VN REVISITED: A look at ZANPEI KUMOTORI manga
Lots of new readers lately, and I always love delving into the archives, exposing folks to some of the great stuff we posted back in the early years, so here’s an EXPANDED revisit of an article originally from November of 2009: … Continued
PRAY FOR DEATH coming to Blu!
Restoration label Arrow Films continues to put out Criterion-level releases of films that are decidedly not in the Criterion oeuvre — Spaghetti Westerns, Japanese delinquent gang flicks, gory Giallo and slasher fare, and yes — now they’re going FULL 80s NINJA! … Continued
REMCO “Secret of the Ninja” box art
One of my favorite long-gone toy manufacturers was Remco, who in 1984 gave us one of the craze’s most well-rounded figure lines — Secret of the Ninja. Remco of the 60’s was an aggressive licensor with all sorts of A-list … Continued
The best VN Halloween/monster features in one easy list!
One wouldn’t normally think of a site like this for creepy and monster-y Halloween content, but man over the years we have BROUGHT IT! Here’s a one-stop-shopping list of Vintage Ninja‘s finest “Monsters and Masks” features: The Demon of Mt. … Continued
The oldest days of the Shuriken trade
We’re delighted to present the first of hopefully many editorial exchanges with the superb VINTAGE NUNCHAKU community — found on Facebook here. This ‘other VN’ is the best fountain of info anywhere on old mail order advertising from the kung-fu craze … Continued
The utter dilemma of GYMKATA
If you’re like me, and let’s face it, most of you reading this site are, then you own WAY too many martial arts movies — from old clamshell VHS you rescued from liquidating video stores, to increasingly collectible DVDs from … Continued
Carded wrongness of NONE CHUCK
One of our first toy posts back in 2009 was of an artifact from my own craze-era collection, and a reader just sent me pics of one still on its card, so here’s an update for those of you who … Continued
Reading in progress…
Yeah… THAT Ninja novel, and yeah… THAT John Carpenter! Coming later this year, big feature about this craze-kindling novel, the differences between it and the scripts, its time in big studio ‘development hell’ and what could have been (warts and … Continued
More home video subterfuge
Ninja commandos inflicted some pretty serious damage during Japan’s feudal age, but the damage they’ve done to home video shopers’ wallets in the modern age is probably worse. Video packaging subterfuge — throwing the word NINJA on any non-shinobi-oriented film … Continued