Ninja Vixens: Devilish Angels is strictly low budget. It’s a straight-to-video production with poor production quality, little control over color, an often-static camera, less-than-brilliant acting, poor special effects, and inept fight scenes. I ordered it from Netflix because I couldn’t resist something with a title like Ninja Vixens.
That said, it has its charms. There are at least a dozen Ninja Vixen movies out there.
We open with starving Yuki staggering through the woods. (She looks pretty well-fed to be starving, but nevermind.) From hiding she observes helpless female Anju being abduced by three bandits, who carry her off to their lair to be raped. Yuki follows, hoping to somehow intervene.
The three bandits have barely begun to grope their prey before they discover that their victim has a superhero uniform under her kimono. She’s a Ninja Vixen! (The Ninja Vixen superhero uniform consists of sword, boots, miniskirt, and the sleeveless flare-shouldered Japanese vest called the kataginu, worn over bare breasts.)
Anju beats the crap out of the bandits and steals their money, then wanders off down the road. Yuki follows, begging to become Anju’s apprentice. “I am living in Hell,” she said. “”If you follow me,” Anju said, “you’ll just move to a different Hell.”
It turns out that Anju is on the run from the Ninja Vixen clan, who she blames for the death of her Ninja Vixen sister, and therefore is being pursued by another Vixen named Orchid, who travels with her Comic Sidekick Rapist. (Only in Japanese popular culture do you find Comic Sidekick Rapists, right there alongside the Comic Sidekick Pedophiles.)
Anju is murdering people for money, which is apparently a Ninja Vixen no-no. (Orchid only murders people by way of following orders. And also for fun.)
The plot heads onward to its showdown between Anju and Orchid, along the way displaying plenty of fanservice, mostly breasts, legs, and skin. There is a comic scene involving a talking penis. We also see Ninja Magic— Anju disposes of the Comic Sidekick Rapist by use of the “Tears of the Fallen Angel,” which cause the CSR to dissolve into a puddle of goo, and none too soon.
One chop. Intermittently amusing. Not nearly enough breasts to hold my attention, given how wretched everything else was.
If you want to see this kind of thing done well, and I mean really surprisingly well in that quasi-artsy thing some 70s Japanese exploitation films pull off, check out the sublime SEX AND FURY. It’s quite amazing. In the first scene, our heroine is attacked by miscreants while at a roadside bathhouse. A naked sword fight in the snow quickly follows.
Then refresh your palate with a Bollywood mythological called Jai Santoshi Maa. Poor abandoned wife is tormented by her evil sisters-in-law, but the goddess Santoshi Maa saves the day. Check out the whirling halo!
Many B-movies are boring, but JSM isn’t. It just jumps from absurdity to absurdity at warp speed. It was extremely popular in India and SE Asia and turned a small religious cult into a larger one.
The DVD I have has no subtitles. However, the melodrama is none too subtle and you’ll have few problems figuring out what’s happening.
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