Speaker 1: Hey, you welcome to Weird House Cinema rewind. This is
Speaker 1: Rob Lamb, and today we have an episode that originally
Speaker 1: published twelve six, twenty twenty four. It is our discussion
Speaker 1: of the nineteen eighty Grindhouse mainstay Shogun Assassin. This, of course,
Speaker 1: is a Western release compiled from the first two Lone
Speaker 1: Wolf and Cub films. It's so much fun, so just
Speaker 1: sizzling action and hasn't really captivating electronics score, So let's
Speaker 1: jump right into this episode.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: Hey you welcome to Weird House Cinema.
Speaker 3: This is Rob Lamb and I am Joe McCormick, and
Speaker 3: today we're going to be talking about a film from
Speaker 3: the your nineteen eighty the blood drenched samurai film, Shogun Assassin. Rob,
Speaker 3: this was your pick. How did you get to Showgun Assassin?
Speaker 4: Oh?
Speaker 1: Wow? Mainly because I had subscribed to Criterion Channel in
Speaker 1: order to watch Face behind the Mask for a previous episode,
Speaker 1: and they have all these little collections in their little
Speaker 1: playlists of movies to check out, and they had one
Speaker 1: that was just called synth Scores, So of course I
Speaker 1: had to dive in and see what kind of movies
Speaker 1: they had included there, and they included one film that
Speaker 1: I had heard of but I'd never seen, and that's
Speaker 1: Showgun Assassin. And so I started playing it like I
Speaker 1: think I was eating lunch by myself at the time,
Speaker 1: and it was one of those films where before I
Speaker 1: knew what had happened, I'd watched most of the film,
Speaker 1: you know, like I had other things I really needed
Speaker 1: to do that day, but I was already like sucked
Speaker 1: into it. It's just if you've never seen it, I
Speaker 1: highly recommend diving in as well, because I think it
Speaker 1: will captivate most people who watch it.
Speaker 3: It is incredible in many ways, and I can see
Speaker 3: why it would be classified primarily in terms of its soundtrack,
Speaker 3: because the music in this movie just it washes over
Speaker 3: you like a like a dark rainbow. It's just unbelievable.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so I'm really excited to talk about it here today.
Speaker 1: I made sure to open up a can of my
Speaker 1: Sun Tory Boss coffee here. I'll show it to you. Hear,
Speaker 1: Joe did not buy it from a convenience machine on
Speaker 1: the streets of Japan. This one is just from Super
Speaker 1: h Mark. But they're not sponsoring this episode, by the way,
Speaker 1: but I will be drinking my sun Tory Boss coffee.
Speaker 3: Wait, what is that just coffee or is it some
Speaker 3: kind of coffee?
Speaker 1: Plus, it's just a coffee, it's inexpensive, like col Brew
Speaker 1: black coffee in a can, nice with a fun lytle
Speaker 1: logo on it.
Speaker 3: I'll have to try that one sometime. But oh so,
Speaker 3: Chokin Assassin is a movie that I think we've done
Speaker 3: films of this kind before, though I can't think at
Speaker 3: the moment what they were. But this is a movie
Speaker 3: that is not an original artistic product, but rather is
Speaker 3: made out of other products that already existed.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we've talked about pictures on the show before that
Speaker 1: exist in different, sometimes drastically different cuts. We recently did
Speaker 1: that with Reptilicus. But yet today's episode is an extreme
Speaker 1: case of something like this. Nineteen eighties Shogun Assassin is
Speaker 1: a Western film release edited together from the first two
Speaker 1: films in the famous Japanese Lone Wolf and Cub series,
Speaker 1: those two films being both nineteen seventy two releases Lone
Speaker 1: Wolf and Cubs sort of Vengeance the first of six films,
Speaker 1: and Lone Wolf and Cub Baby cart at the River Styx,
Speaker 1: the second of six films. Warning that you know a
Speaker 1: lot of these film titles. The translation is maybe a
Speaker 1: little rough, but that's part.
Speaker 3: Of its chime.
Speaker 1: So essentially, the American filmmakers involved here set out to
Speaker 1: take the best parts from these two films and stitch
Speaker 1: them together into a single coherent narrative featuring the best action,
Speaker 1: the coolest visuals, and all of this built around a
Speaker 1: rather simplified plot. I'll describe the ways that they simplified
Speaker 1: the plots a little bit as we proceed, but in essence,
Speaker 1: they're just repackaging these two films for the grindhouse market.
Speaker 3: I would say this movie is very loosely plotted. You
Speaker 3: barely need to follow what's going on with the plot
Speaker 3: or the machinations. It is more like a demo reel
Speaker 3: of sights and sounds, and those sites are samurai action
Speaker 3: with blood jets squirting, and the sounds are the dark
Speaker 3: synth stylings of our composers who will get to later.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the plot is greatly reduced here, but in a
Speaker 1: way it also makes it super fun to then dive
Speaker 1: into the full cuts of those first two Lone Wolf
Speaker 1: and Cub films, which is exactly what I did after
Speaker 1: watching Shogun Assassin. All of the Lone Wolf and Cub
Speaker 1: films are available on a Criterion channel as well as
Speaker 1: a this recording.
Speaker 3: But I'm curious how significantly different is the mood.
Speaker 1: I think the mood is pretty much the same. And
Speaker 1: I think that's the really glorious thing about Showgun Assassin
Speaker 1: is that it's easy to imagine all the ways that
Speaker 1: a project like this could go spectacularly wrong, the way
Speaker 1: that it could be disrespectful to the original pictures. But
Speaker 1: I do think that the essential vibe is there. So
Speaker 1: if you go from Showgun Assassin and you're like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I would like more of this, well, the Lone Wolf
Speaker 1: and Cub series is more of this, you know, because
Speaker 1: it is, you know, the full plot, the full character
Speaker 1: development of everything that is in Showgun Assassin that you love,
Speaker 1: except for the score, a different score, but still effective
Speaker 1: scores in the original pictures.
Speaker 3: So regarding not the original films, but Showgun Assassin specifically,
Speaker 3: I've read this movie is esthetic described in terms like
Speaker 3: poetic exploitation violence, and I think that's a good way
Speaker 3: to put it, because this movie feels like it has
Speaker 3: two souls at once. It is at once a work
Speaker 3: of art and a piece of trashy grindhouse gore. So
Speaker 3: on one hand, there really is a kind of poignant,
Speaker 3: almost literary quality to the way details are observed in
Speaker 3: a lot of scenes. Just one scene of many that
Speaker 3: comes to mind is when the young boy is trying
Speaker 3: to bring water from the river to his badly wounded father,
Speaker 3: and he's trying to carry it in his hands and
Speaker 3: it keeps leaking out between his fingers, so he eventually
Speaker 3: carries the water in his mouth to his father. I mean,
Speaker 3: it's like an almost kind of beautiful novelistic detail. And
Speaker 3: also in terms of style, there is a quite exquisite
Speaker 3: vision at play with the composition of the shots and
Speaker 3: very again memorable details strong misancen But at the same
Speaker 3: time there is a campy Tom Savini Friday the Thirteenth
Speaker 3: sensibility operating in quite high gear in most of the
Speaker 3: action scenes, with like a real desire to just see
Speaker 3: blood squirting and to get the camera all up in
Speaker 3: the ridiculous wounds, the cloven heads and all that. So
Speaker 3: it's an interesting combination. It's like some gore geek exploitation
Speaker 3: trash and a thoughtful, meditative, historical art film about a
Speaker 3: samurai father and son were merged into one entity.
Speaker 1: Yeah, like the arterial sprays and there are quite a
Speaker 1: few of them, will make your jaw drop and exclaim aloud.
Speaker 1: But at the same time, yeah, there are such beautifully
Speaker 1: poetic scenes in this picture. Like I cried. I teared
Speaker 1: up at times, you know, I shed tears just to
Speaker 1: Showgun Assassin. So it is both things at once. I
Speaker 1: think it's a great.
Speaker 3: Point, especially with the music. The music is a Digors theme,
Speaker 3: especially that one was it was making me a little misty.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that is a strong track. We'll come back to
Speaker 1: that one for sure.
Speaker 3: Now.
Speaker 1: One thing thing I promise not to do in this
Speaker 1: episode is to painstakingly talk about all the differences between
Speaker 1: Shogun Assassin and the first two Lone Wolf and Cub movies.
Speaker 1: We'll come back to some of these details in a bit,
Speaker 1: but just in broad strokes, I do want to mention
Speaker 1: that clips from the first film, sort of Vengeance, apparently
Speaker 1: amount to only like twelve minutes of Shogun Assassin, mostly
Speaker 1: dealing with the backstory of Lone Wolf and Cup of
Speaker 1: our ronan character and the child.
Speaker 3: Oh well, but that's a lot of what the movie is.
Speaker 3: I would bet that when people watch this movie and
Speaker 3: then think back on it and reminisce about it, the
Speaker 3: primary thing they probably remember is the feeling created by
Speaker 3: the opening five minutes or so. Not that the rest
Speaker 3: of the movie isn't good, but that is the feeling
Speaker 3: of this movie is really established strongly at the beginning,
Speaker 3: again powerfully moody, with this strong synth based melody that
Speaker 3: plays under Diegoro's the child. The child's narration as he
Speaker 3: describes the backstory, and we see these scenes very rapidly
Speaker 3: cut together. They condense a lot of story into not
Speaker 3: much space, but it's quite effective in my opinion.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that narration by the child is quite excellent, and
Speaker 1: that is something that is original to Shogun Assassin. There
Speaker 1: is not something like that in the Lone Wolf and
Speaker 1: Cub movies. We don't really have his insight or reflection
Speaker 1: on what happens.
Speaker 3: Here, though his narration continues throughout this movie. I mean
Speaker 3: like he gets to tell us how, you know, we
Speaker 3: see them pushing the cart through the jungle and they
Speaker 3: look around and see monkeys screaming at them, and the
Speaker 3: kid says, this is how I get my education.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so I'll come back to some of the details
Speaker 1: about the differences and at least the ones that are
Speaker 1: really key to understanding what's happening in the picture or
Speaker 1: why things are, you know, proceding the way they are.
Speaker 1: But yeah, basically, though, more time is spent with the characters,
Speaker 1: of course, more time is spent with the politics and
Speaker 1: the background. More time is spent laying out the duties
Speaker 1: that ogami Eto has. That's our main character, the Showgun's executioner.
Speaker 1: In fact, the first ten minutes or so the first Lone,
Speaker 1: Wolve and Cup movie is just ogami Eto about to
Speaker 1: execute a young lord, like a child that is the
Speaker 1: same age as his own son, on the orders of
Speaker 1: the Shogun. This is of course the sort of thing
Speaker 1: that if you are a recent viewer of the excellent
Speaker 1: Hulu FX miniseries Showgun, which is of course more historically
Speaker 1: based perhaps in some ways than Shogun Assessin, you'll be
Speaker 1: familiar with this sort of thing. But it does just
Speaker 1: a great job in the original picture just laying out
Speaker 1: like this is the kind of work he has to do,
Speaker 1: you know, he has to do bloody deets for the Showgun.
Speaker 1: Out of a sense of honor and duty, and at
Speaker 1: and at night he prays for this of those that
Speaker 1: he has killed. And then finally, I should also mention
Speaker 1: that both of these films had also already been released
Speaker 1: in the US by Toho with subtitles, so it's interesting
Speaker 1: to think about that as well. This is not it's
Speaker 1: not like Shogun Assassin was the absolute first time US
Speaker 1: audience has had a chance to see these films. You know,
Speaker 1: at least some moviegoers out there already were familiar with them.
