Radiance Films is on a roll lately as far as doling out deluxe
special edition releases of films that have yet to have their fair say in the
United States or westerners in general.
Earlier this year they unveiled The Bounty Hunter Trilogy consisting
of three Shogun era action thrillers starring Tomisaburo Wakayama. In quick succession, Radiance turned right
around to unveil their newest forthcoming trilogy set of distinctly feudal
Japan era set action-war jidaigeki thrillers with the Shinobi film
trilogy. Ranging from 1962 to 1963,
these three Kadokawa Pictures productions lensed in black-and-white Daieiscope
35mm widescreen were startlingly violent and realistically gruesome for their
day from renegade filmmakers’ adaptations of an already subversive author’s
novels.
Centered around the character of Goeman Ishikawa, a rogue
ninja who springs into action when Oda Nobunaga’s forces wipe out his ninja
clan and murder his family, the series spawned a total of five films but only
the first three are actually based on the Shinobi no Mono works of
novelist Tomoyoshi Murayama. Written for
the screen by Hajime Takaiwa, the period-set wartime ninja thrillers followed
the trajectory of the first three novels before Takaiwa continued on writing
new screen adventures for the character unrelated to the text. For that reason, despite switching directors
from Satsuo Yamamoto who handled the first two films Band of Assassins and
Revenge while Kazuo Mori handled the third film Resurrection the
fourth and fifth films have been excluded from the set.
--Andrew Kotwicki