A Life of Ninja (1983)

A Life of Ninja (1983)
Aka: Secret Life of the Ninja; Ninja Grandmasters of Death; Ninja Grand; Invisible Endurer, Deadly Life of a Ninja
Chinese Title: 亡命忍者
Translation: Asylum Ninja

 

Starring: Chen Kuan-Tai, Yasuaki Kurata, Elsa Yeung, Peng Kong
Director: Lee Tso-Nam
Action Director: Peng Kong

I'm not sure what happened between Tommy Lee and Lee Tso-Nam, because they seemed to work together a lot during the late 70s, but by the early 80s, Peng Kong had become Lee Tso-Nam's go-to guy. Obviously, this wasn't a problem, since the man had quite a bit of talent.

This film is a trashy little ninjasploitation flick about a sleazy businessman who's marked for death by the Iga ninja clan. Nobody likes the bastard, least of all his alcoholic wife and his sister-in-law, who's also his business rival. Said sister-in-law (Elsa Yeung) is also a martial arts aficionado and has recently started dating a kendo/bujutsu máster named Chow (Chen Kuan Tai). When it becomes apparent that ninja are killing everybody around the businessman, and that the sister-in-law is also on the hit list, Chow becomes to the businessman's bodyguard to ferret out the killers (shades of Erik Von Lustbader's first ninja novel).

As far as I'm concerned, a ninja movie must be judged on two fronts: the quality of the martial arts and the creativity of the ninja tricks. With regards to the latter, we get quite a few. Poisoned icicle daggers, ninja hypnosis, deadly ninja sex, wire-assisted ninja jumps, explosives, and more punctuate the action. I must point out that the film's dialogue mainly consists of Chen Kuan-Tai telling everyone that it doesn't matter how many guns and bodyguards you have, the ninja will always prevail in the end.

Peng Kong's action is occasionally inspired, although sometimes a little silly. A drawn-out fight between Chen Kuan-Tai and a super-powerful ninja (played by a professional wrestler) doesn't work for me, but a previous scene in which he kills a bunch of ninja with a pair of tonfa does. The finale has Chen hacking a bunch of shinobi down with a katana, followed by a long fight between Chen and Yasuaki Kurata. The lighting is off during the katana portion of their fight, making it hard to see. The last bit, with Kurata adopting an eccentric monkey/cat style while Chen goes into bad-a** mode is a highlight. I regret that the resident kunoichi didn't get to fight more, though.

About the final fight of A Life of Ninja, Chen Kuan Tai has an extended throw down with Yasuaki Kurata, playing the master ninja like he did in Heroes of the East; Ninja in the Deadly Trap and lord-knows-what-else. The first and most lengthy portion of the fight is pure hand-to-hand. Chen Kuan-Tai uses his usual Southern styles, but it feels pretty hybrid/non-descript in choreographer Peng Kong's hands--or it could be just the modern setting. Yasuaki Kurata uses more footwork, and gets in some interesting kicks, especially some low-to-high ground-based kicks. Then Kurata turns ou thte lights (unfortunately), and the two exchange more blows before Kurata attacks with fire bombs. And then he whips out the katana, which might've had more interesting choreography than in the surprisingly lackluster climax to Ninja in the Deadly Trap, had we been able to see anything.

Finally, the lights turn back on and we get the final portion of their dust-up, where Chen goes all brutal and intense, while Kurata exhibits his versatile skills with a made-up monkey/cat skill that probably required even more agility and coordination than his crab technique in Heroes of the East. While it's always impressive that choreographers and kung fu-trained actors could bust out the made-up styles, something tells me that there's something in Peking Opera Training and animal-oriented styles that makes that easy. So I guess I find it particularly impressive when Kurata, who was karate/aikido trained, could do that sort of thing. Then again, perhaps his training in kenpo, whose rights lie directly in Shaolin Kung Fu, made the transition to shapes choreography easier.

This movie features some of Kurata's best Taiwanese choreography. One may easily argue that he looks better under the direction of the great-but-underrated Lam Man-Cheung in A Book of Heroes, and that film certainly features some lively and exciting katana work from him, but the fact that he spends much of the fight being double-teamed and triple-teamed by three hawt female martial artists (Lan Xin-Mei, Elsa Yeung, and Yukari Oshima), lowers it a bit below this film. He's evenly matched with Kuan-Tai for the duration of the finale, which ultimately makes it more satisfying.

Fun at times, but it's no Heroes of the East or Ninja in the Dragon's Den.