Speaker 1: But this was kind of like a you know, a
Speaker 1: redistribution or repackaging of these films for a new audience,
Speaker 1: and it certainly seemed to have found its audience.
Speaker 3: Well, yeah, that makes me think, what is your understanding
Speaker 3: of the original reception history of this movie. Was it
Speaker 3: literally like a you know, a midnight movie grindhouse kind
Speaker 3: of kind of thing.
Speaker 1: That's my understanding. This was like a grindhouse sensation, you know,
Speaker 1: in which the expectations for cinema were you know, at
Speaker 1: the extreme. People were tuning in to see those brilliant
Speaker 1: arterial sprays, the violence and some of the psychedelic sequences,
Speaker 1: you know. And and it's through this that Shogun Assassin
Speaker 1: ended up really resonating with various various folks, everyone from
Speaker 1: like you know, Quentin Tarantino, members of a Wu Tang clan,
Speaker 1: and so forth. There's a lot here that's been sampled
Speaker 1: elsewhere and so forth. So I think it it also
Speaker 1: does a great job of just you know, introducing the
Speaker 1: world of Lone Wolf and Cub to a different audience,
Speaker 1: a wider audience, if you will.
Speaker 3: You can think of it kind of like one of
Speaker 3: those sitcom episodes where they do a clip show from
Speaker 3: the other episodes, but here it's it's a clip show
Speaker 3: of Lone Wolf and Cub, so you get you get
Speaker 3: a flavor of the different adventures.
Speaker 1: It's hard to imagine another project doing something like this though,
Speaker 1: Like can you imagine taking say Predator one and Predator
Speaker 1: two and then editing them together into one film.
Speaker 3: It would be easier if they had the same main character,
Speaker 3: but yeah.
Speaker 1: I guess. Or how about Godfather one and to edited
Speaker 1: into a single ninety minute film call it Mafia sa brilliant.
Speaker 3: I love it.
Speaker 1: That's maybe more apt because in an effort like you
Speaker 1: would have to like boil out, you know, reduce it
Speaker 1: and remove all of most of the politics and get
Speaker 1: down to just like an ultra simplified, like you know, plot,
Speaker 1: which is what we have in Shogun Assassin. M Well,
Speaker 1: on that note, why don't we go ahead and listen
Speaker 1: to a little trailer audio. This is from the This
Speaker 1: is the trailer to be clear, to Shogun Assassin, not
Speaker 1: the original Lone Wolf and Cub films. We're not going
Speaker 1: to listen to all of it because it is it's
Speaker 1: kind of long, but I want to make sure we
Speaker 1: get a little bit of that music, and of course
Speaker 1: the narrator saying the title of.
Speaker 4: The picture, return to the vanished kingdoms of ancient times,
Speaker 4: the journey to a lust empire.
Speaker 5: Of mad wizards and bombaric passions. Behold the saga of
Speaker 5: a legendary warrior, a loving father who has the power
Speaker 5: of a dozen armies in one.
Speaker 4: Sweep of his mystic blade.
Speaker 6: This is a story of honor, disgrace, vengeance, massacre, and
Speaker 6: the man who became a demon Shogun Assassin.
Speaker 1: All right, So, if you would like to watch Shogun
Speaker 1: Assassin and perhaps all six Lone Wolf and Cub films,
Speaker 1: it's all currently streaming on the Criterion Channel. I've been
Speaker 1: really digging this resource. Recently, there's also a great looking
Speaker 1: Criterion collection box set of the six films. Showgun Assassin
Speaker 1: itself has been released on Blu ray and DVD, but
Speaker 1: I think that one might be harder to grab right now.
Speaker 1: But of course, if you have some sort of rental
Speaker 1: service at your disposal, be it videodrome here in Atlanta,
Speaker 1: whatever your local video rental option is, or even maybe
Speaker 1: the public library, as a listener brought up in the
Speaker 1: recent Listener Mail episode, Yeah, don't discount your public library.
Speaker 1: They might have some Showgun Assassin waiting for you. All right, Well,
Speaker 1: let's talk about some of the people involved here before
Speaker 1: we get into the plot and so forth. So again,
Speaker 1: this is a nineteen eighty film release composed edited together
Speaker 1: from two nineteen seventy two films. We can't do justice
Speaker 1: to all the folks involved in these different projects, so
Speaker 1: I want to most single out some of the key
Speaker 1: folks from the first two Lone Wolf and Cub films,
Speaker 1: as well as key people responsible for the Showgun Assassin cut. Okay,
Speaker 1: all right, so starting I think at the top where
Speaker 1: credit is deserved. The director of both Lone Wolf and
Speaker 1: Cub films one and two. This is Kenji Masumi, who
Speaker 1: lived nineteen twenty one through nineteen seventy five. Very well
Speaker 1: regarded Japanese film director, best known certainly internationally for his
Speaker 1: work on four of the six Lone Wolf and Cub
Speaker 1: films that's one, two, three, and five, as well as
Speaker 1: his Zatoichi films. His other movies also include nineteen seventy
Speaker 1: two's Hanzo the Razors Sword of Justice and nineteen sixty
Speaker 1: six's Return of Damijin. This is a Tokusatsu film about
Speaker 1: a giant demon god. I haven't seen these films, but
Speaker 1: this was the second in a series that had started
Speaker 1: earlier that same year. Like a big statue type.
Speaker 3: Dude, Well, like a giant statue of a samurai warrior.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly, with a scowl on his face and so forth.
Speaker 3: See screenshots of one scene where he appears to be
Speaker 3: walking through a parted See ooh, I don't know. I'll
Speaker 3: have to flag this one. Come back to it, all right.
Speaker 1: We also have to credit the creators of Lone Wolf
Speaker 1: and Cub. Two individuals worth singling out here. The first
Speaker 1: as Kazuo Kooki, who lived nineteen thirty six through twenty
Speaker 1: nineteen writer, creator of the He's the legendary Japanese manga writer, novelist, screenwriter, lyricist,
Speaker 1: and entrepreneur, apparently best known for co creating the Lone
Speaker 1: Wolf and Cub series, not only writing it but also
Speaker 1: adapting it for the screen. In both of these the
Speaker 1: pictures that are used to create Shogun Assassin. He'd continued
Speaker 1: to do this with numerous other works of his that
Speaker 1: were adapted to the screen, including nineteen seventy two's Hanzo
Speaker 1: the Razor. He also wrote a Wolverine story for Marvel
Speaker 1: I think I think it's from two thousand and three
Speaker 1: X Men Unlimited Volume one, issue fifty, and he is
Speaker 1: a member of the Eisner Hall of Fame. And then
Speaker 1: the artists that were the manga artists that worked with
Speaker 1: him on this was Goseki Kojima, who lived nineteen twenty
Speaker 1: eight through two thousand. Yeah, he worked with him on
Speaker 1: the Lone Wolf and Cub film, so very much a
Speaker 1: part of the original alchemy of bringing this idea of
Speaker 1: life on the page. All right, now turning to the
Speaker 1: folks heading up Shogun Assassin, we have a Showgun Assassin
Speaker 1: director and writer Robert Houston born nineteen fifty five. So
Speaker 1: this individual is an Academy Award winning director for a
Speaker 1: two thousand and four short form documentary titled Mighty Times
Speaker 1: The Children's March. This was produced by HBO and the
Speaker 1: Southern Poverty Loss Or dealing with the Birmingham, Alabama civil
Speaker 1: rights Marches of the nineteen sixties. Long before this, though,
Speaker 1: he played Bobby in Wes Craven's nineteen seventy seven Mutant
Speaker 1: Mayhem movie The Hills Have Eyes. What I included a
Speaker 1: still for you here, Joe. If anyone remembers, he's the
Speaker 1: blonde kid in the T shirt. Okay, yeah, that's him.
Speaker 1: That's our director.
Speaker 3: Wow, paths Crossing. I had no idea.
Speaker 1: Yeah. He appeared in a handful of late seventies and
Speaker 1: early eighties pictures before heading up the Showgun Assassin project
Speaker 1: for producer David Weissman, which would ultimately be released by
Speaker 1: Roger Corman's New World Pictures. His subsequent directorial and writing
Speaker 1: credits include an array of thrillers, erotica, an episode of
Speaker 1: Doogie Howser MD, and of course, Academy Award winning documentary.
Speaker 3: Shorts How Strange?
Speaker 1: Yeah, All right now? David Weisman, who has mentioned He
Speaker 1: is credit ded with as a writer and a producer
Speaker 1: on this He lived nineteen forty two through twenty nineteen.
Speaker 1: He was apparently part of a splinter group from Andy
Speaker 1: Warhol's factory back in the sixties, and he went on
Speaker 1: to produce such films as nineteen eighty five's Kiss of
Speaker 1: the Spider Woman. All right, now, getting back into the
Speaker 1: original Japanese cast, the actors who bring this picture to life,
Speaker 1: it's Lone Wolf and Cub. So let's start with Lone Wolf.
Speaker 1: The character of ogami Eto, the Shogun's executioner turned ronan.
Speaker 1: He's played by Tomisaburo Wakayama, and he lived nineteen twenty
Speaker 1: nine through nineteen ninety two.
Speaker 3: He brings a lot to this movie in that he
Speaker 3: is an absolutely lethal action hero, but he does not,
Speaker 3: I don't know, he doesn't have a very active aura.
Speaker 3: He brings a lot of stillness and patience. Do you
Speaker 3: know what I'm getting at here?
Speaker 1: Yeah? Yeah, And I think it's it's something that's easy
Speaker 1: to sort of not really process all the way, especially
Speaker 1: if you're just watching Shogun Assassin, and maybe if you
Speaker 1: just sort of have it on in the background or something.
Speaker 1: But it begins to make more and more sense once
Speaker 1: you really absorb the character, because you know, he doesn't
Speaker 1: talk much, but it is a full body performance of
Speaker 1: kind of this mix of silent honor and determination, but
Speaker 1: all of it burning within this scowling husk of shame
Speaker 1: and sorrow. Like he is a man who's been brought low,
Speaker 1: who's been betrayed, who is marked for death, you know,
Speaker 1: and all of these circumstances are out of his control,
Speaker 1: but inwardly he's remaining true to his principles while the
Speaker 1: whole world either turns their backs on him or turns
Speaker 1: their blades on him. And then when he does unleash
Speaker 1: his fury, oh man, it's just this fluid artery severing machinery.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 1: It's the and right down to when he's finished, like
Speaker 1: the fluid sheathing of his sword.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 1: It's like a final signature on a regal contract of death.
Speaker 3: Yes.
Speaker 4: Uh.
Speaker 3: His presence in the action scenes is very much like
Speaker 3: a he is a machine where the valve is closed
Speaker 3: and then suddenly it explodes open and there is a
Speaker 3: release of activity and then it closes again.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's it's such a great performance. And when you
Speaker 1: when you learn a little bit more about Wakayama. Uh,
Speaker 1: Like his background makes sense when you see this, because
Speaker 1: he was an accomplished kabooki actor uh and a judo
Speaker 1: practitioner that you know that ended up then getting into
Speaker 1: film acting. You know, so I can you can, I
Speaker 1: can see that, like that control of the body, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, fluid movements, and and then like his his
Speaker 1: ability to use these often like just smoldering facial expressions
Speaker 1: you know, uh, like where he's not just scowling, He's
Speaker 1: not just like, well, I'm gonna look like a like
Speaker 1: like a bad ass for this scene. Like, no, there's
Speaker 1: there there, there's stuff going on behind the eyes and
Speaker 1: you can sense it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there's something more uh sad and also in a
Speaker 3: way threatening about the kind of the blankness that he
Speaker 3: often brings.
