Bandits vs Samurai Squadron (Kumokiri Nizaemon) (1978)

PLOT:

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Wronged samurai turned crime boss Kumokiri Nizaemon (Tatsuya Nakadai) has assembled his rather large group of men for one final job, with which to cap off ten years of ruthless banditry: the hoodwinking and robbery of the district’s largest kimono wholesaler, Kichibei (Tetsuro Tamba). Unfortunately for Kumokiri and his band of thieves, they are being hotly hunted by an elite samurai squadron, led by Shikubu Abe (Shogoro Ichikawa), who are honour-bound to thwart them. Burglary, blood vendettas, and assassinations, all culminate in the sort of bloody showdown 70s samurai cinema is known for.

REVIEW:

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Prepare to be confused for at least 50 minutes. Hideo Gosha’s nearly 3 hour chambara starts with a bloody nighttime raid, without bothering to introduce the situation first. Who’s being raided? Who’s doing the raiding? These are the sort of questions that don’t get answered until nearly an hour has passed, at which point Kumokiri addresses his assembled bandits and explains what their last mission is going to be. This is first time it’s actually clear who, out of the film's many characters, are “bandits”--and it’s most of them. Suddenly the actions of these characters are a little easier to suss out. This scene is followed by another expository scene, in which a blind masseur (Jo Shishido) explains Kumokiri’s identity to Abe, telling him (and us) what we probably suspect: that Kumokiri isn’t just some schmuck thief, but a disgraced samurai. After those scenes, everything else falls into place. However, they’re a long time coming, and I can see a few people giving up in frustration around the 30 or 40 minute mark, when important things are clearly happening, yet you still don’t have enough information to process them.

If you're a fan of Gosha, or the genre, though, I'd suggest you struggle through. It really isn't as bad as I may make it sound, and it's worth sitting through it to see Kumokiri's plan unfold.


Anyway, anyone familiar with Gosha’s other movies should realize that, in a movie pitting bandit against samurai squadron, the director’s sympathies are going to be on the side of the bandits. Gosha doesn’t truck with samurai--at least, not the bushido-backing, honour-loving kind. Gosha’s (and the viewer’s) interest is clearly in Kumokiri and his band of merry men; however, the movie really fails to make a connection between the characters and the viewer. Part of it is because there are just so damn many characters; each one is only able to get a bit of screen time, making it difficult to develop a relationship with them. Even the character whom the movie is named after, Kumokiri, is fairly bland, but at least he’s played by Nakadai, so there’s something going on.

On top of all of that, the actual plot that Kumokiri and his men have hatched isn’t particularly interesting. Fans of heist films are going to be sorely disappointed that the big scheme merely involves one of the female bandits tricking Kichibei, the kimono merchant, into marrying her; once she’s done this, she need only locate his vaults and his keys, and the rest should be easy. Not exactly cloak and dagger stuff, but it is suitable enough to set up some late night raiding and some bloody sword fights, which is what you really want from the film in the first place.


That said, I’d hate to sound like I was ragging on the film, which I thoroughly enjoyed, despite it’s obvious weaknesses. I’m a sucker for bloody samurai action, and Bandits vs Samurai Squadron delivers that in spades. In fact, I should be clear: if you want a bloody sword fight movie, this is probably one of the best. The violence starts with the opening raid, and then the film is punctuated by action throughout, easing the viewer through its lengthy duration. Gosha has always been a good action director, and here it really comes through. The fights are quite visceral, with lots of physical damage being done to the surrounding environment. Geysers of violent red blood erupt out of those unlucky warriors who find themselves on the business end of a katana.

I’d be lying if I said that the acting was also top notch, but you get good, genre-style stuff. Nakadai is a great as always, and while he’s not cinema’s strongest swordsmen he’s still a guy that knows how to make a fight look interesting. It’s a pleasure to see chubby-cheeked Jo Shishido as well, even if his part is underdeveloped and brief. The women of Bandits vs Samurai Squadron are largely there to be pretty, and often topless, though they do get a chance to show off their acting chops. 70s era Gosha is a lot closer to grindhouse cinema than his 60s incarnation.


Bandits vs Samurai Squadron is a hell of a lot of fun, if you know what you’re getting yourself into. If you’re willing to sit back and wait for the film to start making sense, you’ll be treated to some great action scenes, my favourite being a rice-paddy duel between Kumokiri and the Samurai Squadron’s strongest swordsman. You’ll also be introduced (if you haven’t been already) to Gosha’s trademark pessimism--it isn’t much of a spoiler to say that no one is going to be riding happily off into the sunset in this one. Gosha would never allow it.

