For years, Japan has had an amazing scene where low-budget genre films can flourish. Lately it seems to be exploding, as films like Tokyo Gore Police, Machine Girl and the upcoming RoboGeisha push the form into pure absurd balls-out bliss. These go way beyond the level of craziness in films like Wild Zero and Versus, and those films were already pretty nuts to begin with. The current wave of movies don’t make any particular sense, and they’re often not even good in the traditional meaning of the word, but they’re mind-bogglingly amazing at the same time.

Now, straight from the American Film Market comes news of a film that I’d think was six or seven years too late, if it wasn’t sprung from the same mold. From Seiji Chiba and action director Yuji Shimomura, who previously collaborated on Death Trance, comes Aliens Versus Ninjas.

Twitch has news of the film, and the plot recap that follows. They also have a brief first-hand account of the sales trailer that is making the rounds there. While the effects are evidently unfinished, Todd Brown says, ” If you’re thinking Predator as filtered through Tokyo Gore Police, you’re not far off.” Actually, I wasn’t thinking that, but now that the idea has been put into my head I want a double feature of this and RoboGeisha, like, now.

Once upon a time in Japan, there was a band of great Ninja warriors led by Yamata called Iga Ninja.  One day they witness a flash in the sky and a roaring giant ball of fire crashes into the distant forest.  The warriors rush into the deep woods in an attempt to identify the mysterious fireball.  There, instead of finding predictable enemies, they are stunned to face never-seen-before creatures with claws and fangs, the aliens!  The hungry brutal aliens start to savage and feast on the Ninja warriors, leaving only a few to survive.  Yamata and his warriors swear to avenge their comrades’ deaths and risk their lives to challenge the aliens.  However, none of the Ninja weapons, neither their swords nor their throwing stars, has any affect on the alien warriors.  Now the Japanese greatest Iga Ninja face the biggest challenge ever!