Speaker 1: So yeah, just just a wonderful performance, you know. He
Speaker 1: he's mostly known for, you know, for these films, the
Speaker 1: Lone Wolf and Cub films. He's in all of these
Speaker 1: original six pictures. He also had some starring roles and
Speaker 1: some other Toho Martial Arts films, but outside of Japan,
Speaker 1: he only ever appeared in two Western films. He pops
Speaker 1: up as a coach in nineteen seventy eight's The Bad
Speaker 1: News Bears Go to Japan.
Speaker 4: What.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I haven't seen that one. But then he also
Speaker 1: has has a turn as a as a key yakuza
Speaker 1: boss in Ridley Scott's Black Rain from nineteen eighty nine. Now,
Speaker 1: I haven't seen that one either. It's, you know, one
Speaker 1: of Ridley's like non sci fi fantasy films, so I've
Speaker 1: never gotten around to it, but I've seen some stills.
Speaker 1: He looks like he has a really smoldering presence, and
Speaker 1: I think he gets to deliver a monologue that features
Speaker 1: the title of the picture.
Speaker 3: Oh Wow, nineteen eighty nine, Michael Douglas, Andy Garcia, Kate Capshaw. Yeah, oh,
Speaker 3: this looks worth seeing.
Speaker 1: I remember seeing trailers for it as a kid and
Speaker 1: thinking like, oh, it's more Blade Runner, and then I realized,
Speaker 1: oh wait, it's not Blade Runner. This takes place in
Speaker 1: the real world, and then I don't watch it.
Speaker 3: But hey, the poster is hilarious. I see Michael Douglas
Speaker 3: there with his arms folded, like, yeah, what do you want.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's like something like an American cop must go
Speaker 1: to Japan to track a yukuza killer or something. I
Speaker 1: don't know, but it may be great if you love
Speaker 1: it right in and let us know. All right, So
Speaker 1: that's our Lone Wolf, our Cub.
Speaker 3: Sorry, I'm sorry. I'm imagining Michael Douglas doing like Fish
Speaker 3: out of Water scenes where he like tries sushi for
Speaker 3: the first time. He's like, oh, what is this?
Speaker 1: I mean it was the nineteen eighties, but I hope
Speaker 1: that's not what Black Rain is, but I know maybe,
Speaker 1: so all right. Digoro is played by Akihiro Tamakawa born
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty eight.
Speaker 3: Child actor.
Speaker 1: Cute kid, but like these are pretty much his only credits.
Speaker 1: But still I cannot stress enough how cute this kid is.
Speaker 1: Just such a cute kid. Show any clip that features
Speaker 1: Lone Wolf and Cub to anyone in your vicinity, and
Speaker 1: that will at least be their one of their comments.
Speaker 3: Cute kid.
Speaker 1: A lot of spraying blood and so forth.
Speaker 3: He's even cute when he's operating like the switchblade knives
Speaker 3: in his baby carriage.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he gets to kill too. Just one of the
Speaker 1: interesting details, all right. The chief antagonist of this picture
Speaker 1: is this is kind of confusing.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I was mighty confused by.
Speaker 1: This because when you watch Shogun Assassin, they talk a
Speaker 1: lot about the Shogun, and they present the show is
Speaker 1: kind of like this evil, paranoid, corrupted ruler who is
Speaker 1: just exacting his vengeance in paranoia on the entire nation.
Speaker 1: Like that's very much three and that's you know, ed
Speaker 1: works within the context of Shogun Assassin. But the character
Speaker 1: who they identify as the Showgun is absolutely not the
Speaker 1: Shogun in the Lone Wolf and Cub series.
Speaker 3: I was so confused because the movie, the way it's edited,
Speaker 3: makes it clear that he's supposed to be the Shogun,
Speaker 3: because like when the narration mentions the Shogun, they always
Speaker 3: showed this guy's face. And then I was reading summaries
Speaker 3: of the plot that like, say, no, this guy isn't
Speaker 3: the Shogun. He's like the head of the Ninja assassins,
Speaker 3: And I was like, well, that kind of makes sense
Speaker 3: because he doesn't really look like he doesn't have shogun regalia, no,
Speaker 3: not at all, And so yeah, it was I had
Speaker 3: no idea what was going on here, but I did
Speaker 3: call him the Shogun in my plot summaries. Yeah, that's
Speaker 3: what we're gonna go with.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's totally fair to call him the showgun within
Speaker 1: the confines of shogun assassin, but within the confines of
Speaker 1: the larger Lone Wolf and Cub series and the other
Speaker 1: six movies, this character is Yagyu Rotsuto, and he is. Yes,
Speaker 1: he's the head of this group of ninja assassins. He is.
Speaker 1: He's not the Showgun, he's one of them Showgun's many vassals,
Speaker 1: but he is working his own political agenda within the system.
Speaker 3: He really just doesn't have shogun energy either. He does
Speaker 3: have big bad energy, but for a Western equivalent, he
Speaker 3: feels more like a like a resputant type character, like
Speaker 3: he's supposed to be a wicked mad monk or something.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because that's the look he has, like this like
Speaker 1: demon white hair and scowl like he out scowls are
Speaker 1: our Ronan here, you know, like he's just it's a
Speaker 1: scowl off between these two. But yeah, Ratsuto is such
Speaker 1: a great villain in this picture. Even even though he's
Speaker 1: largely an orchestrator, we don't see him directly do anything.
Speaker 1: And that's ultimately kind of the tragedy here. Because this
Speaker 1: character is the long term antagonist of the series. There's
Speaker 1: not going to be any payoff with him. This guy
Speaker 1: is not getting assassinated, No, matter. Despite the title Showgun Assassin,
Speaker 1: the Showgun's not getting it in this picture.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the target of our protagonist in the last scene
Speaker 3: in the movie is some guy. It's like, who is this?
Speaker 1: I think in Shogun Assassin they present him as the
Speaker 1: Shogun's brother. Yes, but in the actual movie, the second
Speaker 1: len Wolf and Cub film, it's like a guy who
Speaker 1: is betraying an Indigo company in order to give trade
Speaker 1: secrets to the Showgun. So it's like an entire subplot
Speaker 1: that doesn't really directly. I mean, it does impact the Showgun,
Speaker 1: but it's not the Shogun's brother.
Speaker 5: No.
Speaker 3: The in Shogun Assassin they describe him as this evil
Speaker 3: lord who's the brother of the Showgun and is oppressing
Speaker 3: the people who hire the Lone Wolf.
Speaker 1: But now he's like a corporate defector.
Speaker 3: But like, I don't recall if we ever meet him
Speaker 3: much in the movie before this, I mean maybe a little,
Speaker 3: but yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so at any rate, you can call him Shogun,
Speaker 1: you can call him Ratsudo. But this character is played
Speaker 1: by Yunosuki Ito, who lived nineteen nineteen through nineteen eighty,
Speaker 1: a well regarded Japanese character actor who appeared in more
Speaker 1: than two hundred films from between nineteen thirty two and
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy nine, with parts ranging from hammi performances, which
Speaker 1: I'm to understand are referred to as radish performances in
Speaker 1: Japanese culture because yeah, apparently he wrote a memoir and
Speaker 1: it was like, you know, like a memoir of a
Speaker 1: radish performer or something, you know. But he played everything
Speaker 1: from like comedic characters to memorable villains. His credits include
Speaker 1: Kurosawa's films Ikiu and fifty two Sandjuro and sixty two
Speaker 1: High and Low, sixty three He Is. He's also known
Speaker 1: for a dual role in the classic ninja film Shinobi Nomono,
Speaker 1: which I think this is one that we mentioned in
Speaker 1: passing in our episodes on the Ninjas. This is a
Speaker 1: picture from nineteen sixty two, and it was an award
Speaker 1: winning performance. There's also a picture called Obamb exclamation Point
Speaker 1: from nineteen sixty four that said to be a great
Speaker 1: example of his comedic work. I included a still from
Speaker 1: Obamb where you can see him like plugging his ears
Speaker 1: with his fingers and you know, clear comedic performance here he's.
Speaker 3: Doing kind of a Don Knat's face.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Yeah, it's that style of comedy. So yeah, I
Speaker 1: love Eto so much in this as the villain Ritsudo,
Speaker 1: but sadly he did not return to play the part
Speaker 1: in subsequent films. But here we have just this brooding,
Speaker 1: demonic visage of a man just grading with hatred. And
Speaker 1: I have to say the English dub in Shogun Assassin,
Speaker 1: I feel it does very accurately capture the essence of
Speaker 1: his original Japanese language dialogue as well. Just that just
Speaker 1: that grating, like teeth grinding level of a venom in
Speaker 1: his voice. Yeah, just like you want this guy or
Speaker 1: you maybe you don't want this guy to show up
Speaker 1: outside your door everything every time you do something wrong,
Speaker 1: like thee in your place.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 3: They they fit him in well as the Shogun with
Speaker 3: the narration, at least because, as Daigoro explains that the
Speaker 3: Shogun was paranoid and saw enemies everywhere, and this guy
Speaker 3: looks like that. He's his eyes are always shifting back
Speaker 3: and forth real quick to you know, see enemies coming
Speaker 3: from any corner. He's he looks suspicious and frightened and angry,
Speaker 3: and also has that that general look of someone who's
Speaker 3: like the not wellness of their mind has affected their body,
Speaker 3: like he looks kind of decrepit in some way.
Speaker 1: Absolutely so again, Showgun Assassin does not have time for
Speaker 1: all the politics. They simplify everything. But it's it's a
Speaker 1: good at it in terms of just presenting a picture
Speaker 1: that the grindhouse audience can enjoy in a villain they
Speaker 1: can who anah at.
Speaker 3: This movie has so many villains.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, because we also have we have numerous heads
Speaker 1: of different Ninja assassin clans and I'm not even we
Speaker 1: can't even get into all of those, but one of
Speaker 1: the key one, but I would say the key one
Speaker 1: that also ends up becoming an ally of sorts is
Speaker 1: the Supreme Ninja. This is Yagyu Sayaka played by Keo
Speaker 1: Matsuo born nineteen forty three, our female ninja master of
Speaker 1: Exceptional Skill. She's perhaps best known for this role, but
Speaker 1: she was also in nineteen sixty nine's Outlaw Gangster VIP
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty four's gat of Flesh. In nineteen seventy is
Speaker 1: the Vampire Doll.
Speaker 3: So she plays the head of a clan of ninja
Speaker 3: who are all women who sort of they do the
Speaker 3: operate in disguise and sneak attack stuff and her ninja
Speaker 3: are said to be the best, and she is. I
Speaker 3: would say, of all the enemies that Lone Wolf faces
Speaker 3: in the movie, she is the one who gets closest
Speaker 3: to getting the better of him.
Speaker 1: That's right, that's right. But also I think she gets
Speaker 1: a little too close to his heart.
Speaker 3: She gets in with a net. It's hard to beat
Speaker 3: a net, you know.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, she's effective in combat against and they have a
Speaker 1: great fight scene. I mean, all the fight scenes are great.
Speaker 1: But other thing worth mentioning is that in Shogun Assassin,
Speaker 1: she is I believe, dubbed by comedian and actress Sandra
Speaker 1: Bernhardt in nineteen fifty five. I'm not saying it's a
Speaker 1: great dub, but apparently this is Sandra Bernhard.
