Muerte de un ninja

Watch this movie and every time someone says "what's that?!", drink a shot of [insert your favorite hard liquor here]. You will be REALLY drunk before the movie ends. You will NEED to be really drunk to make it to the end.

The dialogue scenes in this film are so leadenly directed that it will have you screaming at the TV, "Will somebody PLEASE take less than five whole seconds to respond to someone else's line of dialogue?!" This is clearly not just a matter of bad dubbing (which, granted, in this film it is utterly atrocious), but because the director seems to think that he's Ozu or Kurosawa, forgetting that he's making a ninja movie with Sonny Chiba and Henry Sanada.

Not to sneer at Chiba or Sanada. (I adore the 'Streetfighter' series and have watched nearly all of Sonny's other films.) Nor, for that matter, ninja movies. This is a BADLY MADE ninja movie - and there's the distinction.

Oh, sure, at times the utter goofiness of some of the situation is good for more than a few laughs (acid-spewing 'devil monk'; head-switching virgin/courtesan twin sisters; spider tea kettle), but the plot is awfully convoluted (again, I'd be more than willing to allow that the godawful dubbing has likely obscured any subtleties or nuance) and bewteen the action scenes, when every other line of dialogue seems to be someone responding in amazement "what's that?!" (are you people deaf or something? clean the wax outta your ears!), you keep praying that very soon someone will again be decapitated.

And what's up with that ending? The lovers are whisked off...well, I don't want to spoil it for anyone brave enough to watch this thing, but trust me when I say that at the end of this one you'll either be scratching your head in utter befuddlement or jumping up and down, insanely babbling, "What's that?! What's that?! What's that..?!". Or you'll be passed out from too many shots of [insert favorite hard liquor].