By Spencer Lloyd Peet (www.slpeet.com)
Eureka! Entertainment Ltd has released a Blu-ray and DVD combined two-disc limited edition dual format steelbook of the cult classic blood-spurting Japanese/American film Shogun Assassin. Hailed in the West as one of the most popular samurai films ever, it is a spectacular representation of violence in film as an art form.
The film depicts the story of ronin Itto Ogami (Tomisaburo Wakayama) and his son Daigoro (Akihiro Tomikawa). After the deranged Shogun has Ogami’s wife murdered in an exercise to test the samurai’s loyalty, Ogami abandons his role as official decapitator and, with son in tow who now travels in a wooden cart affixed with hidden lethal weapons, takes up the life of a paid assassin. Lone Wolf and Cub now wander among the wilderness of ancient Japan constantly fending off attacks by ninja spies hired by the Shogun. The warrior’s lightening sword skills are soon pitched against the deadly weapons of the “Masters of Death†as they go head-to-head in a bloody climatic battle.
Shogun Assassin was released in the US in 1980 and comprises of an edited version of the first two films (Sword Of Vengeance and Baby Cart At The River Styx) in the Lone Wolf & Cub saga from the early 1970s directed by Kenji Misumi and adapted from the hugely popular manga series. The project was undertaken by producer David Weisman and director and writer Robert Houston and includes English dubbing with a voice-over narration by Daigoro (voiced by then child actor Gibran Evans) as well as a new superior electronic soundtrack co-written by Mark Lindsey, former lead vocalist with the ‘60s pop outfit Paul Revere and the Raiders. The English dialogue was written to match the actor’s lips movement and thus the translation isn’t exact and the plot line is somewhat altered and simplified as a result. However, Weisman and Houston remained respectful to Misumi’s original work and kept in the vicious, violent scenes which incorporate slicing off heads and hacked off body parts including nose, ears, fingers and arms, leaving one poor ninja as little more than a rolling torso.