This Month’s Zatoichi: Zatoichi’s Cane Sword (Kimiyoshi Yasuda, 1967)

As regular readers will no doubt have noticed, I’ve fallen off the wagon somewhat with my monthly Zatoichi reviews this year; partly a result of unavoidable busy-ness, but to be honest, the last few uninspiring installments in the series have not really inspired me to get a move on either. If I’d kept to schedule, we should really be finishing up this series in about February or March 2016, but as it stands at the moment, we’ve still got ten movies to go. So, buckle up – it’s time once again to hit the dusty streets of some beatific Edo Period backwater, and I promise that this time, I won’t keep you long.

Film # 15, Zatoichi Tekka Tabi (‘Zatoichi’s Cane Sword’), released in Japanese cinemas in January 1967, marks an important sea-change in the Zatoichi series, being the last installment directly produced by Daiei studios. One of the biggest players in Japan’s post-war studio system, Daiei did at least continue to distribute the next few Zatoichi films after Shintaro Katsu took the series under the wing of his newly established Katsu Productions, but one assumes that the gradual loss of revenue from their biggest cash-cow inevitably took its toll on the struggling studio, whose slate of period melodramas and traditional/folk entertainments must have been looking increasingly old-fashioned by the late ‘60s, contributing to Daiei’s declaration of bankruptcy in 1971.

As the last blind swordsman adventure before this (arguably quite timely) changing of the guards, one might well expect ‘Zatoichi’s Cane Sword’ to be a rather underwhelming affair, but, happily, it’s actually a rather energetic and enjoyable entry – perhaps even a slightly great one.

Having said that though, I confess I watched it without taking notes, and couldn’t really come up with a great deal to say about it, so we’ll keep this review short.

Basically: there is little about ‘Zaotichi’s Cane Sword’ to really set it apart from the rest of the series. All the the things we have come to expect by this point are present and correct, and all are run through with a fair amount of good natured gusto. Once again, there is a picturesque small town under the heel of a craven yakuza boss and corrupt politician. There are sympathetic local characters in need of help, hospitable local inns and wilful young ladies in beautiful kimonos, along with assorted thugs, goons and moody wondering ronin. There are inventive set-ups for altercations at gambling houses, sword tricks, duels and chaotic battles, and plenty of intrigue and eccentricity along the way.

Director Yasuda proves deft at wrangling these familiar elements into a movie that is colourful, fast-moving and about as ‘upbeat’ as can reasonably be asked of a story that features a large number of people getting slaughtered in sword-fights. There is even a bit in which Ichi inexplicably performs a strange musical comedy routine about duck hunting to a small crowd of other characters; a diversion that will perhaps make more sense to those familiar with obscurer traditions of Japanese folk entertainment than it did to us.

What the film lacks though, at least for those of us who have made it through the preceding Zatoichi adventures, is a sense of anything remotely innovative, challenging or note-worthy - but it’s all such fun that it’s hard to hold that against it really.

Probably the most memorable story element this time around involves Ichi’s encounter with a master swordsmith (played by Eijirô Tono, a familiar face to anyone who recalls Kurosawa’s ‘Yojimbo’). Now effectively retired (reduced to crafting the occasional hoe or pick-axe, by his own admission), this chap is actually the son and protégé of the legendary smith who forged Zaotichi’s own blade no less, and, when he asks if he can have a look at this singular example of his father’s workmanship, he has bad news for our hero.

After years spent dispensing a quantity of carnage equivalent to that of a small army, Ichi’s blade is in a perilous state. The swordsmith identifies a hairline crack within the metal, meaning it will be good for only one or two more strikes before it shears in two. Disheartened, Ichi temporarily leaves his sword at his new friend’s workshop, only later returning to reclaim it when his tussles with the local goons begin to get hairy. Meanwhile however, the film’s bad guys have also been putting pressure on the noble swordsmith, forcing him against his will to secretly complete work on a pristine new masterpiece blade for their villainous boss…. and if you can’t immediately figure out how this plot line is going to resolve itself in the final showdown, well, maybe you’ll enjoy ‘Zatoichi’s Cane Sword’ even more than I did.

