I saw "Dragon Princess" on a double-feature DVD; the other movie was "The Bodyguard", starring Sonny Chiba, who appears only in the opening 10 minutes of this one. It's an appropriate pairing, not only because of the Chiba connection, but because the two movies share the same basic problems: a story that feels stretched even at 90- minutes, lots of pointless filler, and fight scenes that generally don't deliver the goods due to a combination of poor filming and poor DVD transferring. "Dragon Princess" is a little better than "The Bodyguard", if only because there are more and longer fights. And there are some memorable scenes, like Etsuko Shiomi using kung fu against vicious dogs (years before Milla Jovovich did it in "Resident Evil"), a bad guy going crazy when he hears bell noises, and Shiomi & Yasuaki Kurata jumping from the top of a high cliff and landing safely on their two feet. But I can't stop feeling that both Shiomi (who looks really beautiful here) and Kurata deserved a better showcase than this. (*1/2)

Regardless of whether or not you love this genre, purely from a technical standpoint, I cannot understand those people who gave this movie ratings of 9 or 10. What were they thinking?! There are many "guilty pleasure" films I love to watch and are fun, but I could never score them that highly because of these technical problems. Oh, well.If you are a die-hard lover of kung-fu films, then all the problems I mention about this film are pretty irrelevant--you will like the film. It's got all the action you are looking for and all the usual clichés you love and expect. However, for the average viewer, this is a very problematic movie to watch. The biggest problem is the horrendous quality of the DVD. I found it as part of a 9 movie set entitled "Samurai Collection" by St. Clair Video. ALL the movies in the set were grainy and washed-out and most appeared to come from old 1980 era videotapes that had degraded significantly. Of the ones I have so far watched from the set, this is by far the worst quality. It really looks as if someone sat in the theater with a video camera and recorded the film and then they put it in the set. This actually could be the case and since it appears to be a public domain video, there's nothing that can be done about this. In addition, almost none of the movies had anything to due with the samurai (i.e., a Japanese knight) but were kung-fu movies (or some other martial art film).The beginning of the film is pretty cool, as an evil guy who wants to be named the sensei of a dojo decides to kill his rival to guarantee he gets the job. He enlists the help of some amazing karate experts to kick the innocent man's butt. This is a tad gross, though, so be prepared--you get some pretty amazing eye gouging out scenes so beware!! Oddly, at the end of the fight, instead of killing the man, they let him leave to live in America with his young daughter. There, he trains his daughter as a killing machine so she can return to Japan and seek revenge (duh--you NEVER let them or their kids escape--what was this villain thinking?!). Oddly, although the subtitles say they were living in New York, later they refer to it as Los Angeles.Once the father dies, the daughter returns and seeks justice. It's interesting to see a lady karate expert but it's also weird to see the film is named after Sonny Chiba in the Western release of the movie. He was a major player in the second half of the film, but I really think they were just trying to capitalize on his name--the movie really does star the young female karate master. Originally, there MIGHT have been more scenes with Chiba, but on the DVD, many of the earlier scenes appear to have been edited out with a Ginsu knife! Although the killing machine lady's back story is clear, Chiba's is a choppy mess! Much of the ineptness of this film may not be the fault of the Japanese crew that made the film but the stupid Westerners who dubbed and edited the film. It's really bad and I wish Chiba would kick their butts for doing this!The end of the film is about what you'd expect--with all the usual clichés and intense sound effects. The problem for me was that the movie wasn't particularly good. If it were campier (like MASTER OF THE FLYING GUILLOTINE) I would have loved it more. Or, if the action had been better (like most Jackie Chan films), I would have enjoyed myself. Instead, there were few surprises and nothing to distinguish this dull film within the genre. My advice is see one of the films I just mentioned or a Bruce Lee film--they are simply better.

Funky Nipponese martial arts period piece.Chiba stamps his trademark well & truly.Things progress along nicely with a standard plot line.Camera-work is a bit dodgy but who cares.The fight sequences are masterfully turned out.Definitely worth a look if you like this genre. This movie has enough blood and action to maintain the viewer's interest though because of its technical shortcomings can be hard to follow at times visually. Lots of dark sequences contributing to the general mayhem with a hokey soundtrack. The dubbed dialog is somewhat stilted,but who cares,this is ultimate fun to watch. Chiba has a long track record for making wickedly masterful fight films,one can only equate the fight sequences with high ballet. This is early fare but still serves up the usual dollop of action.

1st watched 9/15/2002 - 4 out of 10(Dir-Yataka Kodaira): Ok karate flick with long-winded final fight scene and shaky camera-work throughout. The camera-work that is done lessons the karate action because it's hard to tell what actual moves are being done and their impact on the intended victim. The plot has been used before(vengeance asked for by the father on his death bed) in films of this genre and there is a fitting ended for those who care enough to stay until the end. If you make it till then, you're a better man than most of us or your interest in the karate action genre is what keeps you close. What you can see of the karate scenes is well-choreographed and this is the reason that I gave this movie a higher rating than what I had originally expected it would receive.