I love samurai films, from “Sanjuro” and “Yojimbo” to “13 Assassins” and “Blade of the Immortal.” Even if you aren’t well-versed in the samurai genre, as long as you’re a movie lover, there’s a high likelihood that you’re well acquainted with the many samurai films of Akira Kurosawa. These classics deserve all of the love and acclaim that they get, but the genre has a lot more to offer, and you’re doing yourself a disservice if you draw the line at Kurosawa and never dig any deeper. Some of my absolute favorites of the genre are “Hara-Kiri” and “Sword of Doom,” but since both of those star the inimitable Tatsuya Nakadai, and he was also the star of “The Face of Another” and “The Human Condition” trilogy, which were the last four films I profiled in my essential cinema series, I’ll save those for another time to break up the repetition of just gushing about Tatsuya Nakadai constantly, may he rest in peace.
Instead, today I want to talk about another of my favorite entries into the samurai film cannon: “Lone Wolf and Cub.” This story first took life as a manga series that ran for six years. Early on in that run, movie star Tomisaburō Wakayama, took an interest in the material. Wakayama led an incredibly prolific career. By the time he became taken with the idea of starring in a big screen adaptation of the manga, he had already made well over 100 films, including entries in the “Shinobi No Mono” and “Zatoichi” series. He got the ball rolling on the adaptation and, long before the manga series had concluded, a feature film series was underway as well. Six “Lone of Wolf and Cub” films were released between 1972 and 1974, and though the series is wildly inconsistent from one entry to the next and has some significant ups and downs, the work as a totality is one that I believe deserves to be considered essential cinema.
“Lone Wolf and Cub” would end up being adapted into an 80-episode television show as well, which somewhat confusingly started up while the film series was still ongoing, leading to some “Lone Wolf and Cub” overlap with different actors and creators helming the same plot concurrently. There was an attempt at another television adaptation in the 2000s, but that one didn’t catch on. Manga sequels to the original series followed over the decades, and there was also the movie “Shogun Assassin,” which was the Roger Corman-led re-edit of the first two movies for an American release. There are all kinds of other alternate adaptations, offshoots, and semi-sequels, but don’t worry, it’s actually a whole lot simpler than it sounds if you’re trying to figure out where to start and in what order to watch. I’m only here to cover the six “Lone Wolf and Cub” feature films starring Tomisaburō Wakayama:
- Sword of Vengeance
- Baby Cart at the River Styx
- Baby Cart to Hades
- Baby Cart in Peril
- Baby Cart in the Land of Demons
- White Heaven in Hell
These films are incredibly entertaining and feature a seldom-seen blending of high-art with grind house level sleaze. For every beautiful vista, creative use of minimal sound design, or tense or poetic exchange, there’s gratuitous nudity, fountains of bright red blood, and off-the-wall insanity that often goes uncommented on. The characters and actors are consistent from film to film, but the actual feeling of each movie changes drastically from each entry to the next. These six films were helmed by three different directors, with Kenji Misumi handling most of them—Misumi directed the first, second, third, and fifth entries in the series, with the fourth and sixth entries handed off to Buichi Saitō and Yoshiyuki Kuroda respectively. It would be fair to assume that the changing directors is what led to the wild inconsistency in this series, but it’s not. Even within just the first 3 movies all made by Misumi in the same year, the films vacillate between sleaze and high-art on the regular to the extent that it’s almost hard to believe they were all made by the same guy.
While I could understand that inconsistency being something that could turn potential viewers away from the series, I think it’s actually a beautiful thing. Not only does it make the series feel more unique, it also displays a willingness to take bold creative chances and even get experimental. My favorite entry in the series, “Baby Cart at the River Styx,” is the weirdest of the bunch. It cranks the zaniness up to the maximum and takes every opportunity to get downright bizarre. I especially love how experimental the editing gets in key moments. What’s so impressive is how the series can get this crazy and can dip into the lowbrow, like with the frequent and occasionally somewhat off-putting exploitation nudity, without ever fully relinquishing its status as a high-brow work of art with gorgeous cinematography, strong performances, and compelling drama. It’s rare to find something that both takes itself seriously and also doesn’t at all take itself seriously and somehow manages to pull both off and have those two extremes coalesce.
And all of that is without getting into how goddamn good the action is. This series is packed with massive action sequences that are always creatively staged and filmed, brutally violent, and consistently thrilling. There’s a great deal of variety to the action as well to keep the frequent bloodshed from ever feeling repetitive. Sometimes it’s a change of location that mixes things up, sometimes it’s the type of enemies our lead is going up against, sometimes it’s the type of weapons being used, and sometimes it’s the seemingly never-ending over-the-top ways the baby cart is weaponized. These sword fights are incredible, and the series packs some of the all-around best large scale 1-v-many battles you’ll find anywhere. Along with being some of the best samurai films ever made, these are also some of the best overall action films ever made.
Since the Criterion Collection put out a big, cleaned up box set for the series and it’s also easier these days to find streaming on the likes of the Criterion Channel or Kanopy, you have no excuse. If you’re a samurai film or action film fan, go check out the Lone Wolf and Cub series.
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