Onimasa (1982)

Times are tough in the Japan of 1918. A shopkeeper and his wife, having just opened up a new store, require protection from Boss Onimasa, if their business is to survive. Unfortunately, they have no money to offer him. On the other hand, they have plenty of children. When Onimasa arrives, however, he is less impressed with the boy they offer him than he is with their daughter, Matsue. He takes them both, but only Matsue is strong enough to withstand estrangement from her family and the rigors of yakuza life. It is through Matsue’s eyes, then, that we witness the fall of Onimasa’s yakuza clan, and the tumultuous forces that shaped Japan from 1918 until the World War II.

Hideo Gosha’s 13th film, and his first film of the 80s, sees the director producing one of his most humane and dramatic pieces. The narrative of the film centres around Matsue Kiriyuin (Masako Natsume), the adopted daughter of Boss Onimasa, and her quest to live the life she wants to lead despite being forced into the chauvinistic and violent world of the yakuza. That the film centers on a female lead marks a distinct departure for Gosha, one that seems to inaugurate the latter part of his career. Even though Goyokin, Tenchu!, and, to a certain extent, Hunter in the Dark all acted as a criticism of the hyper-masculine way of life that is intrinsic in the samurai or the yakuza (or the samurai and yakuza film), they all worked from within that system. In Onimasa, Matsue Kiriyuin is able to take more of an outsider’s view of the violent world she inhabits, and in doing so helps the viewer to see it as fraudulent, and often pathetic.


Though Matsue acts as the anchor of Onimasa's narrative, it is the titular character himself, played by Tatsuya Nakadai, who really drives the piece. After being all but absent from Tenchu! and harnessed with a fairly uninteresting character in Hunter in the Dark, Gosha finally brings Nakadai back into the spotlight, where he belongs. And Nakadai delivers. Generally a reserved actor, allowing his eyes or the pitch of his voice to carry the part, here Nakadai hams it up gloriously. His Onimasa is a weird, eccentric figure, who truly believes himself to be a samurai. It is almost impossible not to smile when he is on the screen. This makes it all the more shocking when he does truly reprehensible things, such as trying to rape his own adopted daughter. Its at moments like these that you suddenly remember that Onimasa isn’t just some entertaining old man--he’s a yakuza boss, and he didn’t gain that position by being all smiles and sunshine.


The plot is long and detailed (Onimasa clocks in at about 2.5 hours), and there’s too much to get into in a short review. The film follows Matsue’s life in the yakuza, from being a child acting as a server to becoming a fully grown woman who strives to leave her criminal family behind her. She succeeds in the life she is forced into through the power of her will. In one of the film’s funnier moments, Onimasa and Matsue, still a child, engage in a shouting match over whether or not she’ll be allowed to go to school. Onimasa, not surprisingly, doesn’t think that women should be educated; however, no matter how much of a hard ass Onimasa might be, he is unable to shout down a little girl as determined as Matsue, and in the next scene we see her attending classes. This sort of thing happens throughout the film, with Matsue always coming out on top.

The main conflict of the film--not the internal conflict of the family, but the one that leads to the bloody finale--occurs due to Onimasa's belief that he is not a yakuza, but a samurai. After he is ordered by the big boss (Tetsuro Tamba) to put down a strike, Onimasa is convinced by the union heads that a real samurai would help the people, and not those in power. Onimasa is convinced, and in helping the union he finds his clan ousted from the greater yakuza organization. Onimasa's decision would be admirable, if it weren't for the fact that he doesn't even understand how he got into it.


Onimasa is not an action movie, even though it does contain moments of graphic violence (it should be mentioned, here, that the film contains a rather violent dog fight that certainly seems authentic, and will probably make some viewers uncomfortable). The film is, on the other hand, a rather effective period piece. Through the eyes of Matsue Kiriyuin we get to see the decline of the yakuza and the great Onimasa clan. As well, we get to see the changing Japanese society, with a special focus on the government’s actions against the perceived Communist threat. The lack of action might disappoint fans of Gosha, which is too bad, since Onimasa shows the director at the height of his power. Every shot in the film seems perfectly composed, and the acting--especially from Nakadai and Natsume--is great on all fronts. It also contains a great performance by Shima Iwashita in the role of Onimasa’s wife, a no-bullshit lady who really holds her own in scenes with Nakadai. Add to that an appearance by a moustachioed Tetsuro Tamba and you’ve got quite the ensemble cast.

