Sunday, October 08, 2006

Shogun Assassin DVD

For over a year now I've been writing on film for Brooklyn Rail , a local arts monthly. So far I've written on such topics as Pinky Violence , Spaghetti Westerns , Film Noir , and Asian Films . Below is an excerpt from my Shogun Assassin DVD review that's current at the time of this blog post:

Shogun Assassin (AnimEigo)
In 1980 a couple of enterprising American filmmakers purchased rights to the first two films of the excessively violent Lone Wolf and Cub samurai series—a chronicle of a shogun’s executioner who, framed by his megalomaniacal boss, is on the run with his infant son in a baby cart equipped with secret weapons. The filmmakers, David Weisman (director of the Edie Sedgwick vehicle Ciao Manhattan) and Robert Houston, edited together all the super-violent parts (dismemberments, decapitations, naked female ninja, etc.), rewrote the script around their new edit, and brought in a then unknown Sandra Bernhard to dub all the female parts (for a flat $200 fee), plus Mark Lindsay from Paul Revere and the Raiders to provide the soundtrack. The poster and logo designer’s son did a voiceover as the kid, adding narration to hold together the patchwork story. The result, Shogun Assassin, was a big cult hit for Roger Corman’s New World and is an ultimate example of violent, mind-bending movie-making, a postmodern artifact that foretold the future of exploitation and world cinema...

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Yes, Lone Wolf and Cub is a great job of Japanese violent movie. Here is some review: http://bladeak.blogspot.com/2006/04/lone-wolf-and-cub.html

Another similar to that movie called Shogun Hunters: http://bladeak.blogspot.com/2006/11/shadow-hunters-echo-of-destiny.html