Five Elements Ninjas

Before I even knew the name Shaw Bros. I was a fan. I saw this movie many years ago on a t.v. series Black Belt Theater.

The 5 elements are unique and add some of the fun to this movie.

If you are a fan of old Kung Fu movies, do yourself a favor and pick this up on DVD. The quality isn't great, but it does have a nice mini-filmography of the actors in the movie.

Thanks to Netflix, I've finally had the chance to take in some Shaw Brothers movies and see what all the fuss is about them, this movie included. It's a pretty enjoyable martial arts exercise overall; if you like the 1970s to early 1980s style of Hong Kong martial arts, you'll certainly like this one. That's not to say that it's perfect, however. The script does have a few patches that while I won't say are boring, do come off as kind of padding and may have you mildly urging the movie to get on with it. Also, the basic story is one that has been told in dozens of other martial arts movies. But with the inclusion of ninjas, it definitely has a fresh element to liven things up. Indeed, the scenes with the ninjas have enough nuttiness (not to mention well choreographed and exciting action) to make it worth sitting through the parts that are routine or a little slow. The production values are also pretty solid for this kind of movie, even though it's clear that the "outdoor" sequences are actually on a soundstage. Definitely give this movie a look if you're craving some martial arts action with a little silliness.

The Garrish colors add to this awesome action flick. The choreography is beyond superb (almost no wire use, no stupid CGI, Joel Silver not in presence.) King Fu films are like gene Kelly films or Fred Astaire films- you watch them for the beautifully choreographed moves. The Kung Fu here is among the best of all kung fu films (not classic fung fu films--ALL Kung fu films) The crap Hollywood is spewing now and calling kung fu is just their shallow brainwashed doctrines of how anything that doesn't encompass CGI or a woman for PC reasons is cheap. This is a must for your King fu collection.

Cheh had a long and colorful career as one of the top directors at the Shaw studio but by 1982 his stock had fallen as trends moved away from the period costume kung fu action films he was so fond of. While fellow kung fu film director, Liu Chia Liang was still able to pull off hits, Cheh was perhaps getting too quirky and obvious with his favorite themes of heroic men in revealing outfits, gruesome fights and few if no women in the story. A few films followed in this year with one released the next, but none rival Five Element Ninjas. Cheh was out of the Shaw studio by 1983 and working in low budget Taiwanese cinema he never was able to achieve anything remotely near his past successes. This is his swan song at the Shaw studios,

The plot is absolutely silly and full of absurdities even for your average Chinese made Ninja film. It's as if Cheh saw the competition and said, "Oh yeah? Well watch this!". Except for Venom star Lo Meng, the cast is composed of Shaw second stringers but that doesn't mean the action is anything less then excellent. This film has the best fight scenes in a Cheh film since "The Crippled Avengers" of 1979. Everyone is fighting with weapons in mass fight scenes that are incredibly choreographed. Unfortunately, many production credits are not translated and I don't know who was the genius behind the fight scenes. Lo Meng is the only one doing open hand fighting and he fights a samurai in the first extended fight scene! Granted the samurai sword skills on display are from outer space but it goes with the absurd nature of the entire movie. So much of this film is wacky that it's a waste of your time to recount it. It's as if everything you'd expect from a late Cheh film (good and bad) was turned up to "11" including the pace.

Bloody and nuts. Just the way a good Cheh film should be. See it.

If you don't like Ninja movies then don't watch this movie. If you can't appreciate that this movie does not take itself too seriously then don't watch it. This is a well crafted movie. The are a lot of things wrong with this movie but there are more things that are right and work. The story is good and leaves me satisfied at the end. This is VERY key when watching any movie. The creativity is great, clever and very funny. The fighting is in no way extremely slow paced (like one person writes in the comments) but it is possible to see that it is rehearsed here and there which of course it is for safety reasons. Most of the locations are horrendous especially where the elemental confrontations take place. I don't care so much about that because the story works and the dialog is funny so these flaws don't ruin it for me.

There are a lot of movies from this period that are REALLY bad and leaves more questions than answers. This is not the case here because this movie is one of the best Ninja movies out there. I have seen A LOT of Ninja movies (well nearly all I think):)

Another wonderful albeit very different movie from that era is "Ninja in the Dragon's den". I give both these movie 7/10. Also if you like goofy Ninja movies you might wanna watch Shogun's Ninja. It's hilarious :D