The Samurai Film: Expanded and Revised Edition
by Alain Silver
Overlook, 320 pp., $50
Months back, during a conversation Harry Knowles and I were having, he recommended the three-film series Sword of Justice, about Hanzo, a renegade constable. I had never heard of it. Without going into specifics, Knowles managed to convey how exceptional these films are and how they had to be seen. As soon as he noted that the director was a producer on the Sword of Vengeance series, I couldn’t resist.Seeing Lighting Swords of Death more than 25 years ago had really hooked me on samurai films. Certainly I had seen many of the Kurosawa masterpieces: Seven Samurai, Throne of Blood, Yojimbo, and Sanjuro. I had picked up on a few other samurai films, catching them when I could. The Sword of Vengeance series, also known as Lone Wolf and Cub or the Baby Cart series, is about a former Royal Executioner who was set up, disgraced, and driven from the court. Now, he wanders the countryside pushing his young son ahead of him in a wooden baby-cart equipped with more (and more effective) weaponry than all too many of our military vehicles in Iraq. During the course of most of the 80-minute films, he wipes out enough other samurai, men, women, and ghosts to make for a film so bloodthirsty that The Wild Bunch would look tame in comparison.
I was knocked out. I still derive the most intensely perverse pleasure from watching any of these films. Finding information about these films or about any samurai films was a frustrating enterprise at the time, for the simple fact that it was near-impossible. This was long before videos or DVDs, so, even seeing them involved determination.
Soon, though, I picked up the first edition of Alain Silver’s The Samurai Film (1977) somewhere. Although not comprehensive, it proved to be a bible as I watched samurai films whenever they were shown. It compensated for its necessarily limited coverage with Silver’s distinctive intelligence and terrific taste.
Keep in mind that any one volume on the samurai must include a significant sense of history, profiles of both actual notable figures and famous fictional (folk-tale) characters, as well as an explanation of customs and codes of honor before it can even begin to discuss what ends up on film. Silver, it should be said, did a superb job.
A new edition is out, and I’m just beginning to enjoy it. There’s so much information, so many films to now track down. The 1977 edition doesn’t seem to cover the Sword of Justice series, but this new edition does. The source of Hanzo’s “Razor” nickname and core of his power, for instance, is discreetly dealt with (if somewhat more specifically than in Harry’s highly enthused endorsement). Silver notes “the pointedly off-beat elements – not the least of which are Hanzo’s priapism and investigative self-torture.”
This refers to the Razor’s evidently extensive and rock-hard dick. His morning ritual consists of brutally pounding it and jamming it into salt (I think). I have to note here that if one chooses to view this and invites a woman over who can even spell the word “feminism,” one might be forced to make another date with another woman soon after pressing play. In all likelihood, she will leave quickly, if she doesn’t burn you and your house down. This is a legitimate and even moderate response, as the renegade constable often tortures women in vicious and explicit ways. Then, he introduces them to the magic of his manhood, causing in one case even the Mother Superior of a corrupt nunnery – after being crushed bloody with weights – to discover herself succumbing, telling the Razor anything he wants to know as long as he doesn’t stop! All this done with almost no style or humor.
Twenty years ago, I would have been lost after seeing a film like this, desperate for information and finding none. There are many samurai books out now, but Silver’s is still one of the very best. If you had just read his short bit on the Hanzo films, you probably wouldn’t even bother to see them. Which is a plus.
Meanwhile, I did want to take this opportunity to announce the first annual Harry Knowles Hard Dick Tractor Pull at South by Southwest 06. Knowles won’t actually be pulling; he’ll just be judging. Grand Marshall of the Hard Dick Tractor Pull, if you will.
This article appears in December 23 • 2005.