WANT TO TELL YOU THAT OR YOU WON'T RENT OR BUY IT.
That said I get the feeling it would still be mostly senseless but that's not to say it's not fun in a Hi Octane wacky Asian way. There is almost never a shortage of ideas in Japanese fantasy films and this one is no exception, but at over 90 minutes and with no sense of story or purpose it's a bit of a trial to get through.
It seems like it will be simple enough when it starts. A group of bad guys, one of whom wears anachronistic glass goggles, attack a convent. One of the bad guys pulls out both his eyes and throws them on the ground so that they can turn into monsters to help in the battle. They kill some people fly around in the air spray blood, not spurt, spray blood in all directions and then leave without finishing the job. Sort of a Pearl Harbor kind of attack, they just make their enemy really mad. It would seem that the rest of the film we be a revenge movie as the female survivors track down the outlandish baddies and kill them real good with more gushering blood and goofy super powers. The group of sisters, Ninja's I guess, are called Konoichi, but like much of what is in this movie that's only a guess. These sisters in their quest for revenge do occasionally bear their very very small breasts, at one point this is done to invoke what they call NINJA MAGIC: NIPPLE SHOCK WAVE!
Sort of like a Power Rangers type thing in the middle of a fight a character will yell out things like, NINJA MAGIC: RED PHOENIX, FLYING BULLET POWER, or ROTTING EGG CURSE, or ENERGY BALL and unconvincing but bizarre powers will suddenly become part of the fight scene. The women to combat the ENERGY BALL thing sit on the ground spread their legs suck the energy balls into their, well you know, and then blow the bad guy into a thousand pieces. After this scene you can pretty much stop watching, it never tops this moment.
Yes, this isn't RASHOMAN that's for sure.
Moments like this will keep you going through the baffling thousand characters with a thousand motivations and special skills and agendas plot. I'm sure if I'd seen at least a few of the other films this would be more involving and less frustrating and by the end tedious. If you think you've seen campy Japanese samurai type screaming in movies before, well, this is the Mount Everest of over the top screaming. The scream however does lack the conviction of the authentic over the top screaming Asian movies. By this point the filmmaker's are camping it up and know they are that robs it of a bit of the fun.
The DVD box should also say something else WARNING: THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE VERSION OF THIS FILM IS PERHAPS THE WORST DUBBING JOB IN HISTORY. It sounds like a SCTV parody of a English dub. It sounds like it was recorded by two guys, and maybe a girl or one of them just using a high voice, who do everthing. One of the characters sounds like John Candy and the other sounds like Joe Flaherty doing a dead on Yoda impersonation. It never matches anyone's lips but it sounds like what it is, two guys sitting in a room rushing half heartedly through the dialogue. It never actually sounds like it's part of the rest of the audio track or on a locations where the film takes place at. It cheapens the film enormously, just check out any scene in the much better Japanese surround mix and compare. The English one is childishly bad. Just for fun it references American action films. The lines MAKE MY DAY, and I'LL BE BACK pop up when you least expect them. Not that this takes away from anything given the nature of the film. Then again trying to make sense of this fast paced goofy story is even harder when trying to watch subtitles and keep up. It's nice they did an English track, I think done specially for this release, pity it's so poor.
The film's soundtrack isn't helped by the tinny, sounds-like-FRANCIS FORD COPPOLA'S DRACULA -done-on-1980's-keyboards music score by Torsten Rasch.
Extras on the disk reveal that certainly the filmmakers' intended much of the film to be funny. The director/ actor Ozawa is a pretty clever and amusing in person, he just needs to be a better film story teller. The extras also feature the sort of random nature that occasionally plagues Media Blaster releases. You never know when some extra will just suddenly start or stop in mid sentence. But you have to wonder, given the still unreleased titles of really classic Japanese horror and fantasy films, that this one would pop up while other more deserving ones remain lost to modern audiences both here and in Japan itself. I don't know perhaps this film is something of a relief from all the deadly serious and equally senseless RING and THE GRUDGE knock offs flooding our DVD shelves.
Best element of the film in terms of a classical look is the cinematography by Shouji Ebara. There are many classy visuals in between the grade school wackiness of the rest of it. Just imagine CROUCHING TIGER HIDDEN DRAGON directed by Lyold Kaufman and you'll have some idea, though Kaufman would have made sure it made a bit more sense and had larger breasts and more of them, and maybe you'd get to see the LESBIAN CANNIBAL HO DOWN video for the 100th time. For me that never grows old.
This is probably best watched as a party tape with some slash metal music playing over the soundtrack and the subtitles turned off. In that context it rates 4 stars.
