After seventeen years in Japan attending ninja school, where she learns such cool tricks as teleporting, Shadow Moving (duplicating herself), and a whirlwind quick-change into a pink bikini to distract the enemy, Chinese beauty Wu Shiau-kuei (Hui-Shan Yang, looking considerably better than she did in Golden Queens Commando) completes her training--much to the annoyance of fellow ninja Kuroda, played by Peng Kang--and returns home to attend her father's funeral. She also plans to use her nifty ninja skills to take revenge on the man who killed dear old dad: a traitorous Shanghai businessman (played by Kuan Tai Chen) who is in cahoots with the Japanese (the film takes place during WWII, although zero effort has been made to convince the viewer, with fashion, architecture and automobiles clearly from the early '80s).
Wu's first attempt fails, the lady ninja only escaping death thanks to the help of a masked stranger. To improve her chances, she assembles an all-female ninja squad (herself, a kung fu expert, and a prostitute), but her second attack (the girls bursting out of garden statues) is foiled by her target's four bodyguards. Undeterred, Wu and her friends plan to bump off the businessman's hired muscle one by one. The first bodyguard is easily dispatched by the hooker, Ya-Chih (Pu Ying-Lan), when he visits her brothel, but the second, a female Taekwondo expert, proves more challenging: luring Wu to a boxing ring, she floods the floor with baby oil and strips to her underwear. Wu also undresses for the fight, with her modesty preserved by strategically placed black handprints. The two women proceed to fight, slipping and sliding in the oil, at which point I knew that I had found something special. You have to trawl through a lot of godawful ninja films to find trashy gems like this one!
The lunacy continues as they tackle the third bodyguard, who is armed with a rope spider-web that he throws and then scuttles across, and a boomerang sword. He winds up being hung, which leaves Yamamoto, a bald-headed, tattooed weirdo with black lips and some crazy disco outfits. Unfortunately, the kung fu expert ninja woman fails to kill him and is captured, stripped to her underwear, tied to a wheel and tortured to death. Wu is more determined than ever to take revenge, but, in the first of the film's two plot twists, is shocked to learn that her target is actually an undercover agent who is on a secret mission to kill a Japanese general (it's also revealed that he was once Wu's fiancé and didn't kill her dad). Can this film get any better? Yes, it can...
The general arrives in Shanghai, accompanied by his personal bodyguard, who is none other than Kuroda (remember him? the ninja with a grudge against Wu?). At a party, the assassination goes ahead as planned, but then, in the film's second plot twist, it is revealed that the general was a decoy, the Japanese having suspected deception all along. Kuroda kills the undercover agent, which upsets Wu enough for her to agree to a showdown in a forest, a battle that sees both ninjas using their many skills (but sadly, no repeat of the pink bikini trick from Wu). In the film's final WTF? moment, Kuroda does the old 'disappearing into the ground' ninja trick, but this is the first film I have seen that actually shows a ninja in his tunnel, frantically burrowing his way through the earth like a mole. Bonus points awarded for that! After dragging Wu down for a spot of subterranean fighting, the nasty ninja is blown to smithereens by a handy explosive device sneakily attached to his outfit by Wu.
With loads of acrobatic martial arts, silly wire-work, sword fights, and general wackiness, this one is up there with Ninja in the Dragon's Den as one of the most entertaining films the ninja genre has to offer.