A final delicious taste of Taiwanese trashy fun for now. Though this was part of the Anthology festival that served up some Taiwanese Black Movies, I don't think this one really qualifies. But the fest actually called itself Taiwanese B Films - though that is a misnomer as well since the concept of B films i.e. second features  - didn't exist in Taiwan. But B films has also come to mean low budget genre films and this certainly qualifies as that. Loads of ninja action, kung-fu, seduction-fu and Chinese pride fill the screen like a melting chocolate sundae. Messy and nutty but it hits the spot. It stars Yang Hui-shan aka Elsa Yang who I just watched in Woman Revenger. If only the Woman Revenger had been a ninja she could have done so much more damage. This one has all the cool ninja tricks that they keep up their sleeves. Literally. Bombs, stars, knives come out of nowhere. And always my favorite, burrowing underground.



It is 1940. In Japan Wu Xiao-chui is taking her finals in school. Ninja school. To be specific the Iga Ninja school where she has been practicing for seventeen years. To pass her test she has to get by a number of ninjas in order to get to her goal. She utilizes the normal go to ninja skills - creating multiple images of yourself, a fake hand, leaping into trees and a new one to me as she is surrounded by ninjas and revolves till she is in a bikini doing the hippy hippy shake. That allows her to escape till her last obstacle is in her way, Kuroda (Peng Kang). When she reaches her goal and is given her graduation papers by the Master, Kuroda objects. She is Chinese. We are at war with China. Besides she is a woman. The Master says too bad. We know this won't be the last we see of Kuroda. Villain is written across his face in neon.



Xiao-chui returns to China where her rebel father has just been killed at the home of her traitorous fiancé Li Tong (Chen Kuan-tai) who had once headed their clan, the Sanyi Tang. He is protected by four martial arts masters of varying skills. Xiao-chui tries to get by them to kill Li Tong but is unable to. But she looks great in her red ninja outfit - though I am not sure red is the best color for a ninja. So she finds three women and trains them in her arts - one being a prostitute  who says "can't a prostitute love her country too". Her skill. Seduction. Good fun as they manage to separate the four from each other and then attack them - good fights - one on a boxing ring of slippery oil where Xiao-chui strips down to an outfit of black hands across her vital parts and fights a huge ferocious female. The film parses out the craziness throughout the film so you never have to wait long for something to happen.