Speaker 3: All right.
Speaker 1: There are some other heads of different ninja groups that
Speaker 1: we could mention if we have more time. But I
Speaker 1: do want to mention that we have not one, not two,
Speaker 1: but three masters of death in this picture that show
Speaker 1: up late in the movie as essentially like the main bosses.
Speaker 3: Their outfits, in particular their hats might be quite familiar
Speaker 3: to fans of Big Trouble and Little China.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the Three Storms and Big Trouble Little China are
Speaker 1: clearly based in part in large part on the look
Speaker 1: of the Masters of Death aka the Monks of Death
Speaker 1: aka the Hidari Brothers. They're not sorcerers like the Three Storms.
Speaker 1: They are just masters of martial arts and they depend on
Speaker 1: particular weapons. Let's see, what is it, the like the
Speaker 1: flying maces, the like the spike gloves.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there's like a like a Gardening Claus kind of thing. Yeah,
Speaker 3: there's a there's like a glove with spikes on the fist,
Speaker 3: and there's a club with nails in it.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So yeah, these are the Masters of Death. The lead
Speaker 1: Master of Death is Binma Hidari played by Minoru Oki,
Speaker 1: who lived nineteen twenty three through two thousand and nine,
Speaker 1: Japanese actor best known for his work in the Lone
Speaker 1: Wolf and Cub films. Because not only does he play
Speaker 1: the lead Master or Monk of Death here, but he
Speaker 1: returned to the Lone Wolf and Cub series in films
Speaker 1: five six to play his own version of the chief villain,
Speaker 1: Yagyu Ritsudo.
Speaker 3: Oh. Okay, so he replaces the actor who in this
Speaker 3: movie is is twisted into being the Shogun.
Speaker 1: Right yeah, so yeah. The character shows up much later
Speaker 1: and so I believe he is the actor playing the
Speaker 1: character when vengeance and or assassination finally does occur.
Speaker 3: Okay.
Speaker 1: He was also in nineteen sixty nine Horrors of Malformed Men,
Speaker 1: which we've mentioned on the show before. And I'll also
Speaker 1: mention that one of the other Masters of Death, this
Speaker 1: is the Karuma Hidari I forget which weapon he uses,
Speaker 1: is played by Shin Kashida, who lived nineteen thirty nine
Speaker 1: through nineteen eighty two, a supporting actor best known for
Speaker 1: this film, as well as Godzilla Versus Mecha Godzilla from
Speaker 1: seventy four, Lady Snowblood two, and then two different Dracula films,
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy one's Lake of Dracula in nineteen seventy four
Speaker 1: is Evil of Dracula, which I think you could also
Speaker 1: maybe referred to as Principle of Dracula. That's one. It's
Speaker 1: on my list now. I really want to see Evil
Speaker 1: of Dracula.
Speaker 3: Okay, all right.
Speaker 1: But let's get back to the music here again. This
Speaker 1: is what drew me into watching Shogun Assassin in the
Speaker 1: first place. And we've already talked a little about just
Speaker 1: how about how effective the synth score is. Now the
Speaker 1: original films were scored by Iikens Sakura and Hideika Sakurai,
Speaker 1: and I think some of their original music remains in
Speaker 1: Showgun Assassin. I could be wrong on that. But more
Speaker 1: to the point, we have this just deliriously great synth
Speaker 1: score added to the picture. And this is the work
Speaker 1: of Mark Lindsay born nineteen forty two and W Michael Lewis.
Speaker 4: So.
Speaker 3: I don't know if I've ever used this term applied
Speaker 3: to music before, but sometimes we say of an actor
Speaker 3: that we admire that they're really committed to the role,
Speaker 3: meaning that they're they're not holding back anything for fear
Speaker 3: of embarrassment. They're not trying to be more subtle than
Speaker 3: is required. They just go headfirst all the way in.
Speaker 3: This is the first movie I've ever seen where I
Speaker 3: would say that about the music. The music is just
Speaker 3: committed to the feeling. They are not holding back anything.
Speaker 3: This just unabashed, pure feeling made into vibrations.
Speaker 1: Absolutely. Yeah, it's just a terrific score and it's interesting
Speaker 1: looking at these two individuals. So. Mark Lindsay was the
Speaker 1: vocalist and sax player for the American rock band Paul
Speaker 1: Revere and the Raiders from nineteen fifty eight through nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy five. Joe, are you familiar at all with Paul
Speaker 1: Revere and the Raiders.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, yeah, I mean this was some of my parents' music.
Speaker 3: I remember when I was younger, Like, I remember kicks,
Speaker 3: you know, kicks just keep getting harder to find.
Speaker 1: Mm hmm. I this was also some of my parents' music.
Speaker 1: I specifically remember going through the records at my grandmother's house.
Speaker 1: It would have been like the records of my mom's
Speaker 1: and also her sisters, and find a Paul Revere and
Speaker 1: the Raiders album in there, And I remember just thinking, man,
Speaker 1: the nineteen sixties just looks so lame, Like this is
Speaker 1: the lamest thing I've ever seen, because if you're not familiar,
Speaker 1: their whole shtick visually was dressing up as Revolutionary War soldiers.
Speaker 1: You know, they had these Revolutionary War costumes, which I mean,
Speaker 1: I guess maybe I've ever heard like was it cool
Speaker 1: at the time. I guess it was people dug it.
Speaker 1: But I remember just thinking this just looks super lame.
Speaker 3: Is there supposed to be? Like, so if it's Paul Revere,
Speaker 3: is it like the British are coming? Like British invasion music?
Speaker 3: Is that all thing.
Speaker 1: I guess it's like, yeah, it's like a counter to
Speaker 1: the British invasion, and that would that would have been
Speaker 1: lost on me as a as a child looking at this,
Speaker 1: all I knew at the time was that what's the
Speaker 1: most boring thing in school? It's it's American history. At
Speaker 1: the time. I'm not saying that as an adult, American
Speaker 1: history is fascinating, but at the time, the idea of
Speaker 1: Revolutionary War themed music was not like a great cell
Speaker 1: But to be clear, Paul Revere and the Raiders not
Speaker 1: super lame. They had some real gems, some real jams,
Speaker 1: if you will.
Speaker 3: I understand it from the school perspective. Yeah, it's like
Speaker 3: the band is where their theme is. They're all math textbooks.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it was. It was like they were textbook themed.
Speaker 1: So anyway, Yeah, they have some, they have some. They
Speaker 1: have some great music. I went, I'd never really gotten
Speaker 1: into their stuff, but I did make sure that I
Speaker 1: listened to some of their tracks. They have a great
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy one cover of Indian Reservation So solid group.
Speaker 1: Mark turned to film scoring in the nineteen seventies for
Speaker 1: a bet w Michael Lewis, for his part, was a
Speaker 1: music producer who got into scoring with nineteen seventy eight
Speaker 1: Secrets of the Bermuda Triangle, and he'd go on to
Speaker 1: score nineteen eighties New Year's Evil, nineteen eighty one's Enter
Speaker 1: the Ninja, and also the TV series In Search of
Speaker 1: starring Letter Tame like Oh.
Speaker 3: I saw that when I looked him up.
Speaker 1: A couple of nineteen eighty seven releases Maximum Potential and
Speaker 1: Hot Child in the City.
Speaker 3: Sorry, I had to stop and remember what the name
Speaker 3: of this other Bermuda Triangle movie I was thinking of was.
Speaker 1: No.
Speaker 3: The one I was thinking of is a made for
Speaker 3: TV movie from nineteen also from nineteen seventy eight called
Speaker 3: The Bermuda Depths, which starred Carl Weathers in the shortest
Speaker 3: shorts ever made and also had burl ives as I
Speaker 3: think a marine biologist or something. But it's ultimately it's
Speaker 3: about a giant turtle that attacks a boat.
Speaker 1: I think you made me watch the climax from this picture.
Speaker 3: And it looked not the best.
Speaker 1: It looked incredible. Maybe we'll come back to it, maybe
Speaker 1: so anyway, Yeah, the music for Shogun Assassin, I think
Speaker 1: it's just tremendous. Again, de Goro's theme is not only
Speaker 1: I think the best track on the score, but it's
Speaker 1: just an amazing and emotional number in its own right.
Speaker 1: Like it's one of these where I was listening to
Speaker 1: it earlier and it was like, is this one of
Speaker 1: my favorite songs? Now I think this is currently one
Speaker 1: of the greatest musical compositions of all time. My opinions
Speaker 1: will change, obviously, but right now it's really doing it
Speaker 1: for me.
Speaker 3: It's so good, Like I said, not holding anything back.
Speaker 3: You can imagine somebody being like, oh, is this music.
Speaker 3: I don't know, should we make it a little more
Speaker 3: subtle little but no, it's just it's just the raw
Speaker 3: power of feeling unleashed. Something feels absolutely unabashed about it,
Speaker 3: and I love.
Speaker 1: It, And it's perfect for a film that again is
Speaker 1: a Samurai reduction. You know, it had two films reduced
Speaker 1: into one. You know, just the most dizzying moments of
Speaker 1: psychedelia or bloody violence condensed into a single picture that
Speaker 1: I mean, it's really Again, it's a testament that they
Speaker 1: were to the film, that the American filmmakers here, that
Speaker 1: they were able to take part one and Part two
Speaker 1: in this series and make a single picture out of
Speaker 1: it that works this well. Yeah, the score here by
Speaker 1: the way to Shogun Assassin is available wherever you stream
Speaker 1: your music, and there are CD and vinyl versions as well.
Speaker 1: I do not know if there is like a blood
Speaker 1: red vinyl edition of this soundtrack, but there needs to be.
Speaker 3: If you listen to it, at least the version that
Speaker 3: I heard on Spotify. It includes some of the narration
Speaker 3: from the movie as well.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's so good. That also made me tear up,
Speaker 1: like on an airplane listening to this. You know, people
Speaker 1: are like, are you okay, And I'm like, I'm just
Speaker 1: listening to the Shogun Assassin soundtrack, man, that's all. That's
Speaker 1: all that's going on here. I'm good.
Speaker 3: This is funny. How similar are our experiences were? I
Speaker 3: also had embarrassing emotional episodes Digoros theme specifically.
Speaker 1: Yeah, all right, let's get into that plot of Shogun Assassin.
Speaker 3: All right, Well, we have already mentioned how strong the
Speaker 3: movie kicks off. So the introductory segment has a child's
Speaker 3: voice narrating as we see a montage of scenes play out,
Speaker 3: and this is the voice of Digoro, the Cub of
Speaker 3: Lone Wolf and Cub. So the introductory narration plays over
Speaker 3: this dark melody on synthesizer bas the sound of absolute doom,
Speaker 3: and we hear the child's voice say, when I was little,
Speaker 3: my father was famous. He was the greatest samurai in
Speaker 3: the empire, and he was the Shogun's decapitator. He cut
Speaker 3: off the heads of one hundred and thirty one lords
Speaker 3: for the shogun. And as this narration is going on,
Speaker 3: we see our protagonist walk into the frame the silent
Speaker 3: ogami Eto. His eyes are downcast, he moves slowly. He
Speaker 3: has a blank, lugubrious expression. And then we see Ito's
Speaker 3: blade twisting and gleaming in the light. And then suddenly
Speaker 3: there's like a shadow playlet entirely in red and just
Speaker 3: the silhouettes of the human figures in the foreground, and
Speaker 3: we see a man kneeling to receive a death sentence
Speaker 3: and another man, presumably our protagonist here, bringing a sword
Speaker 3: down on his neck.
