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 ong Kong period action films have long been
notorious for over-the-top combat sequences involving plenty of wire-fu
and head-spinning camera moves. Japanese period pieces, on the other hand,
tend to be more uptight and somber productions punctuated by lightning
quick swordplay and the now ubiquitous bazooka blood. The idea of mixing
the two styles together had the makings of a very bloody and very
entertaining picture, with one of the earliest successes coming in the
form of the outrageously violent "Lone Wolf and Cub" series. A
much less successful, but still entertaining attempt at this stylistic
crossbreeding is the Japanese actioner "Kunoichi Lady Ninja."
The film opens with a Buddhist
convent being savagely waylaid by the demonic henchmen of a lecherous
warlord, with the last seven nuns spared by the arrival of the convent's
ghostly patron. Intent on revenge, the nuns hire a mysterious one-eyed
samurai named Jubei (Hitoshi Ozawa, the film's director) to train them and
awaken their hidden Ninja powers. Led by the spunky Ochie (Yuko Moriyama
from the "Zeiram" films), the seven women commence the ambushing
and killing of the warlord's henchmen, leaving ominous notes for the
warlord with each dead body.
It's at this point that the film starts injecting a
political-spiritual subtext in an attempt, I suppose, to legitimize what
has up to this point been an exploitation film. It doesn't really work, as
the addition seems to be hashed together in random fashion. And given how
meekly the first few demon henchmen go down, it becomes evident that the
new subplot is essentially padding to bring the film's running time to
feature length.
Ruminating on plot details is missing the point,
however, as "Kunoichi" is the sort of film made specifically for
turn-your-brain-off-at-the-door style entertainment. To that end,
"Kunoichi" has most of the requisite details: pretty women in
various stages of undress kicking ass, furious earth-bound and aerial
action, and of course plenty of blood spray. The film's battles are
frenetic, but so incoherent that it's tough to see who got slashed and by
whom. And since the side characters come and go faster than a "Star
Trek" Ensign in a red uniform, it's tough to tell who exactly gets
killed at the end.
The warlord's demonic henchmen are quite an eclectic
bunch. There's a giant dope wearing WWII-era biker goggles in feudal-era
Japan, a one-armed albino swordsman with a bad case of arthritis, and a
sexually ambiguous and flamboyant whip-wielding fop (reminiscent of Bunny
Wigglesworth from "Zorro: The Gay Blade"). The warlord himself
(played by Takashi Miike veteran Ryuushi Mizukami) is a piece of work.
Dressed in kabuki make-up and flailing about like a Nancy boy, Mizukami's
sexually frustrated antics are a hoot.
One can only guess that the filmmakers tried to
distill the best parts of Hong Kong and Japanese genre cinema into
"Kunoichi". However, an element of Hong Kong period action films
that the filmmakers didn't leave out is the campiness. The whole
production is obviously put together with tongue firmly in cheek, and the
film's premise is solid enough, but the execution is played for laughs as
much as for visceral impact. The wirework is of a quality that requires
the viewer to chuckle, the sets look like leftovers from a Toho Studios
monster flick, and the acting is an uneven mix of decent comedic timing
and so-painful-it's-funny melodrama.
And then there's the plain silly stuff like
fast-forward motion during combat and the combatants announcing the name
of their next special attack during battle. Those names are the best part
of the gag, with such howlers as the 'Returning Echo' (where the lady
ninja absorbs an enemy's energy attack through her private parts and
literally vomits it back at them), the 'Nipple Shock Wave', and 'Virgin
Blood Attack' (use your imagination).
We are also not spared the curious Japanese cinematic
tradition of depicting the female characters in sexually exploitative
manners. To the film's credit, several of these sequences are handled in
such a way as to generate a few genuine guffaws.
Thanks to the energetic battles, scantily clad ninja
girls, and other assorted wacky characters, "Kunoichi" holds the
viewer's attention more than it probably should. There's enough
anticipation of what bizarre sight will come up next to convince you to
keep watching. The story is non-essential to the success of the film, and
even though it only weighs down the middle third, doesn't get in the way
of the fun.
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