Blog Archives

Sword Of Doom (1966)

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Posted on June 29, 2008 by Samson

Sword of Doom is an acclaimed action film from director Kihachi Okamoto. It tells the story of a ruthless swordsman who is deadly with his sword. The fact that the central character is a very unlikeable character makes the movie different from many of the samurai films that have come out of Japan.

Ryunosuke Tsukue is this central character. He kills a man in a sword fight despite promising the man’s wife that he will give up winning if she … (read more)

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Kill! (1968)

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Posted on April 30, 2006 by Justin

This film’s a great bit of fun for fans of Japanese cinema, particularly the chambara genre — swordplay films set in period Japan. Kill! is a comedic take on the genre’s conventions, loosely based on the same source material as Akira Kurosawa’s film Sanjuro (Shugoro Yamamoto’s novel Peaceful Days).

Our two lead characters are the simple farmer who wants desperately to become a samurai, Hanji (played by Etsushi Takahashi), and a worldly samurai-turned-yakuza named Genta (played by Tatsuya Nakadai). … (read more)

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Zatoichi: Zatoichi Meets Yojimbo (1970)

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Posted on November 25, 2005 by Mat

Zatoichi Meets Yojimbo, is the first Zatoichi film to see Shintaro Katsu go head-to-head with screen legend Toshiro Mifune. We know that they have to fight one another, but whose fighting skills will reign supreme?

What an incredibly good film! The entire film feels as though there was more money to spend than in all the previous Zatoichi films put together, and this has resulted in a forty year old film that is just as much, if not more, … (read more)

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