Speaker 1: And to be clear, if you have to have your
Speaker 1: head cut off, this is the guy you want to
Speaker 1: do it. This guy is the ultimate pro.
Speaker 3: It reminds me of our series on the Invention of
Speaker 3: the guillotine, where we were talking about how bad a
Speaker 3: lot of professional executioners were and like they just couldn't
Speaker 3: like it took them way too many tries to get
Speaker 3: it done.
Speaker 1: Yeah, a gami eto one one swipe every time, guaranteed.
Speaker 3: If you want some real oof historical reading, look up
Speaker 3: Jack Ketch.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I remember some of these details. And it
Speaker 1: was also I recently visited the revisited the Tower of London,
Speaker 1: so I got I got to read more about some
Speaker 1: of these these execution facts. Yeah, but they did not
Speaker 1: have the shoguns mastered decapitator on hand.
Speaker 3: So Diegoro's narration goes on. He says it was a
Speaker 3: bad time for the empire. The shogun just stayed inside
Speaker 3: his castle and he never came out. People said his
Speaker 3: brain was infected by devils and that he was rotting
Speaker 3: with evil. The shogun said the people were not loyal.
Speaker 3: He said he had a lot of enemies, but he
Speaker 3: killed more people than that. Then we see a castle.
Speaker 3: The gate swing open, revealing sort of a court to
Speaker 3: a bunch of entourage of people and a ruler. And
Speaker 3: here's where I was originally going to break and discuss.
Speaker 3: Wait a minute, is the guy we're seeing here the shogun?
Speaker 3: But we already had that conversation, not originally, but in
Speaker 3: Shogun Assassin, that is what is implied. He is the Shogun.
Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, so we're just going to continue referring to
Speaker 1: him as the Shogun just for the simplicity's sake here.
Speaker 1: And you know, oh, I do love this narration because
Speaker 1: there is a simplicity to it that also works not
Speaker 1: only for the project that is Shogun Assassin, but also
Speaker 1: the idea that this is a child's recollection and the
Speaker 1: child is working for from a much simpler view of
Speaker 1: right and wrong and good and evil in his known universe.
Speaker 3: Interesting. Yeah, and I guess implied by that, you're saying
Speaker 3: this might be sort of a child's memory of the
Speaker 3: Shogun in which he looks almost like a monster.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I think you could lean into that kind
Speaker 1: of interpretation.
Speaker 3: So he's got wild, uncombed white hair and beard that's
Speaker 3: blowing around in the wind like a mass of cobwebs. Also,
Speaker 3: he has flaring white eyebrows, his teeth are clenched, he's
Speaker 3: got dark eyes, and his eyes just keep jerking back
Speaker 3: and forth, suspicions suspiciously the Shogun is not well. And
Speaker 3: then we see the shogun soldiers leading bound men up
Speaker 3: a mountain side with their hands tied behind their back
Speaker 3: to a chaotic mass execution in the gravel beside a
Speaker 3: small tarn. The narration goes on. It was a bad time,
Speaker 3: everybody living in fear, but still we were happy. My
Speaker 3: father would come home to mother, and when he had
Speaker 3: seen her, he would forget about the killings. He wasn't
Speaker 3: scared of the shogun, but the shogun was scared of him.
Speaker 3: Maybe that was the problem. And so here we see
Speaker 3: a brief glimpse of the family's life at home, the
Speaker 3: mother nursing the baby's son at their house, rain pouring
Speaker 3: into the small bamboo forest outside, and I think the
Speaker 3: sort of weather is a metaphor. Here there's love and
Speaker 3: comfort inside, but not outside where the weather is bad.
Speaker 3: And the father comes home and undresses. He takes his
Speaker 3: baby in his arms, and the mother says that she
Speaker 3: had a bad dream, but the father calms her and
Speaker 3: says to the baby, what a time you chose to
Speaker 3: be born? Igoro. The narration goes on. At night, mother
Speaker 3: would sing for us, while father would go into his
Speaker 3: temple and pray for peace. He'd pray for things to
Speaker 3: get better. Then one night the shogun sent his ninja
Speaker 3: spies to our house. They were supposed to kill my father,
Speaker 3: but they didn't. Here we see ninja scaling the wall
Speaker 3: and sneaking into their home. And there, if you go
Speaker 3: back to our Ninja episodes from a while back, we
Speaker 3: see some stuff we talked about there, some equipment, like
Speaker 3: the ninja are carrying swords between their teeth out and
Speaker 3: they climb up on ropes on grappling hooks. And so
Speaker 3: the father is praying in his temple while with the
Speaker 3: baby in his arms, and then he hears his wife's
Speaker 3: scream from the other end of the house. By the
Speaker 3: time he gets there, she's mortally wounded and the ninja
Speaker 3: are gone, and the dying mother tells the father that
Speaker 3: he must protect their son. The narration tells us that
Speaker 3: was the night everything changed forever. That was when my
Speaker 3: father left his samurai life and became a demon. He
Speaker 3: became an assassin who walks the road of vengeance, and
Speaker 3: he took me with him. And then at this moment
Speaker 3: we see a scene of the dynamic that will be
Speaker 3: treated as sort of the ground reality for the rest
Speaker 3: of the movie. The father trudging along lonely, desolate roads,
Speaker 3: pushing a wooden cart and the baby son riding in
Speaker 3: the cart. Daigo says, I don't remember most of this myself.
Speaker 3: I only remember the Shogun's ninja hunting us wherever we go,
Speaker 3: and the body's falling and the blood.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and this is the like, this is the key
Speaker 1: component of Lone Wolf and Cub that has been highly influential.
Speaker 1: So if you out there are a fan of the
Speaker 1: Mandalorian series, like the Mandalorian is quite clearly and you know,
Speaker 1: the creators are very upfront about this, very much inspired
Speaker 1: by Lone Wolf and Cub. You know, a warrior protecting
Speaker 1: a child, you know, hunted by enemies, but you know,
Speaker 1: standing by the child to protect them, and especially with
Speaker 1: Lone Wolf and Cub, I couldn't help. But also compare
Speaker 1: it to the two thousand and six novel by Cormick McCarthy,
Speaker 1: The Road, in which a father and his son traverse
Speaker 1: a doomed landscape where there's ever present danger and the
Speaker 1: father's entire existence is to still down to the protection
Speaker 1: of his son. Quote. He knew only that his child
Speaker 1: was his warrant. He said, if he is not the
Speaker 1: word of God, God never spoke. You know that that
Speaker 1: kind of vibe. So, I mean, I don't know the
Speaker 1: Court McCarthy ever watched Shogun Assassin, but you know, I
Speaker 1: think they're scratching the same itch here. But I think
Speaker 1: it's something that you know, a lot of us can
Speaker 1: relate to. You know, certainly if if there is a
Speaker 1: child in your life where there has been a child
Speaker 1: in your life, where you have this role as a
Speaker 1: as a protector, like, it's easy to sort of lean
Speaker 1: into this. I think ultimately, you know, very distilled idea
Speaker 1: of what your responsibility is. You know, in the same
Speaker 1: way that zombie films are enthralling because it simplifies good
Speaker 1: and evil into like you know, and in us versus them.
Speaker 1: It's like this kind of the lone wolf and cub
Speaker 1: model reduces everything down to I must protect my child
Speaker 1: from ninjas, you know. And you know, we get to
Speaker 1: some degree that is.
Speaker 3: Act yeah, and so, and we get that demonstrated here
Speaker 3: because here we go to the very first action scene
Speaker 3: in the film, the attack by ninja wearing baskets over
Speaker 3: their heads, which is amazingly creepy and memorable. So it
Speaker 3: begins with one man running toward the father and son
Speaker 3: from a distance. They're on the road. He's pushing the
Speaker 3: cart there just in the middle of nowhere, and there's
Speaker 3: someone running toward them, sword in hand, his head completely
Speaker 3: covered in a basket like a helmet with a mask
Speaker 3: in the front. There's kind of a grating in the basket,
Speaker 3: but you can't see his face. And there's a long
Speaker 3: build up as the ninja draws closer, and then finally,
Speaker 3: when he's in within striking distance, the father just suddenly
Speaker 3: flicks his sword and cleaves the ninja's head through the basket,
Speaker 3: with the ninja catching the blade between his hands as
Speaker 3: he dies. And then a second ninja leaps out from
Speaker 3: behind the first, springs from his dying partner's shoulders and
Speaker 3: tries to land a killing stroke while his while the
Speaker 3: father's sword is stuck. But the father is too crafty.
Speaker 3: He pulls a hidden second weapon from the cart, which
Speaker 3: is a bamboo pole with a retractable blade in it,
Speaker 3: and he skewers the attacker in mid air. And so
Speaker 3: then as the first ninja collapses with his dying breath,
Speaker 3: he tells the father, you are marked for death. Wherever
Speaker 3: you go, you cannot escape the showgun.
Speaker 1: Oh, it's such a strong start this scene is not
Speaker 1: only is it from the second film Lone Wolf and
Speaker 1: Cub Baby cart at the River Sticks. It is the
Speaker 1: cold open to that picture, like he just goes straight
Speaker 1: to this encounter, and it's a little longer in the
Speaker 1: original cut obviously.
Speaker 4: But.
Speaker 1: I have several thoughts of this same. First of all,
Speaker 1: in the Showgun Assassin cut, I believe the second area
Speaker 1: assassin that leaps over the shoulders of the first, I
Speaker 1: believe he says ninja is he? Which is great with
Speaker 1: an the context of Showgun Assassin, But of course in reality,
Speaker 1: I don't know that as a ninja you would say
Speaker 1: ninja as you attack somebody, But still I love it. Secondly, yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: back to the first assassin though. Yeah, he apparently tries
Speaker 1: to pull off this maneuver that is known in Japanese manga, anime,
Speaker 1: and cinema as a shinkin shiradori. This is where you
Speaker 1: catch the blade with between your palms before it can
Speaker 1: cut into you, and then if you're really sadly maybe
Speaker 1: you do a special twist to sort of like throw
Speaker 1: the attacker to the side. This has become like a standard,
Speaker 1: not only in manga, in Japanese cinema but throughout like
Speaker 1: action picture the action picture world. Like for instance, in
Speaker 1: Blade two, the day Walker pulls this move off kind
Speaker 1: of lad in the picture to great effect, but in reality,
Speaker 1: I'm to understand this is impossible for a human swordsman
Speaker 1: to pull off. I think there's a MythBusters episode where
Speaker 1: they look into it, and I think the word the
Speaker 1: term shinkin shihradori. I think it originally referred to some
Speaker 1: sort of maneuver that keeps your opponent from even drawing
Speaker 1: their sword. So like, that's the time to stop it
Speaker 1: not coming through the air at your head. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: what makes this sequence so amazing is that you know
Speaker 1: you're going up against the greatest swordsman that's ever lived.
Speaker 1: You're trying to counter his deathly sword strike, and he
Speaker 1: does not get all of that counter move. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: like maybe he stops it from cleaving his head all
Speaker 1: the way through, but it has already entered the brain
Speaker 1: at this point.
Speaker 3: But it almost seems like this was the plan, Like
Speaker 3: the plan is that the father will get his sword
Speaker 3: stuck in the first ninja and the second one will
Speaker 3: use that moment to strike. Did you get it the
Speaker 3: same way?
