Lone Wolf and Cub 1: Sword of Vengeance (1972)

SWORD OF VENGEANCE, the first entry in producer Shintaro Katsu’s six-film adaptation of Kazuo Koike’s classic manga series is the movie that defines extreme, blood-spraying Japanese swordplay action. Katsu, famed star of the ZATOICHI series cast his brother Tomisaburo Wakayama in the iconic role of a stern Shogun’s executioner who is framed for sedition by a secret ninja clan, forced to go on the run with his infant son and assume the mantle of an assassin for hire and one-man army.

SWORD OF VENGEANCE was famously edited together with its sequel BABY CART AT THE RIVER STYX (1972) and released in the U.S. in 1980 by New World Pictures as the action-packed cult classic SHOGUN ASSASSIN. This review chiefly concerns itself with the original, unedited 1973 version, a stylized genre masterpiece, slower in pace yet richer in characterization and more faithful to the source material than its equally entertaining Americanized version.

The chambara film, Japan’s venerable, indigenous period action genre was in its twilight years by January of 1972 when SWORD OF VENGEANCE premiered. Literally hundreds of films detailing the heroic and not-so-heroic action exploits of samurai, ronin and ninja assassins in Japan’s feudal era had been brought to the screen, most notably during the genre’s golden age ranging from Akira Kurosawa’s THE SEVEN SAMURAI (1954) through the 1960s. With Japan’s studio system crumbling amid a declining box office something special was needed to revive the genre, if only temporarily.

Shintaro Katsu, who was enjoying enormous success as a blind swordsman in the long-running ZATOICHI film and television series set out to produce a multi-film adaptation of a popular 28-volume manga series titled LONE WOLF AND CUB. Initially released in 1970, the comic series, written by Kazuo Koike and illustrated by Kojima Goseki, upped the ante for the genre with its depictions of extreme violence, sexuality and rebellion against the status quo.

Its hero, Ogami Itto, was a masterless samurai who chose to defy the fate laid before him as a disgraced executioner for the Shogun, framed by the Yagyu Shadow clan for treason and ordered to commit seppuku. With his wife murdered and his infant son in tow, he assumes the role of a demon on earth, a man not bound by any laws who is determined to seek his own justice by the point of his sword.

Portraying Ogami in SWORD OF VENGEANCE, as well as its five sequels was Katsu’s younger brother Tomisaburo Wakayama, an established chambara actor with a background in judo. In an entertainment career spanning over 30 years, Wakayama’s brooding performance as Ogami remains his most famous and for good reason. Despite his lack of leading-man looks, he has a palpable screen presence that suits the larger-than-life character. He also moves with the strength and purpose of a trained martial artist, thus giving those limb-cleaving and arterial-bursting strikes an added measure of authenticity.

Action sequences are limited in the film to two bloody fights. This was not the case for the SHOGUN ASSASSIN release which intentionally combined action scenes from the first and second LONE WOLF films to create something more palatable to Western audiences unfamiliar with Japanese culture and chiefly concerned with grindhouse-style bloodletting. SWORD OF VENGEANCE, while still possessing the same excessive violence in smaller measure, takes its time in establishing Ogami’s background. Yet unlike most chambara films that came before, director Kenji Misumi does so with greater style. The film still has the mature art direction and cinematography of classical chambara but also the energy and creativity of what remains one of the most influential manga series of all time. This successful mergence of new and established genre conventions had a big influence on future generations of manga authors, animators and moviemakers and fit in perfectly with mainstream acceptance of gore and extreme violence that exploded with the slasher craze in the 1980s.

Considerable mention of Ogami Itto’s martial arts technique is given in the film. It’s described as being Suio-ryu, a real Japanese sword drawing skill. Ogami’s nemesis and Yagyu’s leader Retsudo (Tokio Oki) points out Ogami’s “Suio-ryu Wave-Slashing Stroke” while observing a fight between Ogami and an opponent in a river. Without knowledge of the sword style, it’s difficult to tell if any care was taken to accurately reproduce Suio-ryu techniques although Ogami does stick to weapons associated with the art. In his second battle, this time against thugs terrorizing a small village, he wields a modified naginata with a switchblade function. This use of hidden weaponry would become increasingly distinctive and creative as the film series progressed.

