Finders of the Lost Ninja
So here you are, thinking you’ve seen and collected it all, and between decades of official releases, budget box sets, bootlegs and streaming rips, you’ve nigh-completed the finite genre that is the 80’s ninja film. Then labels like AGFA and … Continued
VN’s Japanese Ninja Movie & TV Guide is HERE!
At over 50 pages and even more titles (with more to come on the to-be-entered stack), loaded with visuals and recommendations, here’s your singular resource on Japanese ninja movies and TV from the silent era to the booms of the … Continued
MIKE STONE: ‘THE FIRST NINJA’
“Aloha friends, another beautiful day in paradise.” It’s how Mike Stone begins every post on Facebook from his home in the Philippines, where he’s currently working with a writer on an extensive biography of his storied life and career(s). He’s … Continued
Hey, we’re 12!
Today marks the 12th anniversary of VN‘s first ever post, and coincidentally I was 12 when the 1980s ninja craze more or less ‘officially’ kicked off with the release of Enter the Ninja in 1981. I bring up Enter because … Continued
Everything old is new, but old, but newly old, again, again…
It is the summer of 1984, and I am baffled. Hiroyuki ‘Henry’ Sanada has been with me through every phase of my ninja fandom. Desperately hungry for ANYTHING ninja in the mid-80s and as pasted to HBO as any other … Continued
Gerald Okamura is My Co-Pilot
The advent of the 80s ninja craze saw all sorts of established martial artists from the 1970s transition from various arts to the explosively profitable and high profile modern ninjutsu of both dojo and screen — Sho Kosugi and Mike … Continued
REVIEW: The Cannon Film Guide
If there’s one speck of light in the dark months of the pandemic shutdown, it’s been some great quarantine reading for fans of Cannon Films, and that continues with Austin Trunick‘s The Cannon Film Guide Volume 1: 1980—1984. After an … Continued
TIMELINE UPDATE: How Ninja Conquered the World
Years in the compiling, months in layout, and updated a few times now via feedback from fans around the globe — VN‘s now famed timeline has been updated again with some corrections, additions and newly discovered goodies. From the 1960s … Continued
Talking 60s Shinobi
Tony Stella is an astounding painter whose brush work beckons to a previous era of movie poster glory. He’s also a must-genre film buff with a decades-ling passion for 1960s ninja films, and there’s a genuine exuberance in every word … Continued
Revelations on the silent-era ninja boom from an unlikely source
We’ve recently been blessed with the book Carnal Curses, Disfigured Dreams by Japanese cinema researcher Kigami Jigoku Kobayashi, and it inadvertently provided some jaw-dropping insight into the depth and breadth of ninja movies going back to the 1910s and how … Continued