I hope readers won’t think I’ve done this particular installment an injustice by turning in such a brief review. As I say, I enjoyed it a great deal. In fact it is a nigh-on perfect example of the finely tuned mass entertainments at which Japan’s creative industries excelled through the mid 20th century – exquisitely crafted, visually enthralling, effortlessly entertaining, and entirely disposable to the extent that there is basically very little to say about it to an audience already familiar with the general pattern of such stories.

Perhaps the whole ‘new blade’ storyline could be read as a coded reference to the new production regime that was on the verge of taking over the by now venerable series, but possibly that’s just overthinking things. Either way, ‘..Cane Sword’ certainly makes the grade as a worthy and affirmative farewell to Zatoichi’s Daiei years, and I look forward to discovering what new twists were added to the formula once Katsu himself took the helm from Film # 16 onwards.

This Month’s Zatoichi: Zatoichi’s Pilgrimage (Kazuo Ikehiro, 1966)

After the promising upswing in quality evidenced by the thoroughly decent Zatoichi’s Vengeance, I’m afraid we’re back on the ropes here with another muddled, underwhelming entry in the Zatoichi franchise, despite the presence of both a talented director and talented writer. (Ikehiro’s Zatoichi and the Chest of Gold was one of the most stylish and ambitious entries in the series to date, whilst screenwriter Kaneto Shindô hopefully needs no introduction as the esteemed director of ‘Onibaba’ (1964) and ‘Kuroneko’ (1968).)

We might speculate that ‘Zatoichi’s Pilgrimage’ perhaps suffers chiefly as a result of Daiei studio’s increasingly obstructive attitude toward their main cash-cow. There’s nothing very solid to go on when making such a claim, but… well, we’ll discuss it a bit later.

In the meantime, Shindô’s script as filmed here is, regrettably, what I believe could be termed “a right dog’s breakfast”. The film’s Japanese title translates roughly as ‘Zatoichi’s Sea Voyage’, and indeed both that and the English language title are at least vaguely accurate, as the story opens with an entertaining vignette in which Ichi tangles with an aggressive pickpocket during a coastal ship journey. Arriving at his destination, he kneels before the altar of a shrine dedicated to the Shintō god Kompira, once again vowing to renounce violence whilst he undertakes a pilgrimage to the 88 temples of Shikoku in penance for the lives he has taken in the past. (“You’re a god, so I hope you’ll understand”, Ichi says, addressing his chosen deity.)

For better or for worse though, the implications of all of this are forgotten almost immediately, as Ichi is forced to take down a would-be assassin he encounters on a bridge, and, following his assailant’s horse back to his home village, subsequently finds himself embroiled in the villagers’ territorial dispute with a tribe of mountain bandits. (Said horse’s ability to answer questions, express human-ish emotions and find its own way home alone perhaps suggests that Shindô wasn’t much of an equestrian).

Ichi soon finds himself doted upon by the dead man’s sister Kichi (Michiyo Ôkusu), leading to a romantic yet chaste flirtation between the two that takes up a great deal of screen time without really ever managing to establish the kind of palpable emotional connection between the two that made such melancholy encounters work so well in previous films.

Mostly then, it’s business as usual here, as things grind through what by now seems a thoroughly over-familiar series of events. In its final act, the film suddenly decides to pay homage to ‘High Noon’, as Ichi and Kichi frantically knock on the doors of the frightened and/or scheming villagers, trying and win their support before the bandits return to claim the village at sunset, but to no avail, leaving our hero to face them alone.

For several reasons, this final confrontation is quite poorly conceived, not least because the emotive idea of a lone man bravely facing down impossible odds is rather undercut by the fact that the man in question is the great Zatoichi, whom we have often seen single-handedly decimate far more powerful forces than that represented by the bandit chief’s few dozen guys, making the film’s attempt to sell us on the idea that they are going to wear him down and eventually defeat him somewhat unconvincing, and rendering Kichi’s desperate entreaties to the villagers both unnecessary and counter-productive.