Onimasa can also be seen as playing with the audience’s expectations of yakuza films. Generally speaking, the yakuza films of the 60s portrayed the yakuza as the last bastion of the samurai way of life, with honourable yakuza (often Ken Takakura) overcoming corrupt yakuza and city officials to help the common man. The yakuza films of the 70s--notably those directed by Kinji Fukasaku--showed the yakuza in a grimmer light, portraying them as common criminals. Onimasa, completed in the 80s, seems to play off of both of these ideas. Onimasa considers himself a samurai, and tries to fight for the common man, but his fixation on bushido seems more delusional than noble, and is often shown to be only skin deep. In the end, the yakuza--at least the sensible ones--are the criminals that Fukasaku showed them to be, and people like Onimasa are mere fictions.


Like so many of Gosha’s films, Onimasa is sadly unavailable in North America. Wild Realm films has released a beautiful edition, and I’m hopeful that someone will port the film over for a R1 release. The French are simply years ahead of us in samurai and yakuza films. For you French-speaking types, the disc contains an interview with Hideo Gosha, the film’s trailer, photos from the film, and a Gosha filmography. It really is a great package--too bad there’s no English subtitles.

Onimasa is one of the few films in recent memory that surprised me. A rather unheralded Gosha film in North America, I was expecting a fairly unremarkable and dull yakuza film. Instead, it seems Gosha produced a drama whose quality could match that of his action films of the 60s and 70s. Maybe the film isn’t for everyone, but fans of yakuza films, Hideo Gosha, or Tatsuya Nakadai would be crazy to pass it up if the opportunity arises.

Hunter in the Dark (1979)

You can’t go wrong centering a your film on a one-eyed assassin. It helps when said assassin, Yataro Tanigawa, is played by someone like Yoshio Harada, who excels at looking both grizzled and dangerous (and not much else). Hunter in the Dark, a late 70s yakuza flick by Hideo Gosha, follows Tanigawa’s entrance into the service of Boss Gomyo Kiyoemon (Gosha’s main man Tatsuya Nakadai), a canny and tired crime lord who wants, above all, to retire someplace nice. Most viewers won’t be surprised to find out that this isn’t an easy goal for a yakuza boss to accomplish.

Like Goyokin and Tenchu! before it, Hunter in the Dark is a deeply cynical film, one in which the samurai idea of honour is largely felt only by its absence. In those earlier films, samurai clans are responsible for the evils that the main characters suffer; in Hunter in the Dark, the samurai (embodied in Samon Shimoguni, played by Sonny Chiba) are the villains, and the side of good, if it exists at all, can be found in the ranks of the yakuza.


Seen alongside these two other films, one can trace Gosha’s increasing nihilism. Gosha seems incredibly skeptical about the entire idea behind the samurai, and also seems to point towards the degenerative powers of violence. Of course, this can lead to a bit of a mixed message, since Hunter in the Dark might be Gosha’s best action film, while it simultaneously sends a message that violence begets more violence, and eventually overcomes everything.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. As mentioned, Hunter in the Dark primarily follows Tanigawa, the one-eyed assassin, who also turns out to be an amnesiac. He comes into the employ of Gomyo, who uses him as a bodyguard--an important position, when one works exclusively in the underworld. Tanigawa and Gomyo both get caught up with Samon in a complex bit of political intrigue that involves Tanigawa’s mysterious past and lots and lots of violence.


Hunter in the Dark sees Gosha begin to incorporate women more and more into the story. This is something that he continues throughout the rest of his films--Onimasa, his next film, features an actress in the leading role, and after that films like The Geisha and the Yakuza Wives are focused entirely on women. Here, while you do get one example of a loyal and loving woman, Oriwa (Ayumi Ishida), the majority are included for the purpose of a bath house knife fight. Not that I’m complaining.


At the end of the day, the plot of Hunter in the Dark primarily serves to allow Gosha to film some of his best action sequences. This isn’t to say that there’s nothing to the plot (it’s substantial) or that the characters are unimportant (they aren’t). Nevertheless, the film is driven by action. Whether it’s the action of the narrative--including the political machinations, or the revenge schemes, or what have you--or the actual, physical action scenes, Hunter in the Dark remains an action movie. And the action found in it is great. The story allows Gosha to produce a what could be described as action set-pieces, like the bloody fight in the tea house, or the bath house knife-fight, or the battle in the blazing temple. All of them are thrilling, and Gosha is really able to go all out.


To the best of my knowledge, there’s currently no official Region 1 release of Hunter in the Dark. That means anyone interested in tracking down the film has to enter bootleg territory. That being said, if you can track it down, and you’re the type of person who would track it down, then I think you’re in for a rewarding experience. The weaknesses of the script (slightly convoluted plot, fairly weak characters) and the fairly pedestrian acting (Nakadai is wasted in his role) are more than compensated for by Gosha’s excellent filmmaking. Hunter in the Dark might not be a classic, but maybe it should be.