Speaker 1: Absolutely? And that's a little more clear in the original
Speaker 1: cut of this action sequence, but I think it still
Speaker 1: comes through in Shogun Assassin as well. But yeah, it's
Speaker 1: a great start to the combat because this is going
Speaker 1: to set the tone.
Speaker 3: So after the intro, we see the father and sons
Speaker 3: sitting together at a campfire in the middle of a
Speaker 3: thick forest. They're eating something white. I think it's rice
Speaker 3: balls or maybe buns or something, and they're just sitting
Speaker 3: there staring blankly into the fire, and the child's voice
Speaker 3: over continues. He says, my father hardly ever talks anymore.
Speaker 3: We just go a little farther every day at night,
Speaker 3: we make a fire and have our tea, and we
Speaker 3: listen for the ninja who never make a sound. I
Speaker 3: like that part. Same Diego says, sometimes he tells me
Speaker 3: about the past and about mother. I try not to
Speaker 3: think about it, but my father can't help it. Sometimes
Speaker 3: he gets lost in the past. And here we're about
Speaker 3: to see a couple of flashback scenes from before Lone
Speaker 3: Wolf and cub Win on the Run. The first is
Speaker 3: after the death of Azami Diego's mother. This is the
Speaker 3: sword and ball scene where the father he's grieving. He's
Speaker 3: not in his right mind, and Asdigo with him in
Speaker 3: his temple. They're both dressed in white, and the father says,
Speaker 3: today I begin walking the road to hell, but you
Speaker 3: will choose your own path. And he offers a sword
Speaker 3: and a toy ball. And so the idea is, he says,
Speaker 3: choose the sword and the child will join his father
Speaker 3: on the road to hell. Choose the toy and the
Speaker 3: child will join his mother in heaven. And there's some suspense,
Speaker 3: but the cub he crawls and he reaches for the sword,
Speaker 3: and the father is both troubled and relieved, and he
Speaker 3: hugs his son and says that his mother would be proud,
Speaker 3: and they will defy the shogun together. Assassin with son.
Speaker 3: It's a great sequence. He says that, like it's like
Speaker 3: the name of their business.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well it is. It does pretty bod. I forget
Speaker 1: exactly what the wording is. But they have that banner
Speaker 1: on their cart. That's like sword for hire, son for hire.
Speaker 1: You need a hold of toddler, got you covered? You
Speaker 1: need a local enemy cut in half. We can talk.
Speaker 3: So the other flashback is what followed immediately followed that immediately,
Speaker 3: which is the moment of defiance. So the shogun's emissary
Speaker 3: comes to the father and reads a decree that he
Speaker 3: must either swear eternal loyalty to the shogun or commit
Speaker 3: harakiri with his son, and obviously he's gonna do neither one.
Speaker 3: He's got his head down and he starts to laugh
Speaker 3: and then slowly raises his face up, looking very stern
Speaker 3: and almost evil, and he says, you are wrong. I
Speaker 3: have a third choice. And then the other guys they
Speaker 3: immediately get like freaked out. Uh oh. And in one
Speaker 3: arm he picks up his infant son, and in the
Speaker 3: other arm he draws his sword. And the officials who
Speaker 3: read the decree they call for guards. They're like, ah,
Speaker 3: stop him, can't you see he's a devil. I'm not
Speaker 3: sure quite what was meant by that, but it's yeah,
Speaker 3: they're seeing him as some kind of demon. And this
Speaker 3: leads to a brutal sword fight, one against many to
Speaker 3: escape the building, and the father has his son in
Speaker 3: the crook of one arm the whole time. It's very
Speaker 3: stylized violence. We see a sword blade break off inside
Speaker 3: a guard's neck. There are jets of bright red blood
Speaker 3: that erupt like geysers from the adversary's wounds. You can
Speaker 3: see why this was effective on the midnight movie circuit.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I don't know if arterial sprays like this are
Speaker 1: realistic or hyperrealistic. I thankfully do not know, but it
Speaker 1: certainly sizzles on the screen and you get this idea
Speaker 1: that a human's life blood is just this high pressure substance,
Speaker 1: absolutely straining for release by a skilled swordsman like ogami Eto.
Speaker 3: Yeah, a lot of blood jets in this movie. However,
Speaker 3: as the father cuts his way out of the compound,
Speaker 3: he is suddenly faced with the Shogun and his entourage.
Speaker 3: The Shogun so he like cuts through the gate and
Speaker 3: the gate opens and the Shogun is there with all
Speaker 3: of his men. The Shogun calls him mad one and
Speaker 3: says he can never escape his fate, but he offers
Speaker 3: him a deal. He says, you agree to a one
Speaker 3: on one duel with my son with the Shogun's son,
Speaker 3: and if Lone Wolf can win this duel, he will
Speaker 3: be awarded his freedom, and Lone Wolf accepts.
Speaker 1: Now, again, I'm not going to go into a lot
Speaker 1: of detail about the differences between the original pictures and
Speaker 1: Chokun Assassin, but I do feel like I need to
Speaker 1: jump in on this one say and point out that
Speaker 1: in the original again, Ogami is cornered not by the
Speaker 1: shogun but by Ratsuto and his men, and he's given
Speaker 1: a choice here. He's like, Okay, this is the way
Speaker 1: it can go down for you, Ogami. Either you go
Speaker 1: ahead and commit your honorable suicide right now, or my
Speaker 1: soldiers are going to cut you down with their quote
Speaker 1: wall of swords. And Ogami says, no, neither of those
Speaker 1: is going to happen, and he tears off these outer
Speaker 1: white robes and reveals that he wears black robes with
Speaker 1: the hollyhock crest of the Tokugawa Shogunate. So he's like, look,
Speaker 1: I'm wearing the colors in the crest of the shogun
Speaker 1: You can't kill me. You can't even point your swords
Speaker 1: at me without dishonoring yourself. And so they're at a standstill,
Speaker 1: and so a compromise is made. Okay, you remove those
Speaker 1: robes and we will settle this via a formal duel. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because otherwise you might say, well, why didn't they just
Speaker 1: cut him down? Well, in the original picture it made
Speaker 1: more sense.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So we go to the duel. From here, the
Speaker 3: duel takes place in the afternoon in a meadow of
Speaker 3: tall grass blowing in the wind, and we see the
Speaker 3: two samurai square off at a distance. The shogun's sun
Speaker 3: is scowling, hateful, determined. The Lone Wolf wears the cub
Speaker 3: on a basket on his back, and they draw their
Speaker 3: swords and charge at one another. But Lone Wolf has
Speaker 3: a trick up his sleeve here. Right when they are
Speaker 3: about to meet on the field, Lone Wolf bows his
Speaker 3: head and reveals a mirror mounted on Diigero's head, which
Speaker 3: reflects the low sun and blinds their enemy. And then
Speaker 3: Lone Wolf chops off the lord's son's head and his
Speaker 3: body is just standing there, headlows with jets of blood
Speaker 3: blasting out of the next stump in slow motion in
Speaker 3: the golden sunset.
Speaker 1: Oh it's beautiful, I mean in a grizzly way. It
Speaker 1: is so beautiful. And one thing that's pointed out in
Speaker 1: the sor I'm going to do one more of these. Well,
Speaker 1: something that's pointed out in the original picture is that
Speaker 1: this is like a swordsman that is of comparable ability
Speaker 1: to a gami, but he has the sun to his back,
Speaker 1: and therefore he has an advantage and will probably prevail.
Speaker 1: But Ogami, via the cub and his mirror, turns his
Speaker 1: advantage into a disadvantage by reflecting the sunlight back into
Speaker 1: his eyes.
Speaker 3: That does make more sense of it, because this part
Speaker 3: I was thinking, well, he's just like cutting the slicing
Speaker 3: through everybody, like butter, Why is this guy such a challenge,
Speaker 3: But it would make sense if we know something about
Speaker 3: him and that he has an advantage on the Yeah,
Speaker 3: though they do show the sun. They don't talk about it,
Speaker 3: but they do show the sun being low and in
Speaker 3: his face. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Either way, even if you don't know all those details,
Speaker 1: it is another super stylistically violent execution.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So this scene fades back into a scene of
Speaker 3: lone wolf and Cub at a campfire in the wilderness,
Speaker 3: and the camera slowly pulls back from them as father
Speaker 3: turns his head. And then on the soundtrack they had
Speaker 3: to add this in we get a guttural, animalistic growl.
Speaker 3: It's a wolf growling, probably just a dog right. Yeah, anyway,
Speaker 3: here the introductory I would say this is the part
Speaker 3: where the introductory part of the movie gives way to
Speaker 3: the main plot. Though, as we said earlier, the idea
Speaker 3: that this movie has a plot, it's very loose. Basically,
Speaker 3: the plot is the father wanders the country pushing his
Speaker 3: son in a wooden cart. They stop at places where
Speaker 3: the father can take contracts. He works as an assassin,
Speaker 3: and he makes money. He makes money to live this way,
Speaker 3: but he doesn't seem to really want to become rich
Speaker 3: or like find a way out. He sort of seems
Speaker 3: to squander the money he makes. From what I can.
Speaker 1: Tell, Yeah, I mean, I think part of it is
Speaker 1: like he's I mean, he has no future, Like his
Speaker 1: son is the only future that matters, and he will
Speaker 1: do everything for him, but like he has lost all honor.
Speaker 1: He's a wandering ronan. What is he going to do
Speaker 1: with this money except, you know, pay for the next
Speaker 1: night's sleep, pay for the next bath, and so forth.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So, meanwhile, the shogun keeps hiring new ninjas and assassins
Speaker 3: to send after him and his son, so we follow
Speaker 3: several episodes of that where assassins are sent after them.
Speaker 3: The main mission of this film, especially in the second half,
Speaker 3: is a job that the Lone Wolf takes from a
Speaker 3: group of locals asking him to kill a lord Kirou.
Speaker 3: The Shogun's cruel brother who is oppressing them. But Lord
Speaker 3: Kirou is guarded by three ninja brothers known as the
Speaker 3: Masters of Death, whom we mentioned earlier. Kind of the
Speaker 3: visual inspiration clearly, or at least part of the the
Speaker 3: DNA that inspired the three storms from a big trouble
Speaker 3: in Little China, the large wide hats, the specialized weapons,
Speaker 3: and the deadly auras.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and they do just cut everyone to ribbons when
Speaker 1: they jump into action. The Masters of Death are awesome.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And so the final showdown at the end of
Speaker 3: the movie will be the Father versus the three Masters
Speaker 3: of Death in a scene in the desert. Strangely, I
Speaker 3: was kind of wondering where that's supposed to take place.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I've never been to any of these, but there
Speaker 1: are a few different sand dunes in Japan, and I'm
Speaker 1: not sure which one we're looking at here, but I
Speaker 1: think I've seen it pop up in a few different
Speaker 1: Japanese films and TV shows over the years.
Speaker 3: Okay, well, I guess we've sort of sketched the general
Speaker 3: outline of the plot, but maybe we can talk about
Speaker 3: a few scenes that we just wanted to explore in
Speaker 3: a little bit of detail. One that I wanted to
Speaker 3: mention is closer to the beginning, and it's the scene
Speaker 3: where a lone wolf and cub visit a bath house
Speaker 3: in town. Because so Digoro is explaining in the narration
Speaker 3: that visiting a town is dangerous because they don't fit
Speaker 3: in and the shogun's ninja are everywhere. But then he says,
Speaker 3: but sometimes you have to take a chance if you
Speaker 3: want to take a bath. So they go to this
Speaker 3: bath house and the manager tries to turn them away,
Speaker 3: thinking that they are penniless beggars. But then lone Wolf
Speaker 3: flashes his wad of gold. He doesn't have a lot
Speaker 3: he like, gets it out of the cart, and the
Speaker 3: guy changes his tune. He eagerly goes to wash Digoro's feet,
Speaker 3: and then Digoro kicks water in the guy's face. And
Speaker 3: I like this scene because of the little moments of
Speaker 3: the child almost playing, like the way he stomps around
Speaker 3: in the tub. It's clear that for the rest of
Speaker 3: his life there is very little room for play, but
Speaker 3: here you get to see him play.