In fact, when the village’s one able young man eventually comes to Ichi’s aid and dies immediately, his wholly avoidable death is basically Kishi’s fault – a fact the film’s script makes no attempt to address, despite its strict and simplistic moral code.

On the plus side though, Ikehiro once again proves himself a highly accomplished, if somewhat showy, director here, masterminding numerous bold and dramatic Spaghetti Western style shots and deep focus panoramas, some of which – such as the moment in which a horseman pauses on the ridge of a vast wooded canyon and observes Ichi making his way along a path on the valley floor hundreds of feet below - are pretty breathtaking.

The film’s bad guys are good too. Rough-riding cavalry specialists, they make extensive use of bows and crossbows, leading to much seat-of-his-pants arrow-dodging on the part of our hero. A welcome change of pace from the usual legions of yakuza toadies, these somewhat Viking-esque dudes also wear animal skins and enjoy sessions of garrulous boasting, slapping their naked bellies and chomping on chunks of barely cooked barbecued meat. (Upon being invited back to their hideout, Ichi humbly thanks them for “allowing me to experience many dishes with which I am unfamiliar”.)

I’m not sure whether these guys were meant to represent some particular ‘type’ common to the Southern island of Shikoku, but regardless, it certainly does the movie a lot of good to have them around.

As a result of all this, ‘..Pilgrimage’ certainly offers a lot of fun moments and memorable action scenes (especially during its first half), making it all the more disappointing that as it fails to really cohere into anything very satisfying. In fact, taken as a series of stand-alone ‘bits’, Ikehiro’s raw footage is often excellent, but unfortunately, the film bears all the hallmarks of a movie that has been badly abused in the cutting room.

On a number of occasions, scenes seem to end prematurely, awkwardly fading or wipe-cutting before whatever dramatic point they were intending to make has been fully established. In particular, the film’s final battle is sloppily paced, with awkward cross-cutting and at least one glaring continuity error, whilst the connecting tissue between different scenes and character encounters is often pretty ragged to say the least, giving the overall impression of a film whose central kernel has been removed, leaving the remnants feeling rather awkward and aimless.

It doesn’t help that veteran composer Ichirô Saitô’s score – a blaring, brass-heavy cacophony that distorts horribly through my TV speakers, even on this pristine Criterion blu-ray – is often used quite inappropriately, reaching its nadir during a light-hearted scene in which Ichi and Kichi go skinny-dipping together in an idyllic mountain lake; a beautifully photographed and potentially touching scene that is unfortunately rendered unintentionally hilarious through the use of tense music cues that seem more suited to a violent nocturnal ambush.

Writing in his monumental Gun & Sword (I don’t have to go to trouble of telling you to go and buy it by this stage do I?), Chris D. takes a far more positive line on ‘Zatoichi’s Pilgrimage’ than I have here, but, interestingly, he also casts some light on the possible reasons for the film’s deficiencies:

“Director Ikehiro explained in an interview that the big production boss called him and screenwriter Shindo on the carpet after reading the first draft, explaining that it was good, but that it was way too unorthodox for what was Daiei Studios’ main franchise. So they had to rewrite it a bit in a more conventional direction while still trying to take a somewhat different approach.” (p. 790)

From this, we can perhaps further speculate that when we watch ‘Zatoichi’s Pilgrimage’, we could be seeing a very different film from the one Ikehiro and Shindô initially intended to make. Certainly, there is little that strikes me as terribly “unorthodox” going on in the final cut, with the possible exception of the aforementioned editing mishaps.

Basically then, we can perhaps best chalk up ‘...Pilgrimage’ as a troubled production, the results of which poorly serve the ambitions of both scriptwriter and director, whether as a result of studio interference, unworkable time/budget constraints or some other combination of unguessable disasters.

For Shintaro Katsu’s part, he seems more on auto-pilot here than ever; though still a hugely likeable screen presence, he no longer seems even remotely interested in trying to push his character in any new directions. Whatever was going on behind the scenes, it is hardly surprising that Katsu only made one further Zatoichi appearance for Daiei (‘Zatoichi’s Cane Sword’, released in January 1967) before he managed to wrangle the character out of their hands, defying the expectations of Japan’s rigid studio system by taking on production duties himself, ensuring that the remaining films in the series saw the light of day as independent ventures, under the auspices of the star's newly formed Katsu Productions.

