The Challenge

According to Scott Glenn, the original script was about a ruthless club fighter from California with no family and no real background who gets involved in bringing a sword to Japan, and through a lot of crazy adventures he winds up with a martial arts sensei. The core of the movie would have been about father and son finding each other from completely different cultures. After shooting started, Glenn became aware very quickly that all those character-driven scenes were either being cut or shortened to almost non-existence, and that he was doing a martial arts movie. Toshirô Mifune came to him and told him: "Look, this is what's happening. I'm disappointed, and I know you are, but this is what it is. So you can either have your heart broken every day, or you can use this experience as an opportunity to be spending an interesting time in Japan with me as your tour guide." Glenn accepted Mifune's offer.

After Akiko disappears at the street festival, Rick runs into a guy with a walkie-talkie. As they're talking, people passing in the background look at the camera, duck, and run out of frame.

The movie was renamed "Sword of the Ninja" for the U.S. Television version shown and was drastically reedited by about ten minutes due to it's graphic violence (decapitations, gun play, etc.) It also features commercial interludes that go into a silver portrait that would stop the film where the commercial break would begin and then return to the film after the commercial with the same interlude fading back into the film. This version of the film has rarely been seen since the late 90's and has been shown it's original 108 min. uncut version on cable networks since then.

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