Film: Shogun Assassin
Release date: 29th November 2010
Certificate: 18
Running time: 85 mins
Director: Robert Houston
Starring: Tomisaburo Wakayama, Kayo Matsuo, Minoru Oki, Akiji Kobayashi, Shin Kishida
Genre: Action/Adventure/Drama
Studio: Eureka!
Format: DVD & Blu-ray
Country: Japan/USA
The early-80s. Britain’s video shops are a savage, lawless frontier. Cassettes are exempt from BBFC classification and, unless legally deemed “obscene”, anything goes. Illicit imports such as Mario Bava’s Bay Of Blood (refused release in 1972) are exhumed and unleashed for the first time. A slew of exploitation titles cascade into the marketplace, as distributors ransack back catalogues for product. Mining the exotic, outlandish and sanguinary, outfits like Vipco sought to deliver amoral sleaze to front rooms across the nation. Synthesising this unholy trinity into an intense, borderline surreal concentrate, Shogun Assassin is an exemplar of video nastiness.
Alongside it, nefarious foreign titles such as Possession, Inferno and The Beyond jostled for shelf space, their lurid cover art enticing wide-eyed renters with the promise of deviant thrills a-gogo. It couldn’t last. A self appointed outfit of moral sheriffs – with Mary Whitehouse at their fore – decided to clean up the tide of clamshell-encased filth. Many of the most outrageous titles from this ephemeral boom were withdrawn, denied certification, and cast into exile. But their repression was pyrrhic - since being classified as likely to “corrupt or deprave” was always going to imbue them with malign cool. Thus, a subgenre of forbidden cinema was defined; and, rather than slip disgracefully back into obscurity, the elusiveness of the movies enhanced their aura. And so the repute of Shogun Assassin was born.
Adapted from famed manga serial Lone Wolf and Cub, the film traces the bloodstained flight of the shogun’s decapitator and his infant son, Daigoro.
Wary of his martial prestige, the slightly loopy overlord commands his ninja minions to execute the executioner. And fails. Finding his wife slain, Lone Wolf vows that the perps “will pay. . . with rivers of blood!”
Exile from empire, the disgraced samurai realises that vengeance may be incompatible with single parenthood. Finding his young son unscathed, he places two symbolic props before him, and compels Daigoro to make a choice. Either from intuition or instinct, the barely crawling babe must decide to “choose the sword and join me...or choose the ball and join your mother.” Drawn to the gleaming blade, he lives - and sets off on the road to hell with his father…
Capitalising on James Clavell’s namesake novel, Shogun, the movie dubs and merges two Japanese Lone Wolf and Cub films from the early-70s. Conceived by Japanese culture fiends Robert Houston and David Weisman, the visceral reversioning showcases kick-ass aesthetics whilst effacing cultural differences. In a bold change, Daigoro acts as narrator, providing a humanising counterpoint to the bloodshed with his cutesy expository. Eschewing the original soundtrack, a contemporary minimal synth score is installed. Think John Carpenter channelling orientalist cliché, circa Halloween. As producer Weisman states, “We took out all the material that had generically Japanese historical stuff…and just pared it down to ‘Conan the Barbarian walks the earth.’”
The result: streamlined, relentless spectacle. Diluting context and pruning plot, the recuts inevitably compromise texture. American accented voiceovers – hailing from the venerable “you killed my master!” school of dubbing – consolidate this crude absorption. Like a chicken teriyaki sub, Shogun Assassin envelops the exotic within a palatably occidental framework.
An all-action emphasis radically affects the pacing of the film, which often feels stuttering and episodic. Structurally, Lone Wolf’s quest resembles a side-scrolling hack-em-up video game of yore. Walk. Stop. Kill. Walk (continue for 82 minutes, then roll credits). A succession of baroque and brutal vignettes, the film’s gory flamboyance is its fundamental attraction – and greatest liability.
Shogun Assassin never quite entered the BBFC’s banned list, but, in the fervour of the era, copies were seized and its distributors (unsuccessfully) prosecuted. So – just how nasty is this nasty-by-association? Superlatively billed as “the greatest team in mass slaughter!” during its trailer, the film’s protagonists are murderously prolific. Resembling the grotesquerie of ukiyo-e prints, Lone Wolf’s lethal grace is formalised with morbid reverence. Rotating around him - cynosure of a Danse Macabre (Dance of Death) - foes are inventively decapitated, severed and maimed. Blood assumes the pallor of poster paint. A katana sword is the brush with which he executes frenzied, splattered tableaux; the Jackson Pollock of snuff. Crimson eruptions gush, geyser and spurt with pornographic vigour, as hordes of opponents succumb to the sword.
Ironically, the movie’s visual style evidences an east-west fusion far before any swingeing American edits were inflicted. Original helmer Kenji Misumi’s framing is clearly indebted to Sergio Leone – who, of course, ‘borrowed’ liberally from Kurosawa’s Yojimbo. Misumi shoots in ultra-widescreen 2:35-1 ratio, frequently alternating between expansive long shots and extreme close-ups. Punctuating combat with instants of bucolic lyricism – swaying grass, scenic waterfalls – Misumi’s action choreography recreates Leone’s famously tense pauses. Stillness, serenity. Then slaughter.
With dialogue pared to a minimum, intimate portraits of his characters’ grimy, haggard faces communicate their emotions. Sharing the spaghetti western’s obsession with gadgetry, Daigoro’s pram becomes a wheeled arsenal, and ingenious ninjas wield a variety of disguised weapons (including daggers concealed in giant daikon carrots!). Like Eastwood’s ‘bounty killer’, Lone Wolf is an ignoble mercenary in a world bereft of honour, who oft plays dirty. Unexpectedly throwing his sword at an opponent in an unthinkable breach of samurai etiquette, archaic codes are clearly redundant for this man become demon. Morality is a luxury. Ultimately, only survival matters. Bestial, lupine logic prevails.
If unlikely to “deprave or corrupt” – as all good video nasties ought - Shogun Assassin may be charged with perverting its sources. No critique can besmirch its cult credibility, but Robert Houston’s (commercially imperative) re-write wreaks havoc with the integrity of the original works. Nonetheless, expedient butchery renders this an often jaw-dropping, incessant action extravaganza. Who needs formalities like character development when you’re mere minutes from the next bout of artful carnage? A vital grindhouse artefact, Shogun Assassin will irk those in search of coherence, but should more than appease audiences receptive to the glory of the gory. DJO
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