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In the late early 1990s, I saw a few minutes of a 1970s/1980s Ninja Movie (not a cartoon or anime, a live action film) on a cheap local UHF TV station.

The movie in question has the following elements:

  1. Had a late 70's, early 80's Ninja Movie feel, both dialogue and plot badly dubbed over the original Asian content

  2. The most striking feature was the bad guys had a flying fortress, a castle build on some kind of floating mountain - you would think this would be a dead giveaway, but a recent Anime claims the first 500 search results for related terms.

  3. When each major character was introduced, the scene would pause with a freeze frame of that person in action, with the background colored out and that persons name printed on the screen. I distinctly remember the narrator saying "...THE KOREAN NINJA...(name forgotten)" for one of the characters.

  4. The Korean Ninja wore wooden sandals, that resembled a rectangular block of wood, with two smaller rectangular pieces of wood affixed to the bottom as a sole.

Jenayah
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PhasedOut
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    Are you saying this was anime or at least animated? It's not clear from your question. – Paulie_D Dec 09 '16 at 16:10
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    Your 4th point describes Geta which are ubiquitous among ninja masters, even Master Splinter wears them – Binary Worrier Dec 09 '16 at 16:18
  • There must literally be thousands of badly dubbed ninja movies from the 70s/80s. The flyng fortress really isn't enough to help us find it. Can you remember anything else? – Daft Dec 09 '16 at 16:33
  • @Daft, I really cannot remember anything else. There cannot be that many ninja movies with a Flying Castle, can there? Also, my original question with background information as to why I cannot remember more was edited. – PhasedOut Dec 12 '16 at 13:52

1 Answers1

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This is probably Sanada Yukimura no bouryaku (1979), also known as Renegade Ninjas, The Shogun Assassins or Death of the Shogun.

From IMDb:

Generel Sanada, seeking retribution for the murder of his father and a lost battle, both conceived by the Shogun, devises a series of brilliant plans to thwart the Shogun's overwhelming strength.

The movie revolves around the Sanada Ten Braves, and they all get their freeze-frame introduction. Most notably, "the Korean Ninja, Isa Miyoshi" is introduced at 10:30. Screenshot in case the link goes dead. Other ninja introductions at 7:59 and 10:49 for instance.

As for the flying fortress, there is one descending upon the troops at 1:24:50, better seen at 1:25:15. Once again, screenshot.

And the dubbing is indeed as awful as you can get.

Warning: some female nudity (girl and woman bathing, and a guy handling the latter's breasts). Also, did I mention awful dubbing?

Found with the Google query movie "the korean ninja" transcript -chiun which yielded this identification request on a Kung-Fu fandom forum. The -chiun is there to exclude Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins which was the result of my first query (movie "the korean ninja" transcript).

Jenayah
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  • Fair warning, based on my poking around in the movie, there is female nudity in a river bathing scene, both a woman and a girl, not sexual, but you may want to be careful where you watch it. – FuzzyBoots Dec 12 '18 at 23:19
  • @FuzzyBoots thanks for the heads-up, they're a bit closer just before that, edited the warning in – Jenayah Dec 13 '18 at 20:06