In this golden age of home viewing, the Criterion Collection still provides some of the best editions of the best movies ever released, usually with a rich selection of extras including audio commentaries (perhaps the greatest gift ever to film students and cinephiles alike). This column features one Criterion release per week, based on where my interests lead me.
The Lone Wolf and Cub universe began as a manga series by writer Kazuo Koike and artist Goseki Kojima published from 1970 to 1976. It’s one of the most influential manga franchises ever: there are multiple English-language versions of some of the original tankobon (collected volumes) as well as two Japanese-language television series, six Japanese-language movies, several games, and one English-dubbed movie. This release includes the six Japanese-language movies plus the English dub and a disc of extra material, so there’s a lot here for fans of the franchise.
The Lone Wolf and Cub movies are chambara (sword fighting) films set sometime during the Edo Period. Lone Wolf Ogami Itto (Tomisaburo Wakayama) used to be the Shogun’s executioner, which means he was well-practiced in the art of cutting off heads with a single sword blow. Then his wife was murdered and he was framed for treason by the Shadow Yagyu clan; rather end his life as ordered, Itto escapes and begins the life of a wandering assassin for hire, pushing his young son Daigoro (Akihiro Tomikawa, who has no imdb credits outside these films), a.k.a. Cub, in a wooden cart.
Itto, a mountain of a man, is a skilled samurai who is always ready but never in a hurry. Besides carrying out the missions he’s hired to do, he’s kept busy fighting off the many assassins who are sent to dispatch him. Daigoro is a real chip off the old block: in flashback we see his father offering him the choice between a sword and a ball, and of course he goes for the sword (if he hadn’t, this franchise would be “Lone Wolf without Cub”). In a later episode we see him stoically take a flogging in order to avoid breaking a promise, even after the promise become moot. Mostly, however, he rides in the cart and silently observes everything that’s happening around him, in the process proving himself a regular Bette Davis of eye acting (I’m guessing the director used a device like moving a toy off-camera to guide the direction of his vision).
The Lone Wolf and Cub series is an episodic melodrama in the old-fashioned sense: the characters are familiar types, good and bad are clearly differentiated, action takes precedence over character development, and the primary interest in any conflict is not who will win but how. There are a lot of sword battles (in the desert, in the snow, in the water…) complete with the expected quota of ridiculous stunts, severed limbs, and gushing blood, but also great creativity in the weaponry Itto uses. James Bond had nothing on this wandering samurai in that department, and the baby cart is outfitted with gadgetry that puts Bond’s Aston Martin to shame.
Sword of Vengeance (Kenji Misumi, 1972) sets up the series: we learn who Lone Wolf and Cub are and why they’re on the road, mostly through flashbacks filling in details. Itto also undertakes the first of many missions, in the process differentiating himself from the low-lifes he’s been hired to dispatch. In Baby Cart at the River Styx (Kenji Misumi, 1972), Lone Wolf states for the first time that he’s on the “Demon Road to Hell,” meaning he has left the ordinary world for single-minded pursuit of vengeance. That helps explain the extraordinary freedom with which he fights, and also why so many of the English titles make reference to the Western version of the underworld. This film also introduces the first of many female action heroes in the series, here called “Lady Sword Mistresses,” who are sent to assassinate Itto and Daigoro.
Baby Cart to Hades (Kenji Misumi, 1972) opens up another theme that will recur in the series: casual violence against women, including rape, murder, and forced nudity (always above the waist). Never by Itto, of course, who in this film intervenes on behalf of a young woman sold into sexual slavery. Baby Cart in Peril (Buichi Saito, 1972) begins in a tattoo parlor, where the artist recalls a client who always covered her face and was extremely strong. Much of the film is concerned with filling in her backstory and learning why her life took the form it did.
In Baby Cart in the Land of Demons (Kenji Misumi, 1973), Itto is drawn into a clan’s plot to pass off a female child as a male heir, while Daigoro is allowed to reveal his character after he’s accused of acting as a drop for O-Yo a.k.a. “Quick Change” (Tomomi Sato), a pickpocket noted for her skill at changing her appearance. White Heaven in Hell (Yoshiyuki Kuroda, 1974) sees series regular Yagyu Retsudo (Minoru Oku in perhaps the worst fake wig and whiskers ever) attempt to complete the destruction his offspring: after having expended all his legitimate children in previous attempts to kill Itto, he sends his illegitimate son Hyouei on that mission. Of course Retsudo himself survives, setting the stage for the franchise to continue in the manner of the present-day MCU.
Shogun Assassin (Kenji Misumi, Robert Houston, 1980 is made out of parts of Sword of Vengeance and Baby Cart at the River Styx with really bad English dubbing by, among others, Lamont Johnson, Gibran Evans, and Sandra Bernhard. Unless you’re a diehard completist or a fan of grindhouse movies, there’s not much reason to watch this one, which Vincent Canby compared to Woody Allen’s What’s Up, Tiger Lily? (in case you haven’t seen that one, it’s a deliberate parody of badly dubbed East Asian films). | Sarah Boslaugh
Spine #: 841
Technical details: various; color; 2.40:1; English.
Edition reviewed: DVD (5 discs)
Extras: a 2005 French-language documentary about the series, “l’âme d’un père, l’âme d’un sabre”; 2015 interview with Kazuo Koike, writer for the Lone Wolf and Cub manga series; 2016 interview with Kazuma Nozara, biographer of director Kenji Misumi; 2016 interview with Sensei Yoshimitsu Katsuse discussing samurai swordsmanship and its representation in the series; 1939 silent documentary (with optional score) about how samurai swards are made. The Criterion website mentions a booklet with an essay and synopses by Patrick Macias, but it was missing from the set I reviewed.
Fun Fact: Lead actor Tomisaburo Wakayama is the brother of Shintaro Katsu, who played Zatoichi the blind swordsman in a series of 26 films.
Parting Thought: The Lone Wolf and Cub franchise is popular entertainment but that doesn’t mean it can’t have a moral outlook. In this case, it’s that it’s all well and good to be strong and to be skilled in the arts of violence, but if you don’t also use your intelligence and self-control it’s all for nothing—you can destroy others for a while but in the end you’ll be just another dead loser. Can you think of any present-day applications of this moral?