A traditional naginata is similar to a Chinese guandao in that it has a curved blade attached to a long handle. It’s an ideal weapon for use against multiple opponents in an open area as it can be swung in slashing strokes with considerable force and speed to keep attackers with swords from closing in. In warfare it was primarily used like a pike as a defensive weapon against cavalry on horseback as it could be used to cut through the legs of a horse or reach the rider. In one of the film’s goriest moments, Ogami slices through the legs of an opponent just below the knees. This particularly gruesome scene is repeated on a larger scale in THE WARLORDS with Jet Li effectively wielding a guandao in a pitched battle.

The film’s action show-stopper is arguably the greatest onscreen beheading ever shot. Anyone on any budget can fake a beheading but few could do so with the audacious verve seen in SWORD OF VENGEANCE. For simulated gore and dismemberment fans it is pure poetry in motion.

Previously, Hong Kong director Chang Cheh reinterpreted the chambara film of the 1960s, mixed it with the bloody violence of a Sam Peckinpah movie and applied it all with his own unique visual style to the Chinese wuxia film with hits like ONE-ARMED SWORDSMAN and HAVE SWORD WILL TRAVEL. There are definitely similarities to the stylized use of blood in both sets of films. It’s debatable how much of an influence Chang’s films may have had on SWORD OF VENGEANCE and its subsequent sequels but it’s certain that Chang’s films were on Katsu’s radar at the time. In the previous year, Katsu invited ONE-ARMED SWORDSMAN star Jimmy Wang Yu to reprise the title role for a guest appearance in ZATOICHI MEETS THE ONE-ARMED SWORDSMAN.

The film’s plot assumes an episodic nature and could be considered a flaw if it were not a reflection of the source material and a stock element of chambara films of the era. Japanese audiences would have expected a film that merely sets up the premise and follows through with minor subplots. Ogami Itto never resolves the conflict with his enemies, the Yagyu clan, and instead gets involved in the affairs of others where he uses his deadly fighting skills to aid them. The only way this structure can be judged is in how it reveals new details about the main character. Kazuo Koike’s adaptation of his own material is right on target. In a span of less than 90 minutes, Ogami makes a transformation from a stately samurai with flawless attention paid to detail to a scraggily-haired predator capable of enduring any inconvenience or slight so long as he gets the final blow. In other words, we have the makings of one of cinema’s baddest good guys.

Having a young child so close to such violence presents its own unique twist. Daigoro (Akihiro Tomikawa) is too young to understand what’s going on around him and doesn’t seem to particularly care. He’s never put into jeopardy and has no role to play in shaping events that take place. Yet even his presence changes the dynamics of the film. Ogami is by nature ruthlessly efficient and emotionally detached. Simply having a cute little kid with him makes him more approachable. It’s as if Daigoro is his last link to humanity. Other chambara films such as the Mikogami trilogy are often about sword heroes avenging the deaths of their loved ones. In the process of cutting their way through baddies and turning a cold shoulder to fawning women they become machines, like Tokugawa-era Terminators fulfilling their honor-bound duties with no emotion other than controlled rage. As a viewer it can be difficult to relate to these characters. Shintaro Katsu broke the trend with his colorful personality and with LONE WOLF AND CUB, he let a child fulfill a similar function.

To say that SWORD OF VENGEANCE is a classic is an understatement. For years, either this film, its sequels or SHOGUN ASSASSIN have been considered the only chambara movies that matter outside of Akira Kurosawa’s output. This does an injustice to the many lesser-known jidai geki and chambara films, many of which possess their own unique charms and contributions to the genre. SWORD OF VENGEANCE still deserves a place in the top tier of Japanese swordplay films for being a terrific adaptation of an excellent manga series and a devilishly entertaining maelstrom of bodily destruction that has yet to be outdone where style and blood-bursting slaughter are concerned.