I've seen more and more cheap Asian martial arts movies as I have periodically worked through a Mill Creek box set. It has to be said that it didn't take very long for me to realise I had very little patience for them but I have to say that by now I actively dislike them! Ninja Empire is yet another. It's a late 80's Hong Kong ninja flick directed by Godfrey Ho; who incidentally, is a director responsible for one of my actual favourite martial arts movies, the Cynthia Rothrock vehicle Undefeatable (1993) which aside from being laugh-a-minute and thoroughly entertaining, also happens to have the greatest climatic fight scene ever committed to celluloid – watch it and you'll understand.
Anyway, back to Ninja Empire. Its chock full of the usual ingredients of these things, i.e. terrible dubbing, bargain basement production values, a sleep inducing plot-line and several martial arts fight scenes. It did seem to be distinguished a little by the fact that the ninjas – for reasons I could never fathom – appear and disappear in balls of flame. There was some unintentional hilarity with some of the dialogue and the ending was sudden even by the standards of chopsocky movies; so much so, I had to rewind it to see if I had missed something but no, it just
ends! Not that that was a bad thing ultimately because I was suffering watching this. For fans of this sub-genre I am guessing there are things to enjoy here but for me it just seemed like more interminable nonsense.
