Scene of the Week: Ninja Training School
Ninjas make for some quality action films. It doesn’t matter if the ninja is the role of the hero or the villain, you know there is going to be a good chance for some action when a ninja is involved… and a good chance you will see shuriken. While Menahem Golan and The Cannon Group brought out their ninja films in the 1980s they certainly brought ninjas to the forefront, but they were nowhere near being the first to bring ninjas to film. Japanese Ninjitsu films with Toshiro Mifune came out in the 1950s, but one of the first western films to present ninjas to the movie public was the 1967 James Bond film You Only Live Twice. In You Only Live Twice James Bond teams up with the Japanese secret service to stop super villain Blofeld from starting a nuclear war.
This week’s Scene of the Week sees James Bond being introduced to Tiger Tanaka’s ninja training school and a large amount of ninjas. We get to see ninjas training in all sorts of disciplines, including the all important shuriken throwing. Tanaka then takes Bond to see some modern ninjas that are proficient in firearms because a James Bond film still needs gadgets. Spoiler alert, the ninja training school pays off when the ninjas attack Blofed’s secret volcano base in an explosive ending.