Speaker 1: Yeah, these little moments of play, they're very effective here,
Speaker 1: and they've of course been very effective in the Man Laurian,
Speaker 1: very much copying this blueprint. You know, the cuteness of
Speaker 1: the child, the baby Yoda, the Grogu, you know, very
Speaker 1: much patterned on this.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Also there's a moment here at the so they're
Speaker 3: like taking a bath. They're soaking in this big wash
Speaker 3: tub and it's supposed to be relaxing. You see the
Speaker 3: steam rising and they're kind of reclined. But there's an
Speaker 3: interesting moment where like the camera pulls back and reveals
Speaker 3: the father's arm is draped outside the tub and he's
Speaker 3: like gripping his sword. And there's never any attack in
Speaker 3: this scene. It's just that this is who he must be.
Speaker 4: Now.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Ogami can never truly rest. He always has his
Speaker 1: sword at his side, and in a moment that peace
Speaker 1: can disappear.
Speaker 3: And so there are more plots, Like there's a theme
Speaker 3: established that Lone Wolf's enemies want to take his son
Speaker 3: away from him. They think this will take away his power,
Speaker 3: and so there's one plot to steal de Gooro, and
Speaker 3: this leads to a fight scene in a river where
Speaker 3: these guys come and say, like, where is your son.
Speaker 3: We're going to take him, and then the father goes
Speaker 3: to fight them, and then it's discovered that they're like
Speaker 3: hiding armor underneath their clothing, but he fights them anyway,
Speaker 3: and it turns into like a final duel between him
Speaker 3: and one of the lords who opposes him. Standing in
Speaker 3: the middle of a river at the base of this
Speaker 3: I was going to say waterfall, but I think it
Speaker 3: might actually be a kind of a man made like
Speaker 3: spillway sort of thing, and Lone Wolf wins this fight
Speaker 3: by hiding his blade beneath the water before he turns
Speaker 3: to move it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so we get another like super stylistic kill here.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Also after this duel is just the Shogun's just
Speaker 3: standing on a bridge over the water like, oh, I
Speaker 3: will get you. Yeah.
Speaker 1: They keep the dream of an encounter occurring with the
Speaker 1: showgun alive, though it's again it's not gonna happen, not
Speaker 1: in this film.
Speaker 3: Yeah. There's another great scene, which is the scene of
Speaker 3: recruiting the ninja win. So one of the bad guys
Speaker 3: I think this is Lord Kouragawa working for the Shogun.
Speaker 3: He meets with a woman who calls herself the Supreme Ninja.
Speaker 3: The Supreme Ninja. She commands an army of women who
Speaker 3: are all themselves Ninja warriors and the lord shows up
Speaker 3: to task them with destroying Lone Wolf and cub but
Speaker 3: she well, first of all, she they tell her that
Speaker 3: he fought a duel with the Shogun's air, and she says,
Speaker 3: what was the outcome of the duel? And he says terrible.
Speaker 3: But the Supreme Ninja offers the Shogun's emissary a demonstration
Speaker 3: of her of the prowess of her lady warriors. So
Speaker 3: she's like, show me your strongest man, and this silent
Speaker 3: fighter and a brown cloak and a conical hat comes forward.
Speaker 3: We learned this is Juni, the strongest fighter of I
Speaker 3: think it's Lord Kuragawa here. And so the Supreme Ninja
Speaker 3: addresses Junin ands says, okay, you've got to try to
Speaker 3: find a way to escape from this room. But like
Speaker 3: as she says this, her women are gathering around him,
Speaker 3: and things are about to go very poorly for Junei.
Speaker 3: He tries to escape using a grappling hook in the rafters.
Speaker 3: He throws it up to the ceiling and swing out
Speaker 3: of the chamber, but the women cut the rope, they
Speaker 3: rip off his cloak, they pull swords out of their dresses,
Speaker 3: and then they just run around slicing pieces off of
Speaker 3: this dude one at a time. So, like we see
Speaker 3: his fingers hit the floor and then the skin from
Speaker 3: his face falls down to the floor like a rubber mask.
Speaker 3: Oh it's rough. They cut him into a lot of pieces.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this scene is so grizzly and wonderful. They just
Speaker 1: systematically take him apart, reducing him to a limbless, faceless
Speaker 1: husk that like rolls across the floor, and you know,
Speaker 1: then there's nothing left to do but dispatch him.
Speaker 3: And then the Supreme Ninja says, this is your best man.
Speaker 3: Lone Wolf would swallow him and then begin the most
Speaker 3: deranged Harley Quinn laughter. It goes on for a long
Speaker 3: time and stops quite suddenly, and she's calm and she says,
Speaker 3: my women will execute him.
Speaker 1: So basically this lays the groundwork for the next trio
Speaker 1: of sequences, as the has three different groups of the
Speaker 1: female Ninja's attempt to take out Lone Wolf and cut Yeah.
Speaker 3: So so first, well, this is outside. They're on the road.
Speaker 3: Eventually they're pushing the cart between Dikon fields and I
Speaker 3: like how at the Dikon Fields the women are like
Speaker 3: down in the stream washing the Dikon in the water,
Speaker 3: and there's this creepy scarecrow with this like wide eyed
Speaker 3: face drawn on its headsack. It's interesting environmental details. But actually,
Speaker 3: before they get to the Dikon fields, there's an ambush
Speaker 3: by traveling entertainers on the road side. And I thought
Speaker 3: this was funny because in our in our Ninja episode,
Speaker 3: we were talking about some classic story of Ninja running
Speaker 3: around and spying by pretending to be traveling entertainers.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a perfect cover.
Speaker 3: So in this case, the father and son go by
Speaker 3: and the entertainers are they're like dancers or acrobats of
Speaker 3: some kind. They're jumping around, cart wheeling and somersaulting and stuff.
Speaker 3: Whatever these people are. They I think they somehow hypnotize
Speaker 3: Lone Wolf with the spinning patterns on their clothing as
Speaker 3: they spin around. So it gets very strawberry alarm clock
Speaker 3: for a minute here. But of course these are really
Speaker 3: the Supreme Ninja's assassins in disguise, and they try to
Speaker 3: launch a sneak attack, but Lone Wolf is too quick,
Speaker 3: even though he was briefly hypnotized by the clothing. His
Speaker 3: sword flashes and they are done. And this is the
Speaker 3: scene where Diegero starts counting the dead Ninja. You know,
Speaker 3: he says, I try to count them so I can
Speaker 3: pray for their souls. Father tells me not to count them,
Speaker 3: but I have to to know how many to pray for.
Speaker 3: And then I think he says, they're up to three
Speaker 3: hundred and forty five, Ninja.
Speaker 1: It's quite a count.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So then we get to the attack at the
Speaker 3: Dikon fields. So they're like going down the road in
Speaker 3: the cart and these women come up in different waves,
Speaker 3: Like the first wave of women throws these flying killer
Speaker 3: hats with blades on them, the blades on the brim,
Speaker 3: and Lone Wolf fights them off, kills them, and then
Speaker 3: there are the next wave has knives hidden inside the Dikon, which, okay,
Speaker 3: I love it.
Speaker 1: The dicons are like piercing the cart and all and
Speaker 1: oh and I have to mention in the the original
Speaker 1: the second Lone Wolf picture, when they're preparing the dicons
Speaker 1: by the river, they're singing a little song and the
Speaker 1: lyrics are something like, what's the side dish for tonight?
Speaker 1: Oh it's dicon. Uh.
Speaker 3: So yeah, there there are these little a lot of
Speaker 3: little tricks and secrets and reveals in this fight scene
Speaker 3: like secret knives popping out of the baby carriage, and
Speaker 3: our protagonists fight through it all until they get to
Speaker 3: the Supreme Ninja. She herself comes out to UH to
Speaker 3: administer the final attack on Lone Wolf here, which she
Speaker 3: does with a net.
Speaker 1: That's right, she nets him. The net prevents him from
Speaker 1: immediately being able to draw his sword, and of course
Speaker 1: he does eventually draw his sword, but they engage in
Speaker 1: this short, intense close combat sword fight where it's clear
Speaker 1: that they're pretty evenly matched, and we get to see
Speaker 1: her effectively pull off that sword clap shinkin Shihadori maneuver
Speaker 1: against Ogami, clapping his sword blade before it can hit her,
Speaker 1: and then she even does the twist and sends him
Speaker 1: a sprawling So it's a fun little like you know,
Speaker 1: evenly matched, you know, very close confines battle here, But.
Speaker 3: Then it gets kind of looney tunes right at the end,
Speaker 3: like they sort of fight to a draw, but when
Speaker 3: Lone Wolf is finally ready to like land a sword
Speaker 3: blow on her, he like hits her, but it doesn't
Speaker 3: actually hit her. She avoids it by jumping out of
Speaker 3: her clothes. She's not naked she's like still wearing some
Speaker 3: kind of full body stalking, but just lee gives her
Speaker 3: original clothes standing there and leaps up in the air
Speaker 3: out of them, lands in a field nearby, and then
Speaker 3: starts fast motion running backwards as if the tape were
Speaker 3: in reverse up a hill.
Speaker 1: Yes, Oh my god, this outcome is so wild. I
Speaker 1: can't stress enough how bonkers it is. I think looney
Speaker 1: tunes is the right word, because it's not like she
Speaker 1: peels out of her clothing in a realistic manner. It
Speaker 1: is like her outer garments are a jet fighter and
Speaker 1: she has ejected from them.
Speaker 3: Yes, and then runs like a spring snake in the can.
Speaker 1: Like a spring snake. And then the running backwards. I
Speaker 1: guess the idea is, like you, she can't lose sight
Speaker 1: of her opponent something, so yeah, she's just running backwards
Speaker 1: and doesn't take her eyes off of lone Wolf for
Speaker 1: quite a while, like at least a half a mile
Speaker 1: running backwards across the field. It's amazing.
Speaker 3: But she's going really fast, so we don't have to
Speaker 3: watch her go, you know, normal normal speed to a
Speaker 3: half mile.
Speaker 1: And he just sort of like looks at her. He
Speaker 1: just watches it.
Speaker 3: I've seen that trick before well matched. Then they also
Speaker 3: have to fight some more ninja in the woods. This
Speaker 3: is a more I don't know. There's a bunch of
Speaker 3: guys in the in the hats again and in this
Speaker 3: fight they use the cart as a weapon, like it's
Speaker 3: got blades that come out the sides and chop all
Speaker 3: the ninja's legs off. But after all this we come
Speaker 3: to the part I mentioned this near the top of
Speaker 3: the episode. We come to the part where Lone Wolf
Speaker 3: is injured and this leads to a sequence where the
Speaker 3: boy has to take care of his father, like his
Speaker 3: father is hiding in this little hut, and so I
Speaker 3: mentioned the scene earlier of the boy trying to bring
Speaker 3: him water from the river and he ends up having
Speaker 3: to carry it in his mouth. But there also he
Speaker 3: goes looking for food and he finds a food offering
Speaker 3: at a shrine, but then he and he wants to
Speaker 3: take it, but he doesn't want to be disrespectful, so
Speaker 3: he leaves an offering of his own in its place.