This Month’s Zatoichi: Zatoichi’s Vengeance (Tokuzô Tanaka, 1966)

As observant readers may have noted, April and May saw my household taking a break from our monthly Zatoichi screenings, partly just to allow our enthusiasm to recharge a bit after a few slightly underwhelming installments (#11, #12). Predictably enough though, it wasn’t long before I found myself missing good ol’ Ichi-san pretty, and perhaps it was this sense of returning to a regular routine after the self-imposed break that helped make film #13, which marks the exact half-way point of the series, seem like the freshest and most satisfactory Zatoichi viewing in quite a while.

Originally released in Japan as ‘Zatoichi No Uta Ga Kikoeru’, which literally translates as ‘The Song of Zatoichi Can Be Heard’, this episode’s title could perhaps more accurately could be read as something like ‘We Hear Zatoichi Calling’. Not wasting time with any of that crap however, whoever who came up with the films’ English release titles cut to the chase and just went with ‘Zatoichi’s Vengeance’ (not to be confused with Zatoichi's Revenge).

Basically, the success of ‘Zatoichi’s Vengeance’ is due largely to the efforts the filmmakers’ take to reassert a sense of dramatic seriousness and moral conflict that more recent episodes in the series have conspicuously lacked. Hajime Takaiwa’s script may be built around a set of by now wholly formulaic plot elements (the struggling small town merchants being menaced by yakuza, the orphaned kid in search of a father figure, the brooding samurai with a chip of his shoulder, the broken-hearted maiden condemned to life in a brothel – all are present and correct), but nothing here feels like mere faffing about or narrative water-treading. Whilst there is little going on that we’ve not seen many times before, these storylines are all played out with an elegant, straight-faced simplicity that, as in so much of best Japanese popular story-telling, imbues their melodramatic form with real gravitas.

Zatoichi’s familiar robin hood act (taking the townspeople’s side against yakuza intimidation, etc) seems to have real purpose this time around, as, for the first time in a while, the villains are presented as a genuinely vile bunch – cruel, petty thugs whose bullying behavior actually makes us angry, rather than yet more faceless extra for Ichi to mow down amid some largely uninvolving inter-gang conflict.

More than just a triumphalist good vs evil beatdown though, the film follows the example set by some of the best early Zatoichi installment in taking the time to question the methods and motivations of our ‘noble’ characters, as embodied both by the conventional jideo-geki conflict faced by Shigeru Amachi’s samurai (which I won’t trouble you with here), and also, more interestingly, via a curious character referred to only as the biwa priest – a blind nomad who, after befriending Ichi on the road, essentially seems to function as a dark shade of our hero’s troubled conscience, dispensing fragments of pithy, oblique wisdom that cast doubt upon his violent way of life.

At first, the priest castigates Ichi for inadvertently corrupting the ideals of the local child who has adopted him as a father figure. Seeing the boy completely obsessed by his new idol’s slick swordsmanship after Ichi pulls a few tricks in non-lethal self-defense, Ichi accepts the priest’s point and suffers manfully through a grueling beating when he refuses to retaliate against the yakuza upon their next encounter. When he does finally give in and draw blood against the baddies though, the priest changes his tune and casually exonerates him, declaring that of course it is only human to fight back against such provocation. Well, demands a confused Ichi, should I draw my sword and take the route of violence or not? Both ways are correct, the priest informs him in full zen pomp, you simply lack the insight to comprehend it.

