But his narration is pretty well-written, and it goes along way to starting the film off in a classy manor.Īmong the dozen or more comic book styled villains that come looking for killer and son, include a group of Ninja assassin women, the Shogun’s son, and a deadly trio that call themselves The Three Masters of Death (they kill via claw, club, and mailed fist), as well as countless others. Chute claims this robs the little brat of his wordless demonic quality. As David Chute pointed out in his review for The LA Herald Examiner, in the Japanese flicks, despite six films in the series, the kid never ever says a word. The fact that little Daigoro narrates the adventure, changes the story somewhat from its original Japanese origin. A young toddler (The Lone Wolf’s infant son, Daigoro played by Akihiro Tomikawa) recalls, via voice-over narration, his ma’s death at the hands of the evil shogun’s minions (dad used to be wicked Shogun’s head head-chopper) – and Dad’s eternal Vengeance as one deadly foe after another comes looking for the undefeatable, vaguely demonic, Ogami Ittō (though, like Eastwood in Josey Wales, he basically wants to be left alone). A small section of the first film ( Sword of Vengeance, the origin part), and most of the second entry ( Baby Cart at the River Styx) has been stitched together to provide American audiences with Shogun Assassin. Now, tricked up with extremely impressive English language dubbing, and a new buzzy electronic score by none other than Mark Lindsay (former lead singer for those top 40 bubblegum goofballs Paul Revere and The Raiders), to deliver a bloody good time to unsuspecting patrons. That this crimson red showstopper, where people shower the landscape with red hemoglobin as if they had garden hoses for veins, managed only a R rating, shows cooler heads prevailing at the ever more reasonable MPAA. But remember, until recently, the MPAA had been slapping bloody Japanese flicks with X ratings for violence (the fate of New Line Cinema’s superior Sonny Chiba starrer The Streetfighter). But then seven years later, here comes the now Corman-less New World Pictures, Shogun Assassin. I wondered how long, considering how popular Hong Kong Kung Fu crap was, it would take for an American distributor to bring Lone Wolf and his Baby cart from hell to a grindhouse or drive-in near you.Ĭolumbia Pictures was the first out of the gate, when they took Sword of Vengeance – Part 3, Baby Cart to Hades, and released it as Lightning Swords of Death. The hero of this blood-soaked popular Japanese series, stoic, semi-mad father Ogami Ittō aka ‘Lone Wolf’ (Tomisaburô Wakayama), practically had my movie-going companion diving under the seats, as Ogami Ittō’s samurai sword turned hundreds into limbless, throbbing, artery-spurting corpses (I gave the clever carnage a B+). In the last week of September 1973 I saw at The Toho La Brea something called The Sword of Vengeance – Part 4, Baby Cart in Peril on a Japanese language double-bill (all prompted by a promising LA Times review by Kevin Thomas). Dir: Kenji Misumi (and Robert Houston, American version)
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