The Challenge of the Lady Ninja (1983)

One ninja star out of four

Challenge of the Lady Ninja had the potential to be so bad it's good and a fun girl power movie, but was bogged down in sexploitation. The film couldn't even pretend to be about empowerment when it featured ninja mud wrestling.

Wong Siu Wai, a Chinese woman, had trained for 17 years in Japan as a ninja, becoming the only female ninja in the clan. You could tell she was the only woman because she was the only ninja wearing red. Totally blends and keeps her hidden. Her fellow ninja, Koloder was furious because she beat him and is Chinese. She had to go home to Shanghai when her father was killed by her fiancé who turned out to be a traitor. We all have family problems, but girl had more than her share. Upon returning home and meeting up with the resistance she determines to train some women in the art of being a ninja. Her ninja training included a long session of stretching with gratuitous boob and crotch shots and lots of suggestive moaning. I never knew this was essential to ninja training but discovered ninja mud wrestling was part of the experience. Nothing sexist about this at all. Part of the training included one ex-prostitute who could seduce a man by projecting her body in underwear before him and then transporting out. Wong had the same ability.

Lee Tong had four martial arts bodyguard who dressed like aliens, especially the guy with a scorpion tattooed on his bald head. The women work to kill off the bodyguards one by one which entails a vampire poison bite, dealing with a heat seeking boomerang, and an oil or water fight with two women stripping down to their bathing suits hidden under their clothes. Always be prepared! A dude in a Skeletor mask even appeared out of the blue to help them on occasion. I'm not making this up. The final showdown with Koloder was bizarre and had the abrupt ending so many 1970's kung fu movies employed.

Elsa Yang made a serviceable campy ninja, she just wasn't served well by the script. Chen Kuan Tai as her target and ex-fiancé played the debonair traitor always jauntily dressed in suits. The kung fu movie star had one short fight near the end. Robert Tai played the strange bodyguard with tattoos and blue lipstick, leaning into the oddity of the role.

The movie was set during the Japanese occupation, so 1930's or 40's. You would never know that by looking at it. They did work in a few "ye olden times" costumes, but they were interspersed with modern (70's or 80's) clothes and hairstyles, not to mention the many bikini scenes. Modern cars were shown numerous times as well. I laughed out loud when they played Darth Vader's intro music from Star Wars with the traitor's introduction. The rest of the music was of the bow-chicka-bow-wow generic synthetic variety. There are a couple of versions out there, one where the traitor is the female ninja's fiancé, the other where he is her brother. Does not improve the story either way.

The fights were the swish and fall sword fights, most of the others defied the laws of physics. One underground fight was mind bending. Bad wire-fu was often used and plenty of colorful exploding smoke bombs were thrown. The fights really were quite dreadful. Oh, and lots of jedi, I mean ninja mind tricks.

With so many women in the cast I wish that I could recommend this movie. I found it to be hugely disappointing. Instead of being a movie about women ninjas for women to also enjoy, it was a titillating view of how men want to see women ninjas train and fight. Only for a niche crowd, one of whom I'm not.

3/14/23

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