If all this sounds a tad pretentious, well, what can I tell you – within the context of the film, such musings actually work very well, and the priest, played by Jun Hamamura as a cynical, detached, slightly cruel counterpoint to Ichi’s clumsy, trying-my-best-to-do-the-right-thing benevolence, makes for an intriguing addition to the film’s cast of characters.(1)

Interestingly, the biwa hōshi represented by Hamamura’s character were a genuine part of pre-Meiji Era Japanese culture, their origins stretching far back into the nation’s history. A caste of usually blind musicians who seemingly adopted a persona somewhere between that of Byronic Romantic poets and nomadic zen monks, the biwa hōshi travelled the land dispensing lessons in selflessness and the contemplation of beauty via the recitation of epic ballads and histories, accompanying themselves via the ominous, droning sound of the four-stringed biwa lute (a harsher-sounding, more primitive precursor to the koto and shamisen of traditional Japanese music).

The scene in ‘Zatoichi’s Vengeance’ in which the priest plays his biwa for Ichi whilst the two sit along in a forest clearing – building a slow, droning song of heavy resonance as Ichi listens out for any approaching attackers – is mesmerising, with the instrument’s thick strings and gigantic plectrum producing a dense pattern of sustained overtones that, to my cloddish Western ears, sounds like nothing so much as some kind of medieval doom metal. “You cannot play biwa if you just depend on the strings,” the priest tells Ichi after he breaks a string mid-performance, “and if you depend wholly upon that hidden sword, you will not live long”. Words for our hero to contemplate as he once again strides off into the sunset, amid a more melancholy and ambiguous conclusion than usual.

Tokuzô Tanaka, who previously directed the very good Zatoichi The Fugitive, does an excellent job here too, not only ensuring that the slightly more serious tone of the material is appropriately pitched throughout, but adopting a foreboding and stately pace that serves it brilliantly. Establishing shots and other wide-screen compositions are beautifully rendered by justly-celebrated DP Kazuo Miyagawa, whilst, in Tanaka’s hands, the obligatory fight scenes once again become brutal and exhilarating.

As in ‘..Fugitive’, Tanaka particularly excels at switching back to long shot during action scenes, maintaining the suspense and emotional engagement of his set ups from a greater distance than most action directors would be comfortable with, stressing the physical distances between his fighters and letting landscape elements add to the drama, making his brief returns to close-up all the more effective as a result.

Particularly impressive in this regard is the film’s central set piece, which is played in shadow puppet style silhouette on a narrow bridge, as Ichi’s opponents close in on him from either side, attempting to deafen and disorientate him using the clamour of the town festival's ‘thunder drums’. Of all the hare-brained schemes baddies have used thus far to try to take Ichi down, this I think is the most sensible, and also the most suspenseful for us as viewers. For all of the Zatoichi films’ many virtues, it is often difficult for the filmmakers to generate much excitement within the fight sequences whilst we know that our hero is basically invincible, so to realise here that Ichi is suddenly just lunging randomly, in great pain and unable to sense the enemies around him, is a real shocker that, few a few moments at least, makes us uncertain how things will play out.

As the nature of this finale suggests, ‘Zatoichi’s Vengeance’ is also notable as one of the few films in the series thus far that really makes an effort to explore the nature of Ichi’s blindness on a level that goes beyond mere sight gags and comic misunderstandings. The importance of sound and music is woven into every aspect of the story, and it is their shared blindness that allows Ichi and the biwa priest to build a rapport around the shared experience of the world as revealed to them by their heightened sensory impressions; a development that adds significantly to the reality of the film’s drama.

Throw in yet another epic original score from maestro Akira Ikufube and the return of the always excellent Shigeru Amachi – who memorably played Hirate in the very first Zatoichi film – as a slightly more convincing rogue samurai than usual, and we’re left with the reassuring feeling that the series is really cooking with gas again here.(2) Definitely the best entry since the films hit double figures, ‘Zatoichi’s Vengeance’ is an example of popular chanbara film-making at its finest, and here’s hoping that Kazuo Ikehiro can manage to maintain this standard for film # 14, ‘Zatoichi’s Pilgrimage’, which debuted only three months after this one in August 1966.

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(1) Yet another celebrated character player with more notable credits to his name than you’ve had hot dinners, Hamamura (1906 – 1995) appeared in Kon Ichikawa’s revered ‘The Burmese Harp’ (1956), Kurosawa’s ‘High and Low’ (1963) and Masaki Kobayashi’s ‘Kwaidan’ (1964) amongst others…. not that that stopped him also earning a crust in ‘Watch Out, Crimson Bat!’ (1969) and turning up as “public official” in Fear of the Ghost House: Bloodthirsty Doll (1970).