Goyokin (1969)

The samurai known as Magobei is an intimidating figure. From his very introduction, we can immediately deduce that he is intense, mysterious, and (of course) a master swordsmen. Played by the always-excellent Tatsuya Nakadai, Magobei is one of those samurai characters--like Wakayama’s Ogami Itto or Mifune’s Sanjuro--who, once seen, comes to epitomize the very figure of the samurai in film. Hideo Gosha’s Goyokin relies on his strong central performance, and Nakadai doesn’t disappoint, resulting in one of the more fun and exciting action movies of the 60s.

Hideo Gosha (1929-1992) was primarily a genre director, and this genre was action. He was a hell of a stylist, with a real eye for composition, and an obvious talent for filming action sequences. You could compare him to Kenji Misumi, since they seem to share a love of bloodshed, and since both produce highly stylized works, but where Misumi seems to bring out the inner comic book of his films, Gosha seems better at producing strong action scenes in a more realistic context. Most of Gosha’s films from the 60s are concerned with samurai, while his work from the 70s onward turns towards the yakuza.

Director Gosha and actor Nakadai had a long and fruitful partnership. While it’s a fairly common conceit to compare the relationship (and talent) of Akira Kurosawa and Toshiro Mifune to John Ford and John Wayne, one might also make a similar comparison between the duo of Gosha and Nakadai to the team of Sergio Leone and Clint Eastwood. Nakadai brings some real acting chops to Gosha’s movies, which helps to compliment Gosha’s professionalism as a filmmaker.


The plot of Goyokin only comes to the surface slowly. Magobei’s brother-in-law, Tatewaki (Tetsuro Tamba), is the head of the Sabai Clan, of which Magobei was also a vassal. Long ago, when Japan’s version of “the ship of gold” sunk just outside of a small village, Tatewaki came up with a fiendish plan: by taking the gold, he could replenish the coffers of the impoverished Sabai Clan, and the Shogunate would only need to know that the ship has sunk, its treasure lost. The problem, though, is that the inhabitants of that small village would be witnesses. So Tatewaki did what all samurai do best: he killed them all. Since the true perpetrators of the slaughter are never known to the general population, a legend develops, spreading the idea that the deaths were somehow the result of evil spirits or witchcraft.

Magobei was understandably upset by the slaughter. Out of loyalty to the Sabai, he agreed to stay quiet, since the truth would destroy them, but, unable to live with the murderers, he quit the clan and became a wondering ronin.

When the movie begins, the Sabai are once again in dire straights, and Tatewaki concocts a scheme to intentionally sink the next ship bearing ‘goyokin’ (official gold) and, once again, kill all the witnesses. Fearing that Magobei will find out about the scheme and attempt to stop it, one of the Sabai samurai sends off a couple of killers to get rid of Magobei before he can become a nuisance. Of course, they fail, and Magobei, now wise to the scheme, sets off to Sabai, to stop Tatewaki before he can kill again.


Goyokin is a strong movie in all regards, but it succeeds as well as it does because of Nakadai’s performance in the leading role. His Magobei is absolutely driven, and almost entirely devoid of emotion. It helps, too, that Gosha is able to craft some exciting action scenes for him, and Nakadai is up to the challenge, nearly as good at the physical stuff as he is in the rest of his performance. Luckily, though, his character is backed-up by fine performances from Tanba, Kinnosuke Nakamura (who plays a maniacal swordsmen with mysterious motives) and Ruriko Asaoka, who plays Oriha, the only villager to survive the original slaughter.


Like many of the samurai films of the late 60s and 70s, Goyokin presents a very calloused view of the samurai way of life. The Sabai, who are not shown to be atypical samurai, are hypocrites who truly care nothing about honour, and certainly not the common people below them. Magobei, a ronin, can hardly be counted as an answer to them; far from being an ideal samurai, he has turned his back on bushido. He may be out to help the next of Tatewaki’s victims, but it’s obvious that his personal vendetta is the true driving force.


Perhaps it’s best to call Goyokin an adventure movie. Magobei’s journey involves a battle between samurai and yakuza, an escape from a burning building, cliff-climbing, and a silent duel on a snowy plain. Gosha doesn’t really allow for a dull moment, while at the same time managing enough down time for the characters to be suitably developed. A lot of credit should go to Gosha’s writing partner, Kei Tasaka, since many of Gosha’s other films lack such an even mix of character and action.