Speaker 3: He takes off some of his clothing and leaves it
Speaker 3: at the shrine.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is a very sweet section and of course
Speaker 1: we have that great Digoro's theme playing and yeah, we
Speaker 1: see him, you know, bring water and then food back
Speaker 1: to Ogami as Ogami lays, perhaps dying we don't know
Speaker 1: at this point, but helping him to recuperate.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Oh.
Speaker 3: This leads to the part where Dikoro gets kidnapped to
Speaker 3: the Supreme Ninja and the Shogun's Lord. They decide, okay,
Speaker 3: we've got to steal him to steal the Lone Wolf's power.
Speaker 3: So they take Digo away and they lure the Lone
Speaker 3: Wolf out to find them in the middle of the night,
Speaker 3: and he finds them standing around a well where Digoro
Speaker 3: is suspended by a rope over the opening to the well.
Speaker 3: How's lone Wolf going to get out of this one? Well?
Speaker 3: So I think there's a clever little thing that I
Speaker 3: missed the first time around, but I was rewatching the
Speaker 3: scene and I realized what it was. So he says
Speaker 3: something to Digoro and then Digoro kicks his sandal off
Speaker 3: and it falls down the well, and I think that
Speaker 3: is letting the father know how long the drop is,
Speaker 3: like the timing of the drop, because what happens is
Speaker 3: he draws his sword and he quickly slashes a bunch
Speaker 3: of the bad guys and then stomps on the rope
Speaker 3: as Digoro is falling to stop him from falling, to
Speaker 3: stop him before he hits the water at the bottom.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And this is another thing where it's I mean,
Speaker 1: the editing here is tight and effective. In the original film,
Speaker 1: I think maybe more instantly make sense what's happening, but yeah,
Speaker 1: you still get the sense of it here.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So he slashes all of his enemies here except
Speaker 3: for the Supreme Ninja who's just standing there watching, but
Speaker 3: she does not attack, and neither does Lone Wolf, and
Speaker 3: they kind of regard each other, and then will freeze
Speaker 3: his son and they walk away, and Daigo says in
Speaker 3: the narration, that was the first time I ever saw
Speaker 3: my father's spare an enemy, So I think there's some
Speaker 3: mutual respect.
Speaker 1: Absolutely. Yeah, and we'll come back to this character again too.
Speaker 1: But from here we kind of proceed into mostly dealing
Speaker 1: with the Masters of Death.
Speaker 3: There's a long sequence on a boat. I don't think
Speaker 3: we need to go into all the details of the
Speaker 3: boat journey and the fight on the boat, but there's
Speaker 3: like rebels who are fighting against someone and the Masters
Speaker 3: of Death mess them up on a boat. There's eventually
Speaker 3: a fire and everybody has to jump off the boat.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and after the everyone has to jump off the boat.
Speaker 1: This is I think where we eventually get this sequence
Speaker 1: where the Supreme Ninja, Lone Wolf, and Cob meet up
Speaker 1: again and they're all wet and cold and they huddle
Speaker 1: together for warmth, which is a scene where you don't
Speaker 1: really know where this scene is going at first. Is
Speaker 1: this going to be like some sort of you know,
Speaker 1: just pure exploitation moment, But it ends up being quite
Speaker 1: sweet in its own way. Like, I mean, there's these
Speaker 1: three lost individuals huddling for warmth against in a dark world.
Speaker 3: Well, yeah, it's complex there because so he doesn't harm
Speaker 3: the Supreme Ninja and she doesn't want to harm him anymore,
Speaker 3: but she has to go away and he knows that
Speaker 3: that means her death when she goes back to the
Speaker 3: Shogun to like report what has happened.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so it's bittersweet. And this is of course another
Speaker 1: thing where this is a little more complex and nuanced
Speaker 1: in the second film, but we get a nice, you know,
Speaker 1: edited down version of it here. But I think they
Speaker 1: ultimately spare us nothing of the violence inflicted by and
Speaker 1: upon the Masters of Death. All of that makes it
Speaker 1: to the finished picture.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, yeah. So the final conflict in the film
Speaker 3: is we get the Masters of Death leading their person
Speaker 3: they're serving as a bodyguard for in this sort of
Speaker 3: caravan through the desert. They're going up and down these
Speaker 3: sand dune and then suddenly there is an attack first,
Speaker 3: I think by some rebels against this group, and the
Speaker 3: Masters of Death just chop them up. They don't do well.
Speaker 1: Are these the ones that they're initially hiding under the
Speaker 1: sand to pop up and get the Masters of Death?
Speaker 1: The Masters of Death are just like stabbing them in
Speaker 1: the sand.
Speaker 3: It's kind of dune yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: But this finally leads to the Masters of Death must
Speaker 3: face off against Lone Wolf. And I mentioned this earlier,
Speaker 3: but in this part the music infuses it with such vigor.
Speaker 3: There is this relentless synthesizer vamp and a high lead
Speaker 3: over this galloping drum beat. It's really good. Like the
Speaker 3: movie itself, I think pre dates this convention in video games,
Speaker 3: but it feels like boss music. It's like in Mega Man.
Speaker 3: It's the kind of music that kicks in in Mega
Speaker 3: Man when you like enter the chamber to fight Spark
Speaker 3: Mandrol don't you know what I mean, Like it's like
Speaker 3: it picks up the tempo and it's like really trying
Speaker 3: to get your blood pumping now.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, it is pretty relentless. At the end of
Speaker 1: the day, we know this can only go down one way.
Speaker 1: They may be Masters of Death, but they are not
Speaker 1: going to come out on top against ogami Eto. His
Speaker 1: his skill and his heart is just too powerful for
Speaker 1: them to overcome. So he stylishly defeats one of the
Speaker 1: three brothers, then the other of the three brothers, and
Speaker 1: finally it's a he's squaring off with the final of
Speaker 1: the Masters of Death. This is the guy with the claws. Claws, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: and you know they have a nice back and forth
Speaker 1: and then ultimately Lone Wolf cuts him on the neck
Speaker 1: with this like perfect cut. That and the spray, the
Speaker 1: arterial spray out of this cut is like a fine mist.
Speaker 1: This part of the of the film. This is another
Speaker 1: like just super weird, great moment and it's like this
Speaker 1: Serene Erotics's of death, a cut so perfect that one's
Speaker 1: life blood leaves the body in a kind of like
Speaker 1: high pressure howling mist like a dream. Such a cut
Speaker 1: as like the ultimate aspiration of any killer, and oh
Speaker 1: the irony. The master of death himself dies by this
Speaker 1: cut without ever getting to inflict its perfection himself.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there's a line in the film where they're talking
Speaker 3: about about like the sound of a winter wind blowing
Speaker 3: or something.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he says, I have the quote here when cut
Speaker 1: across the neck, a sound like wailing winter winds is heard.
Speaker 1: They say, I'd always hope to cut someone like that someday,
Speaker 1: to hear that sound, but to have it happen to
Speaker 1: my own neck is ridiculous.
Speaker 3: Ridiculous, It's wonderful. But doesn't he also say something like
Speaker 3: He's like, it was an honor to have been killed
Speaker 3: by you.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because again, if you want to have your neck sliced,
Speaker 1: this is the guy you want doing it. You want
Speaker 1: you want it in the hands of a master.
Speaker 6: Oh.
Speaker 3: But then we also do, in a kind of anti
Speaker 3: climactic way, we get to see a lone wolf doing
Speaker 3: a grizzly finish to his contract, and then the movie's
Speaker 3: just kind of over.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, we get like one final line from the boy.
Speaker 1: He says, what I guess, I wish it was different,
Speaker 1: But a wish is only a wish.
Speaker 3: No, justice for the Showgun.
Speaker 1: No again, if if you were attracted to this film
Speaker 1: because you thought a showgun was going to be assassinated, No,
Speaker 1: doesn't happen. And the character that is labeled the showgun
Speaker 1: he also does not get his come upance in this film.
Speaker 1: I think it ultimately happens later on in the series,
Speaker 1: but played by a different actor. Yeah, but now I
Speaker 1: kind of want to finish that journey. I'm gonna have to,
Speaker 1: you know, in my own time, go through the next
Speaker 1: four of these pictures. I enjoy the first two, and
Speaker 1: of course Showgun Assassin so much.
Speaker 3: Well, that sounds great. I might have to check him
Speaker 3: out too.
Speaker 1: It's a fun ride, a demon ride to hell.
Speaker 3: Oh hey, but one last thought. I think I said
Speaker 3: this earlier, but even if you don't watch this movie,
Speaker 3: which you know it's a hyper violent kind of thing,
Speaker 3: it might not be your style. And that's fine. I
Speaker 3: would recommend checking out the soundtrack if you can. The
Speaker 3: music is great, especially if you love synthesizer stuff.
Speaker 1: Absolutely to a terrific score. But I have to warn
Speaker 1: you the score, it may suck you in. The next thing,
Speaker 1: you know, you're watching Showgun Assassin, then you're watching the
Speaker 1: Lone Wolf and Cub series. That's how it gets started.
Speaker 1: All right, Well, this was a lot of fun. I'd
Speaker 1: love to hear from everyone out there. I know we
Speaker 1: have listeners who are very well acquainted with the Lone
Speaker 1: Wolf and Cub series and are more familiar with Samurai
Speaker 1: and Ninja pictures than we are, So hey, write in.
Speaker 1: We would love to hear from you. We'd love your
Speaker 1: thoughts on Showgun Assassin, Lone Wolf and Cub the series. Oh,
Speaker 1: if you've read the manga, write in about that as well.
Speaker 1: I have not, so I don't have any familiarity with it,
Speaker 1: but of course it is considered legendary in its own right.
Speaker 1: Just a reminder that Stuff to Blow Your Mind is
Speaker 1: primarily a science and culture podcast with core episodes on
Speaker 1: Tuesdays and Thursdays, but on Fridays we set aside most
Speaker 1: serious concerns to just talk about a weird film on
Speaker 1: Weird House Cinema. And if you want to keep up
Speaker 1: with what we're doing on Weird House Cinema, you can
Speaker 1: always follow us on a letterbox dot com. Our username
Speaker 1: there is weird House. You'll find a list of all
Speaker 1: the films we've done so far and sometimes a peek
Speaker 1: ahead at what's coming out next, and hey, we are
Speaker 1: in December, so you know what that means. We're gonna
Speaker 1: we're gonna get at least one Christmas movie in there.
Speaker 1: Is it gonna have Santa in it? Can make no promises.
Speaker 1: Will there be a Christmas tree somewhere in the background
Speaker 1: of a scene? Probably that's probably probably how it's gonna
Speaker 1: go down.
Speaker 3: Has it been a year since I Come in Peace?
Speaker 1: It has?
Speaker 5: Yeah?
Speaker 1: That was That was our Christmas action film from last year.
Speaker 1: Wasn't it that one had Christmas music in it? I
Speaker 1: think it was Christmas was more a part of the
Speaker 1: texture of the picture then some people give it credit.
Speaker 3: Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway.
Speaker 3: If you would like to get in touch with us
Speaker 3: with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
Speaker 3: a topic for the future, or just to say hello,
Speaker 3: you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow
Speaker 3: your Mind dot com.
Speaker 2: Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
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