Director: Sadao Nakajima
Year: 1964
Rating: 7.0
This is
your mission should you decide to accept it. Our cause is lost. Osaka Castle
is burning and the forces of our enemy the Tokugawa are outside the gates.
Princess Sen is unfertile so you five female ninjas (Kunoichi) must go to
the room of her husband Toyotomi Hideyori and have sex with him and then
carry his seed with Princess Sen back to her family. This cannot be the end
of the line of the Toyotomi.
All historically true. Well, except for the Kunoichi and their magical sexual
powers. Hideyori who was the son of Toyotomi Hideyoshi (one of the great
military unifiers of Japan) had gotten on the wrong side of Tokugawa Ieyasu
and it led to this siege of the castle. Hideyori's wife Princess Sen was
the granddaughter of Ieyasu and had been married to Hideyori at seven years
old when he was eight. Just a little historical background which the film
assumes the viewer knows. After the castle falls and Hideyori commits seppuku
(after one last great night), Princess Sen (Yumiko Nogawa - starred in all
those Cat Gambler films) returns home with all her hand maidens - five of
which are the female ninjas and one of whom is pregnant.
Her father knows this and so hires five Iga Ninjas to find out which of the
women are the ninjas and to kill them and the baby. It becomes a battle of
magic between the two groups. One of the Iga Ninjas turns himself into a
woman so that he can infiltrate the hand maidens; another is able to hear
heartbeats and can tell if a woman has two heartbeats instead of one. What
weapons do the Kunoichi have? Sex. While having sex they can drain a man
of his life force and send him out all withered and wasted. We have all been
there. But we lived. They didn't. This magic is called Robust Monsoon. They
also have the Changing Room technique in which the women can move the baby
around from one to another to keep it safe. Not to mention the green
poisonous gas that they can emit from somewhere under their robes.
It is pure fantasy and the look and sets emphasize this. It is played seriously
though even it is a little hard to take it that way. It has very little of
the usual ninja weaponry that we are used to. Magic vs Magic. The Iga Ninjas
make a move; the female ninjas make a counter move. Later there were other
Female Ninja Magic films - the one in 1991 Female Ninja Magic Chronicles
sounds like a remake of this one - that seem to be more sexual than
this 1964 film. This has a smattering of nudity but nothing graphic. This
was the directorial debut of Sadao Nakajima at Toei where he was to spend
much of his prolific career.
