Evil Eunuch Ma Duk (Chang Yi) seeks to usurp the throne of his master the Emperor. Because of his superior martial arts skills and strategic abilities, the Emperor has granted Ma Duk absolute leadership of the Royal Guardsmen, from which the villain has used these resources to carve himself a seat of power. Fearing that his reign is in jeopardy due to disloyalty among his own Guardsmen, Ma Duk recruits two Japanese warriors To Chung (Yueh Hwa) and Ti Yung to ferret out the troublemakers. Ma Duk orders his men to assassinate the local constable who discovered that Ma Duk plots to threaten the empire. Ma Duk is suspicious of everyone including his top ranked enforcers. He sends To Chung and Ti Yung on a killing spree to prove their loyalty. These two Japanese fighters ruthlessly carry out their master’s edicts until they run into unbeatable fighter Ho San Tai, a former Captain of the Guard for Ma Duk. In order to beat this veteran Kung Fu practitioner, the Japanese fighters threaten Ho San Tai’s mother. When she finds out that her son used to do Ma Duk’s evil bidding, she disowns him. Then To Chung and Ti Yung kill the old woman sending Ho San Tai into a fit of rage. He must find a way to destroy these Ninja Wolves in order to regain his mother’s favor in the afterlife.

THE NINJA WOLVES is an effective independent effort that fires on all cylinders., thanks to Joe Law’s taut direction and the performances of the ensemble cast including veterans Yueh Hwa and Chang Yi. Joe Law brings his years of experience to make this low budget production look like a Shaw Brothers epic. It helps that portions of THE NINJA WOLVES was filmed on actual sets owned by the Shaw Bros. Plotwise, the script offers some original characterizations and twists, such as having Yueh Hwa portray a less than heroic individual. Joe Law creates maximum suspense by focusing on the corrupt regime of Ma Duk. The suspense comes from knowing who (and not who) is out to betray the evil Eunuch. The script also introduces to character of Ho San Tai, who is nothing more than a red herring in the general scheme of things. It is implied that Yueh Hwa’s Japanese warrior will change his stripes and become a hero by facing Chang Yi. Well, the Japanese duo do challenge Chang Yi in the climax, but not for the reason you may think. Interestingly, the supposedly Japanese characters have Chinese monikers. Chang Yi has portrayed dozens of memorable villains, but his acting is so good that it outshines his martial arts performance. THE NINJA WOLVES is dead serious (no humor) and Joe Law establishes a dark mood to match the intensity of the multi-layered plot. The movie also benefits from the well-paced action sequences which ensures that between following the intrigue and enjoying the actors’ performances, there is nary a dull moment.

SIGHT THE NINJA WOLVES was filmed in the 2.35.1 theatrical ratio. Like all Martial Arts Theater releases, the Ocean Shores video master is cropped to 1.33.1 The film source (1979) is fairly recent by old school standards and the print—barring the usual blemishes and grain—is in fairly good condition. The colors are not the brightest, but I find the shadowy production design helps produce the dark atmosphere needed to generate the appropriate mood. The blacks are solid to anchor the color schemes. The uncredited martial arts choreography is fast paced and exciting. Nothing too fancy or showy; its very natural and lifelike. There is no speedups during the fights except for some overcranking during the final confrontation between Yueh Haw and Chang Yi. Even though the photography is cropped, the action sequences are well framed—there are no offscreen conversations between any of the characters. Another above average transfer from Tai Seng.

SOUND
Tai Seng presents THE NINJA WOLVES in Dolby Digital Mono 2.0. The frequency levels exhibit a broad range of highs and lows, and the acoustics are crisp and clear. Tai Seng always does a good job with the sound of the English dub track, but THE NINJA WOLVES has unusually strong fidelity. The mono sound is a step down from stereo fidelity. There is no hiss, background noise, or other audio anomalies evident in the soundtrack. THE NINJA WOLVES is mainly dialog driven with the expected martial arts sound effects (such as kicks, chops, clanging staffs and swords, etc.) coming through with surprising clarity. The English dubbing is distortion free and effectively done. The music is also prominent in the mix with some exciting stock library themes heard in about a million other of these films. Despite the stock music, it fits the revelations and action quite well.

FEATURES
The only extras are English language trailers for these upcoming Tai Seng special edition DVDs (all trailers are widescreen with Dolby Digital Mono sound):