Challenge of the Lady Ninja (1983) Blu-ray Review

Crimson garbed Wong Siu Wai (Loretta Yang Hui-shan) has just completed her seventeen year training in Japan becoming the first lady ninja but must return to her home country China due to the murder of her father by the traitor, Li Tong (Chen Kuan-tai), who is working with Japan's military occupiers. Wong gets to work to avenge her father by training a group of women in martial arts putting on their unique sexual persuasion skills to take down Li and his crew of bodyguards who each have their own special skills to overcome. The film is full of ridiculous ninja devices, tricks, and magic including Wonder Woman spinning wardrobe changes, poison teeth, teleporting, wire work, colorful explosive smoke bombs, spider web nets, boomerang sword, minesweeper bomb chain, grandma junk trinket drawer ninja medallion and much more!

This Taiwan genre bender is a classic example of reactionary asian cinema production with the recent demand of ninja films while still filling the typical b-movie exploitation trope by making women the central characters. Don't be fooled though this film is not a typical throw away kung fu actioner, director Lee Tso-Nam (Shaolin vs Lama, Kung Fu Wonderchild, Eagle's Claws) and his frequent collaborative writer Chang Hsin-Yi (Thrilling Bloody Sword, 18 Bronzemen, Thundering Mantis) take on the subject of the Japanese occupation that plagued Taiwan for over 50 years. This is made obvious in the scene which Wong is recruiting one of her woman soldiers where she openly talks about the patriotic duty to defend their country from traitors like Li Tong who is exploiting locals for cash on behalf of Japan.

The sexploitation in the film does easily fall into cringe sex comedy bits that are bordering with over the top manga of the time but it also addresses the very real topic of feminism in Taiwan that began to gain a foothold with the women's political movement fronted by Annette Lu. The women in this film hold power and intelligence far above a majority of the men where we see multiple scenes of men being made complete fools of, how the women come up with the plans and do the rigorous training to take down the baddies while the men just buffoon about. The same scene where Wong talks about patriotic duty a prostitute tells her that they are just women what can they do? Wong does not let this excuse slide opening the groups eyes to the abilities women have always had and are capable of. The films messages skirts the edges of the Taiwan Black Movie movement which was a reactive social realist feminine violence exploitation b-movies that mainly had to do with gangsters which one could say Li Tong and his bodyguards could qualify under but Dylan Cheung in the commentary disagrees with this.

The Justin Decloux and Dylan Cheung commentary is a film history and movie recommendation dump on all the actors and crew members in the film whichcan become overwhelming at moments but is truly the most comprehensive of the two commentaries on this release. Kenneth Brorsson and Paul Fox commentary is a little more fleshed out reviews of certain films from the makers and genre but also has some interesting background on the history of economic and politics of the region from Paul Fox. The 20 page booklet that comes with has two essays from Michelle Kilsner and Jessica Yeung, Kilsner's being a general review of the film and some recommendations while Yeung's essay being more on the Taiwan Black Movie movement and a film program about the rise of women in film during this period.

There's an interview and intro to the film from director Lee Tso-Nam which contains some interesting information on the production of the film but music plays under the entirety of both of these features which is a frustrating obvious cover up of sub par audio from the interview. There is a fun collection of super scratched up grindhouse trailers for Lee Tso-Nam's other films. The disc release comes in a sturdy chipboard box, newly commissioned art covers for cardboard and inner sleeve, several lobby card reproductions, a few stickers, and a double sided poster of the new art for the release. The disk has the Mandarin and English dub tracks with Chinese, English and English dub subtitles.

The new 2k scan of the film is quite unbelievable especially compared to all past home media pan and scan releases, this is definitely a must own for asian martial art enthusiast especially if you are on the constant hunt to fill that ever growing fun but strange genre film void.

Pick up your copy from error4444 at this link: https://error4444.bigcartel.com/product/challenge-of-the-lady-ninja-limited-edition-blu-ray

★★★½