Reborn from Hell: Samurai Armageddon (1999)

Be warned that this movie made me go impotent.  And before I continue, I’ve got nothing against low budget film.  I like it, it can be creative, and fun can be had with it!  But this…this is a group of people trying to remake a decent Sonny Chiba film (Samurai Reincarnation) with a fraction of the budget and having no idea how to even go about making a movie. 

We start with the opening credits, which appear to have been done using only the finest titling option you can find on a video camera that came from the local pawnshop.  Some guy (I’m not going to lie, I know one character’s name in this movie, so we’re going to call this guy…Bob) is mumbling some gibberish over the body of a nubile young woman, who’s naked.  Well, the naked girl sheds her skin and becomes a guy, repeats “I HAVE BEEN REBORN FROM HELL?” or “I HAVE BEEN REBORN FROM HELL!” a few times, and end scene. 

That fairly incoherent scene is an excellent summary of the rest of the film.  I would have stopped there myself, but I’m honor bound to actually finish a film before I review it, in case there’s something redeeming about it.  There isn’t.

Before I continue with the plot summary I would like to point out the dubbing.  A lot of times with films like this (low budget crap nobody cares about but somebody lost a bar bet and now has to release it in America on both VHS and DVD) the people doing the dubbing are primarily animation voice actors.  For the most part, they all overact and add unnecessary inflection in their voices more suited to an animated character with limited movement as opposed to a living actor.  But it’s not always bad, you see.  With a film like Versus, the dub added to the almost comic book-type atmosphere.  Here, it becomes more fodder to laugh at.  And having English speaking voice actors use a stereotypical Asian accent on some characters comes across as a little racist.

Anyway, we meet our hero, the one-eyed samurai Jubei Yagyu, crossing his cheap, visibly wobbly sword with another man outside of the Yagyu compound.  Jubei’s dad lives there and he teaches a group of special needs kids how to be ninjas.  Or at least I think that’s what was going on.  I had always understood ninjas and samurai didn’t like each other too much, and these kids were obviously not samurai.  And they’re terrible ninjas, too.

Bob is keeping himself busy trying to find people to be REBORNED FROM HELL! (I know, poor grammar, but they seriously say ‘Reborn from Hell’ so many times during this movie I think I may wake up at night yelling it) so Armageddon will occur.  He’s looking for dead Japanese warriors to convert into demons so the great war between good and evil will start.  In one of the more ‘what the hell’ scenes, Bob materializes inside an old queen’s chamber, and offers her youth if she’ll join him and use a mask in a ritual with a virgin.  The queen gets excited, straps the mask to her crotch, and uses it as a strap on while Bob apparently beats off in the corner. 

That stuff goes on for a while, Bob recruits, Jubei does minor things, Bob recruits, Jubei does more nothing, while occasionally a man wearing green lipstick and has armpit hair so powerful it can literally pass down his shirtsleeves and choke men (seriously) pops up and kills a few ninjas.  Jubei beats up some people with fight choreography learned from a 9 year old taking Tae Kwon Do, the Samurai Armageddon doesn’t happen, and the movie ends. 

Now, Jubei doesn’t actually stop the Samurai Armageddon.  The movie just stops before it can happen.  I can only assume it will occur in the sequel, which according to the title will also have Jubei looking for revenge (Reborn from Hell II: Jubei’s Revenge).  Jubei isn’t that great of a samurai anyway, contrary to what the film wants you to think.  He walks backwards off a cliff, and he’s supposedly very aware of his surroundings. 

To save anyone else the trouble of ever seeing this movie because no one else ever should, I’ll give a run down of other points of possible interest, which by no means offer a credible excuse to actually watch this garbage; there’s a fight under the crawlspace of a house, which you can’t see that well, and isn’t very dramatic, a guy gets killed because a woman bites his wiener off, the soundtrack is a great example of what music on the Nintendo Entertainment System was, and there are boobies.

There’s nothing redeeming about this movie, in all seriousness.  It’s a waste of an hour and twenty minutes.

0 out of 4

reviewed by Seth Moore

© Copyright 2010 John Shatzer