Gô Ohara’s "Geisha vs. Ninja" gets a bland new title for its Region 1 DVD release

by Chris MaGee

The fact that Gô Ohara’s "Geisha vs. Ninja" (that we reported on previously here and here) is being released direct to Region 1 DVD by Well Go USA on May 5th is hardly a surprise. It's rare for a Japanese film to get anything more than a quiet DVD release in North America, especially a low-budget action movie about a geisha (Minami Tsukui) who uses a special sword to avenge the murder of her father. It's also common for a Japanese film to get a new title slapped onto it to appeal to North American audiences, like Hideo Gosha's 1983 film "Yokiro" being released by AnimEigo as "The Geisha", or Image Entertainment renaming "Pornostar", Toshiaki Toyoda's debut 1999 film as "Tokyo Rampage, but why with such a cool, campy title as "Geisha vs. Ninja" would Well Go USA choose a bland name like "Geisha Assassin" for the film's DVD release? You'd think with the success of such equally campy-sounding films as "The Machine Girl" and "Tokyo Gore Police" that Well Go would realize that there's a huge market for goofy-sounding exploitation films at the moment. I'm puzzled...

Anyway, we go from the what-if-comic "Geisha vs. Ninja" on the right to the bland package art and equally bland title "Geisha Assassin" on the left. Here's the original Japanese trailer to give us a better idea as to which title actually suits this film.

Thanks to 24 Frames Per Second for this bit of news.