Are These the Top 10 Ninja Movies?

Robert Greenberger

Robert Greenberger is best known to comics fans as the editor of Who's Who In The DC Universe, Suicide Squad, and Doom Patrol. He's written and edited several Star Trek novels and is the author of The Essential Batman Encyclopedia. He's known for his work as an editor for Comics Scene, Starlog, and Weekly World News, as well as holding executive positions at both Marvel Comics and DC Comics.

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8 Responses

  1. arcee says:

    Great article awesome picks but IIRC Ogami Itto wasn’t the Shogun (per se) but did have the job of the Shogun’s official executioner – the “Shogun Assassin”

  2. Great article, Bob, but unfortunately with ninja flicks, there’s a veritable mountain of good stuff out in import markets that haven’t reached the US shores legitimately yet like “Shinobi” and “Goemon.” Fun little bit of trivia: The actor who played Ozunu in “Ninja Assassin” is Sho Kosugi, star of the Golan-Globus produced ninja movies in the 80s.

  3. Miles Vorkosigan says:

    Like I said before, Wayne, they missed some. There were, what, three or more “Lone Wolf and Cub” movies? Mark Lindsay was involved with bringing both SA and Lightning Swords of Death to the US if I recall… maybe these are just ones Fox has on their release list. And can you properly call Seven Samurai a ninja flick? If you do, that opens the door for other films like Yojimbo. Or am I reading too much into this?

    • Fairportfan says:

      Well, i thought that at first glance, but i see that the commentary on it says “ninja-samurai”.

      I have to say that i think this article could have done with some fairly severe editing; there are places where it’s almost incoherent.

  4. Otaku-sempai says:

    Well, REVENGE OF THE NINJA is a butchered re-edit of THE DAGGER OF KAMUI (a.k.a. KAMUI NO KEN). It is a great ninja movie to be sure, if a bit long and slowly paced by modern standards. The climax is magnificent.

  5. J DeRego says:

    They missed the whole weird sub genre of Trans World Entertainment’s Ninja movies such as, Ninja: American Warrior, Ninja Thunderbolt, and Devil’s Dynamite. Written, produced, edited, and sold by “auteur” Godfrey Ho under dozens if not hundreds of pseudonyms, where he would stitch horrifically stupid ninja fights and newly dubbed scripts, many of them feature organ smuggling as a plotline, over Thai and Hong Kong crime dramas and unleashed them by the hundreds on US video rental stores. You can now find scads of them in the $3 bin at local drug stores too, sometimes two films to a single DVD.

    You could also include Shogun’s Ninja, and probably the first Street Fighter (Sonny Chiba) film, either would be better choices than Ninja assassin. There’s also The Challenge, with Scott Glenn, an old late night cable TV standard, and The Hunted with Christopher Lambert and Joan Chen.

    Finally, the Bond film “You Only Live Twice” in which 007 gets plastic surgery to become Japanese, takes a Japanese wife, and ninja-infiltrates Blofeld’s hollowed out volcano base…

  6. sam says:

    Excellent list! being a huge ninja fan these movies are pretty on point..alot of my favs are on here..enter the ninja, revenge of the ninja, american ninja cult classics. Ninja turtles, ninja scroll and ninja assassin..nicceee :)

  1. June 18, 2011

    […] ComicMix 6/18/2011 — by Robert Greenberger […]