REVIEW: Lone Wolf and Cub 2: Baby Cart at the River Styx (1972)

In the sequel to producer Shintaro Katsu’s magnificent first screen adaptation of Kazuo Koike’s violent manga classic “Lone Wolf and Cub,” former Shogunate High Executioner and now assassin-for-hire Itto Ogami (Tomisaburo Wakayama) creates even more outrageous havoc as he and his young son hack their way through Akashi Yagyu ninja clanswomen and the deadly Hidari brothers, three Shogunate escorts with distinctive Takeuchi Harness killing techniques.

Sporting large basket hats and distinctive claw weapons, the trio looks as though they might have been a significant influence on John Carpenter when he created James Hong’s villainous henchmen in BIG TROUBLE IN LITTLE CHINA.

Before going further I want to clarify that this is a review of the original 1972 film that was later edited together with SWORD OF VENGEANCE to create the English-dubbed U.S. release known as SHOGUN ASSASSIN (1980). Although the latter film includes many of the same action sequences from BABY CART AT THE RIVER STYX it is still a different film. Thanks to AnimEigo, Western audiences can now watch either version in their original form on DVD.

Almost everything has improved in this sequel right down to an eye-popping opener with more money shots crammed into two minutes than some action movies have in their entire running time. Returning director Kenji Misumi pumps up the high-pressure blood spray and limb-removal action to ridiculous extremes. Artsy visual touches from the first film have been refined and expanded along with impressive pacing and editing that confidently creates a finely tuned balance of low-level tension, frantic bursts of sublime action and tranquil moments of quiet repose that could have been stripped right out of an early Akira Kurosawa classic. Misumi is in full control of the medium and even by high chambara standards the results have never looked better.

Free from the constraints of having to tell an origins story which took up the first half of SWORD OF VENGEANCE, the sequel dives right into the series’ winning formula of an assassin and son selling their services out on the road while being pursued by members of the Shadow Yagyu Clan who continue to see Ogami as a threat to their existence. While the clan’s leader, Retsudo, orders the all-female Akashi branch of the clan to eliminate Ogami, the Lone Wolf takes on the job of assassinating an official who threatens the well being of another clan’s lucrative cloth dye trade. Though very light on depth beyond this simple premise, it provides just the right amount of buildup to justify the film’s heavy dose of excessively-violent swordplay action, excessive even by standards nearly 40 years on.

Audiences will find it challenging to locate a movie with more openly violent, yet artfully displayed period action than BABY CART AT THE RIVER STYX. It’s swimming in beautifully shot head-splitting, arterial-bursting and blood-spattering mayhem. In one uniquely gory scene, a ninja is systematically hacked literally to pieces as female assassins wielding short swords gang up on the poor guy to slice off fingers, arms, feet, and even his nose. He ends up a rolling stump of bleeding flesh with his throat perforated like a cullender. This movie and the entire LONE WOLF series are definitely not for the squeamish.

The previous film hinted at Ogami’s gadgets and unorthodox fighting techniques. This film fully unleashes them with the added participation of Ogami’s son Daigoro (Akihiro Tomikawa). The baby cart is loaded with hidden weapons and even acts as a flotation device. Although still extremely young, Daigoro shakes off his role as disinterested observer and joins his father in the killing spree by activating various instruments of death that spring forth from the baby cart he rides about in. It’s a stretch of reality but even casual viewers should not find it difficult to realize that the film is more interested in creating fun and original fight scenes than plausible ones. Literally hundreds of more historically accurate chambara movies had already been produced. This is about taking the genre into new and exciting territory and even years later it still appears remarkably fresh.

A veteran of the ZATOICHI series, cinematographer Chishi Makiura skillfully shoots all this action with great style and clarity. A variety of unique environments including a desert and transport ship are featured and in each there is a symmetry in how lighting, colors and perspective all work together to enrich a scene beyond the curiosity of seeing a person’s head split in half down to the neck by a sword.

I say this a lot but Japan has produced a disproportionately large number of the world’s top cinematographers. It’s funny that some of their best work appears in what most people would classify as grindhouse movies, which are stereotyped as low-budget films with little artistic value. Even without the gore, BABY CART AT THE RIVER STYX would still be a very entertaining movie, perhaps even more so if the filmmakers had instead used visual metaphor to suggest to the audience what we could imagine might happen to the body when it meets razor-sharp steel. Then again, limiting the splattery goodness would have spoiled some of the fun.

Depicting extreme violence for the sake of shocking the audience and enticing viewership with something that is taboo in real life isn’t something I find worthy of praise unless it serves an alternate, artistic purpose. In the case of BABY CART AT THE RIVER STYX, it adds a new dimension to the power and efficiency of a highly skilled fighter. In Hong Kong, a substance called “power powder” is commonly used to add a visual emphasis to a punch or kick. In Japanese swordplay movies, the blood spray acts in the same capacity by showing us, not what really happens when a body is cut but the power behind the attack that causes such a violent reaction. It’s a way of graphically indicating that the swordsman was able to successfully strike a mortal blow with such efficacy as to cause the victim’s life essence to literally erupt from his body. The other, more commonly used chambara cliche in the movie is having multiple victims drop at the same time, which also serves a purpose by providing a visual cue that the attacker is skilled enough to either mortally strike multiple opponents with a single blow or to control their time of death. Above all, the filmmakers were looking to give chambara action even more visual flair and they certainly succeeded.

Complimenting the onscreen mayhem nicely is Hideaki Sakurai’s colorful score which borrows from the jazz fusion movement that was emerging in the early ’70s from legends like Miles Davis. The beauty of the score is that it isn’t overused and tends to act as bookends to enclose action scenes. Genre filmmakers today like Quentin Tarantino are almost incapable of shooting a series of action scenes without intrusive and bombastic music to support it. As Takeshi Kitano would do years later with his independent films, Misumi goes the opposite way and minimizes the music. He even uses silence in what becomes the ultimate visual expression of stylized swordplay. Coupled with the quiet moments, this restrained use of music creates a marvelous contrast with some of the most savage fighting in Japanese martial arts movie history.

Although chiefly a product of comic book fantasy, the film is not without historical context. In addition to references to real-life martial arts techniques and the detailed period settings and costumes, there is a notable reference to Ota Dokan, a 15th-century samurai, architect and poet. Itto uses a standardized system of secret code, supposedly devised by Dokan, in order to arrange private meetings with his clients. It’s little touches like this that keep the film grounded no matter how exaggerated the action gets.

Like ONCE UPON A TIME IN CHINA 2 or HELLBOY 2, BABY CART AT THE RIVER STYX is an example of a genre sequel done right where everything that made the first film great is refined, expanded and amplified, especially in the action scenes which even include some clever wirework. Tomisaburo Wakayama looks ever more confident in the lead. The addition of actress Kayo Matsuo as the deadly, cackling assassin Sayaka in a fishnet body stocking and kimono with built in ejection capability is priceless. With manga creator Kazuo Koike returning as screenwriter, the film continues to perfectly capture the hard-edged tone of the source material. This film is the 300 and SIN CITY of its time, although I would say superior to both as it isn’t reliant on post-production effects to look good. All around, this is a brilliant chambara classic within an equally brilliant series.

REVIEW: Lone Wolf and Cub 2: Baby Cart at the River Styx (1972), 10.0 out of 10 based on 1 rating

by Mark Pollard

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