I know what you're thinking. How could I take a website dedicated to the review of trash movies and have it feature a review of Shogun Assassin, a movie critically acclaimed all by itself, being in turn made from the first two films of the 1970s Lone Wolf and Cub series, which was comprised entirely of films that were all critically acclaimed? Well, I'm going to follow the Rule of Fun and treat this movie rather like a trash movie. I've always viewed it as such ever since it made the rounds a couple times with one of my friend groups in high school. Shogun Assassin is such an outrageously violent movie that it inspires the sort of hilarity that one often finds in the creme de la creme of trash flicks. It's also dominated by a sense of The Weird that similarly plagues or brightens the types of martial arts movies one would find in the gutter. (Some of which I'll hopefully get to soon!) Besides, I'm currently doing a Godzilla retrospective, and Toho was responsible for the Lone Wolf and Cub films, adapted from the Kazuo Koike/Goseki Kojima manga of the same name. I assure you, everything will work out! Now grab your best baby carriage and get running. The forces of darkness are not far behind, and vengeance is a long journey ahead!
In medieval Japan, a samurai works for a shogun who begins to go insane with old age. He helps the shogun carry out increasingly violent purges of the old man's supposed enemies until the shogun turns his efforts inward, and has the samurai's wife assassinated. The samurai, now calling himself Lone Wolf, goes on the run with his infant son--who partially narrates the story, by the way. The shogun also narrates, but he sounds eternally constipated. Because this is a Toho movie the American dub actors didn't take it fucking seriously at all. They may not have been paid enough to. Anyway, Lone Wolf accepts assassination jobs for money, and eventually gets orders to kill the shogun's brother, Lord Kiru. Lord Kiru is protected by three brothers called the Masters of Death. On this quest, he has numerous run-ins with ninjas, which quickly reveal that a lot of the budget must have gone into the literal gallons of blood that spray everywhere in this movie. And that is the primary crux of Shogun Assassin--endless scenes of blades, spears, or claws ripping flesh till everyone is a blood geyser. Even the Cub's baby carriage is a weapon--it has hidden swords in it that cut people's legs off! And a lot of stuff in this film is white, too. It was designed to show off a ton of blood, and tons of severed legs, noses, ears--the works. Somewhere, H.G. Lewis is blushing. Guess what, at the end, the hero wins, and the bad guys end up in piles of chunks. It is a movie with two options: life and death. Some receive the former--most get the latter.
The gore of this film is certainly one of its big selling points. I don't want to dwell on it, but it really is incredible how much work they put into making this film so shockingly violent. People get vertically sliced in half, jugulars are hacked--basically, think of anything horribly brutal a sword can do, and a sword will do that in this movie. That's all I'm going to say.
It is not a very dialogue heavy movie, but when people do talk, it doesn't sound natural. I already sorta touched on that. It's a hard movie to take seriously, from a dramatic perspective, if people are talking in a scene. But again, it is nearly silent. Ambient sound usually replaces music, and what music there is, is pretty awesome. And fortunately, the actor dubbing Lone Wolf is pretty solid, though in all fairness I don't want to seem quite so hard on the dubwork by and large. But when your two narrators are as ridiculous as the ones in this film you do have to joke a little.
The final showdown in the desert is great. One of the Masters of Death, the one with the garden rake/Wolverine claw setup, ends up finding a group of anti-shogun rebels by stabbing the sand with his claws on a whim. It turns out the rebels, who apparently don't need oxygen, are hiding under bamboo mats underground. He lifts him up by the head, and throws him around, and then does that to three or four more guys. Each of the Masters meet their fates in the most overdramatic ways, each losing about a bucket of paint in the process. Life is cheap and immortals are real in this universe. Lone Wolf proves that.
My one criticism of the film probably is that Lone Wolf is basically invincible. Yeah, he gets cut once and develops a fever from the infection, but he basically just goes into a coma for a few hours and is fighting again minutes later. As any action movie fan knows, it is pretty great to watch someone driven by vengeance cut a lot of people down. But at no point did I seriously believe Lone Wolf would meet his maker. Still, the thrill of seeing him wipe out hundreds of ninjas (contrasted to the mere dozens of something comparably crazy like a Godfrey Ho movie) really makes up for it. That's probably why I'm talking about it on this site, in all honesty--it is not bound to reality. We are not expected to view Lone Wolf as someone with ordinary skills, and that's what makes it a great watch.
Shogun Assassin has paled to me somewhat over time, but also waxed in its power to draw affection from me as well. It is no longer as shocking or gratuitous as it was when I saw it as a kid--I've seen much more insane and graphic films at this point, to be sure--but it also will always have a special place in my heart as one of the awful but astounding movies I got to see with some of my favorite people. Things were simpler then--I didn't have my student loans, my tight work schedule, my anxiety over the struggle of career success. Watching it can take me back to a time when I could laugh easier.
Having returned to it today, I'll be feeling good for a long, long while. And it'll make you feel good too.
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