Super Ninjas = Cult Classic

Wow, I can't believe someones commented on this so recently. I think it was a horribly fun movie, and I was wondering, why does one of the super ninjas fall down at the end of the flick, when he crushes the stone. It seems like he missed completly.

I'm clearly the biggest dork of all of you when it comes to this film. Super Ninjas was broadcast as a "feature" presentation on one the UHF stations in Chicago at the height of the Sho Kosugi ninja craze when I was in Junior High. The station advertised the crap out of it before hand, so I had plenty of warning and was able to record the full thing the first time I saw it using my folks' 300lb. VCR.

Not only was I so hooked that I forced all of my friends to watch it (they all became converts as well), but I actually designed and ran a VERY detailed roleplaying game based on THIS MOVIE. Somewhere in my folks' crawlspace are all the carefully rendered maps of the five stations of the elements, the headquarters of the good guys, and the farm/home of the super ninjas and their teacher-- all based on careful freeze-frame observations from the film, of course.

Yeah, the DVD transfer is lousy, but at least one exists! It's certainly passable, more so than my old VHS tape (yes, I still have that tape, thank you very much).

This is still the kung fu film I measure all others against. As contrived as this plot is, at least it's consistent and the motivation is obvious. Even if you hate kung fu films, it's hard not to at least marvel at the weirdness of it all (ex: count how long it takes them to assemble the mesh shirts into a net before they launch themselves across the water upon the hero's big toe). I mean, cmon man! The Super Ninjas use their chained boomerangs to liberate a conniving Japanese wood ninja of ALL his limbs in one simultaneous go (it's always the fault of those shifty Japanese in these films, you know).

I was prompted to post the words above after just having seen "The One Armed Boxer Vs. the Flying Guillotine" (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0072913/). I told my friend, "yeah, it was fun, but it was no Super Ninjas."

I really hope all of you commenting here have seen the uncut version. I am another fellow "Samurai Sunday" kid from Chicago, and Super Ninjas is still the film that I measure all kung-fu action films against. Anyway, needless to say, I bought a copy of Super Ninjas to replace the badly aged original VHS TV dub my father made of this film back in the 80s. I bought my VHS version from a well known online kung-fu film dealer, and when I watched it I was blown away to find that the version I grew up watching over and over again was in fact a very edited TV version. There is A LOT more blood in this film than what many people have seen. That being said, the widely released US DVD version of this film is also sadly cut. But, I eventually found an un-cut DVD bootleg of the film on eBay which I have been cherishing since, despite the fact that it is still in full-screen format.

I would love to see a non-dubbed, remastered wide screen version, just for comparison sake, even though the cheesey English dubbing is part of the orginal funny charm for me. Hopefully the pending release from celestialpictures.com will have both the original Chinese dialog and the English dubbing as well.

This movie is still for me one of the most monumental films I saw as a kid, and I will spread the word of its greatness as long as I live.

And just for the fans out there, although it isn't a ninja or kung-fu film per se, anyone who loves this movie will surely love Riki-Oh: The Story of Ricky.
( http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0102293/ ) Find it, watch it, love it.

I was a young teenager back in the 80's when I first caught this movie. Like you, we had a station that played a lot of kung-fu movies. I recorded this one and watched it a thousand times. I lost the tape over the year, and I never even knew what it was called. For years I searched for this on video, then on DVD, with no luck.

In the early 2000's, I got online and searched for it. I just typed in '5 element ninjas' and after some searching, I finally found it! I was ecstatic. I searched on E-bay a short time later and found a DVD of it and purchased it.

I absolutely love this movie.