Assassin for hire Itto Ogami (Tomisaburo Wakayama), along with his young son Daigoro, is challenged by five members of a disgraced house of samurai as a test of skill before he is hired to take out a rogue Zen Buddhist priest, acquire a vital document and finally restore honor to the samurai. Ogami discovers that his arch rivals, the Yagyu Shadow clan, are the intended recipients of the document which forces yet another confrontation between the former Shogunate high executioner and his ninja enemies.

This is the fifth entry of Toho’s six-part film adaptation of the LONE WOLF AND CUB manga by author Kazuo Koike. Much like Shintaro Katsu’s many ZATOICHI sequels, this chambara film predictably maintains the same look and feel of its predecessors which were all noted for what was at the time of release considered extreme bloodletting and violence coupled with stylized direction. Tomisaburo Wakayama turns in another iconic character performance as Itto Ogami, the “Lone Wolf,” that will not disappoint although some may be put off by the film’s unusually complicated plot.

A lot of exposition takes place in the first act of the movie to explain to Itto, and the viewer, what his mission is and why we should care. What makes this otherwise dull chatter intriguing is that it is being given by dying men who have all agreed to sacrifice themselves in order to ensure that Itto is the right man for the job. At one point, a swordsman delivers his message to Itto while literally burning to death. It’s an extreme representation of the kind of devotion and honor that encompasses samurai ideals. What is being said by the men isn’t all that important. It’s enough to know that Itto is being hired to wipe out corrupt clan leadership and this could have been achieved without the long-winded monologues and extreme tests. Yet LONE WOLF AND CUB is defined by its extremes and this is one more example.

The middle portion of the film centers on Daigoro in a slice-of-life subplot completely unrelated to the rest of the movie. After a notorious female pickpocket hands him stolen goods while making a getaway, Daigoro is accused of being an accomplice and faces a public flogging unless the woman turns herself in. It provides the filmmakers with an opportunity to reveal Daigoro’s character, and poor child actor Akihiro Tomikawa’s wee genitalia, which, for good reason, is not something Americans are accustomed to seeing in feature films. Wakayama at least had the good taste to keep his own undershorts on during his bare-chested skirmish with the Yagyu clan.

The way in which this sequence with Daigoro is simply dropped into the middle of the movie, coupled with the excessive discourse in the first act suggests that as a film writer manga creator Koike Kazuo may have been losing his bearings and director Kenji Misumi along with him. Sure enough, this was Kazuo’s last film writing credit and Misumi’s last LONE WOLF AND CUB gig. For the sixth and final movie, Toho brought in a new writer and director.

Fighting action is limited in the first half of the film and is largely unremarkable throughout, at least by series standards. The action in the second half is more plentiful and like past entries, contains a few distinctive elements. In this case, we have a crack band of masked spearmen, purported to be the greatest spear fighters in the country. Their best scenes are on horseback as lancers but this does not directly involve Itto. There is another desert scene but this time opponents hold their swords together in order to blind Itto and his companions by reflecting the sun’s rays in their eyes. Arcane coordinated fighting tactics like this may have provided inspiration for some of the fighting action seen in subsequent Hong Kong films like DUEL TO THE DEATH, KUNG FU CULT MASTER and FIVE ELEMENT NINJAS.

Most of the action is compressed into the final act which is capped by a mostly interior fight sequence. It’s highly conventional by series standards with few gimmicks used. The only reminder that we are still watching a LONE WOLF AND CUB movie and not just another jidai geki actioner is the periodic gore, none more eye-catching than a graphic scene where the top half of an opponent’s body is shown sliding off the bottom shortly after being sliced in two by Itto. The rest of the sequence is mildly disappointing. It’s not poorly choreographed, just common and that’s not what audiences expect from LONE WOLF AND CUB, especially when past finales involved armies of soldiers being mowed down by Itto’s weapon-laden baby cart.

One of the more interesting aspects of the LONE WOLF AND CUB films is the subtle spiritual or supernatural theme that persists. The early part of this film is dominated by a series of duels by clansmen wearing masks bearing the image of demons, a signal to Itto, a man who is ever traveling through the “crossroads of hell.” It is exaggerated elements like this that keeps reminding us that Itto is not simply a man skilled in fighting but a force of nature transformed from a tacit pact with the netherworld who has become a mythic antihero with emphasis on the latter given the excessive butchery he engages in towards the end. Bodies are graphically sliced in half and not even women or children are spared his bloody assault.

When he first encounters the Zen Buddhist priest Itto finds what could be his first real challenge. How can he kill someone who is already one with the void, or so the priest claims? It’s as if the priest is holding up a talisman to ward off evil as sweat pours down from Itto’s face. As suggestion that the priest may actually hold some power over him, Itto retreats and finds a highly unorthodox method of confronting him a second time. Later, Itto’s feud with the Yagyu clan becomes little more than a sideshow in his real mission of purging the samurai clan that has hired him, not of evil but the stain of dishonor. This, of course, requires wholesale slaughter.

To most of us in the real world, Itto’s violent actions would be considered the acts of an extremist or madman but it fits well within this realm of endless political conspiracies, feuding quasi-military factions and shadowy assassins with arcane fighting skills that makes up the world of LONE WOLF AND CUB.

REVIEW: Lone Wolf and Cub 5: Baby Cart in the Land of Demons (1973), 8.0 out of 10 based on 1 rating

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