Goyokin is available in North America from Media Blaster’s “Tokyo Shock” label, and in Europe (French only) from Wild Side. The Tokyo Shock DVD is a decent release, about on par with the Animeigo releases of Lone Wolf and Cub. I know that Wild Side has some pretty tip-top releases, so I’d be willing to bet that that’s the better option for anyone who can read French. Everyone else need not worry, though, because the Tokyo Shock DVD really has everything you need.

Bohachi Bushido: Code of the Forgotten Eight (1973)

Remember back, if you will, to the days before Wikipedia, before the internet had so thoroughly saturated every part of our lives. Back then, we were blissfully unaware of furries, of slash fiction, and of things like “pinky violence,” a sleazy and popular Japanese genre, whose basic ingredients are graphic nudity, graphic sex, and graphic death. O, we were almost virginal in our ignorance then…

Teruo Ishii was (apparently) a virtuoso of pinky violence--or, more specifically, the ero guro ("erotic-grotesque") subgenre (trust me, I had to look this up). One of his films, Bohachi Bushido: Code of the Forgotten Eight, based on a comic by Kazuo Koike (Hanzo the Razor), has just found itself released in North America, packed with extras and some easy-to-read subtitles, thus making pinky violence accessible to all.

So, here’s the deal: Shino Ashita (Tetsuro Tamba) is your standard Super Samurai. In the film’s opening moments, he takes on a plethora of armed guards, and kills them all in gruesome fashion, without even breaking a sweat. He declares “To die is hell, but to live, is also hell.” Dude has issues.

Shino is taken in by the Bohachi clan, a group of lowlifes and scumbags who run the prostitution biz in Yoshiwara. In order to become a member of the Bohachi, you have to abandon the “eight human virtues.” What are these virtues, you ask? Well, I’ll tell you:

1. Godliness
2. Obedience and fidelity towards elders
3. Loyalty towards friends
4. Trusting your allies
5. Modesty
6. Justice
7. Conscience
8. Shame

…all of this explained by a voice-over, accompanied by a montage of naked women be tortured, for the purpose of turning them into Bohachi women.

Here’s the thing: Shino, as low and deplorable as he is, seems incapable of banishing all eight of the human virtues, and so is kicked out of the clan. Luckily, though, a clan elder recognizes his unmatched capacity for violence, and keeps him on as a guest. Shino takes up a new occupation--to safeguard the Bohachi’s monopoly on drugs and prostitution, he becomes a hitman, killing every john who sleeps with a whore outside of Yoshiwara.

In this way, Bohachi Bushido tries to have its cake and eat it too. Officially divorced from the Bohachi, the viewer doesn’t have to feel bad cheering for Shino, who now viciously kills the scum of the land. The Bohachi women also turn out, remarkably, to be just as evil as their pimps, and so the viewer isn’t supposed to feel bad for seeing them victimized. Plus, you just know that Shino will eventually turn on the Bohachi, making their evil somehow more acceptable for the duration. The extent to which the film succeeds with this moral switcheroo depends on how willing the viewer is to let it get away with it; and, certainly, if you’ve come to see sex and violence, the film delivers in spades, and so perhaps you’re willing to give it some leeway with its extremely flawed morals.

Bohachi Bushido is at its best when its at its most comical. Prostitutes don fireproof kimonos and roll in flames to put out a grease-fire; when those same prostitutes encounter a ninja some moments later, they inevitably engage in a naked wrestling match with their stealthy assailant. Shino continually gets into bloody swordfights, where limbs fly through the air and his opponents are reduced to blood-filled piñatas. Ishii makes no claims towards realism, and uses coloured spotlights and strange filters to exaggerate the comic book quality of the action. He’s like a poor man’s Kenji Misumi. Tetsuro Tamba (who you may recognize from his role as Tiger Tanaka in James Bond’s You Only Live Twice) plays his standard role: stoic, weather-beaten samurai guy, the same one he plays in countless samurai films.

The Discotek DVD sports a fair amount of extras, including an interview with the female lead Yuriko Hishima and a discussion with pinky violence “expert” J-Taro Sugisaku (who explains that the women in pinky violence films “use their sexy violence to entice the hero to win the battle.”) You also get a few pages from the original manga and a couple of write-ups about the film. All in all, it’s more than you would expect for a film of this, er, genre.

There’s really no point in recommending this film or not. If the idea of unrelenting violence and nudity appeals to you--and hey, who could blame you for that?--then Bohachi Bushido is the movie for you. If you find the entire concept of the film deplorable--and hey, who could blame you for that?--then it’d be best to steer clear.