(2) Interestingly, a quick scan of IMDB reveals that Amachi, in addition to roles in numerous iconic chanbara productions, was actually also a bit of a “horror man”, appearing for director Nobuo Nakagawa in ‘The Ghost of Yotsuya’ (1959), ‘The Vampire Woman’ (1959), and the epic ‘Jigoku’ (1960). Happily for us Euro-horror buffs, he also turned up years later in Paul Naschy’s bonkers Japanese co-production ‘The Beast With The Magic Sword’ (1983).

This Month’s Zatoichi: Zatoichi & The Chess Expert (Kenji Misumi, 1965)

Kenji Misumi’s third film in the Zatoichi series – known as ‘Zatoichi Jigoku Taki’ (‘Zatoichi’s Trip to Hell’) to Japanese viewers, despite nothing much more hellish than usual transpiring within – seems to me to be going a bit ‘meta’ on us, as Daisuke Itô’s screenplay reprises the central themes and relationships from the director’s two (excellent) earlier films, but twists them in unexpectedly cynical and downbeat directions.

Thinking about it, maybe this dashing of our hero’s hopes is what constitutes the ‘hell’ of the Japanese title, but then that's never a point the film really makes with a great force, so maybe I’m giving whoever decided on the film's title too much credit. As far as the anglophone title goes, there is indeed a chess expert, so no additional pondering required on that score.

Just as in Misumi’s Tale of Zatoichi, Ichi here strikes up a rapport with a jaded lone wolf samurai (Mikio Narita, later a regular in ‘70s Toei yakuza flicks), and their blossoming friendship, based on a shared passion for Japanese shogi chess, is presented as a dignified match of noble equals, framed in stark contrast to the undifferentiated mobs of squabbling, swinish goons who intermittently harass them. Meanwhile, a parallel storyline sees Ichi forming an accidental relationship with a nomadic woman of questionable character (Kaneko Iwasaki), with whom he shares a duty of care for an adorable child (in this case a little girl who becomes infected with tetanus after being injured in a scuffle), in a near exact reprise of the previous year’s Fight, Zatoichi, Fight!.

In contrast to the tragic humanism with which both of these storylines played out in their original incarnations however, things here are rather less clear-cut, leaving sentimental old Ichi to deal with the fact that, however much he might want to recapture the warmth he felt for his departed friends in the earlier films, neither of his new companions are quite as principled or benevolent as they initially appear.

In theory, the idea of these heady themes of betrayal, disappointment and nostalgia intersecting with the kind of deft human drama that Misumi proved himself such a master of in his earlier efforts should make for extremely engaging viewing…. which leaves me at a bit of loss when it comes to explaining why ‘Zatoichi & The Chess Expert’ didn’t really work for me at all on first viewing.

Chris D, writing in his monumental Gun & Sword: An Encyclopedia of Japanese Gangster Films, describes ‘..Chess Expert’ as the moment at which “..the series finally gets great again”, praising not only Misumi’s direction, but also Narita’s performance and “master” Itô’s script, neither of which impressed me overmuch, I’m sorry to say. Thus far, Chris’s capsule reviews of each Zatoichi installment have seemed pretty spot-on, largely chiming with my own impressions of the films, so this sudden disparity has caused me to stop for a bit of reflection before banging out the fairly negative review I had initially planned for ‘..Chess Expert’.

You know that uncomfortable feeling when you walk away from a movie screening feeling fairly dismissive of what you’ve just seen, but the contrasting voices of trusted sources who seem to have got a great deal out of the experience cause you to stop and think… maybe I was just coming at that one from the wrong angle..? Maybe it just went over my head a little as I sat there primed for something a bit different..? Well, needless to say, ‘Zatoichi & The Chess Expert’ ain’t exactly ‘Last Year at Marianbad’, but nonetheless, I’ve got a feeling it might fall into this category for me on this occasion.

I WAS pretty tired when I watched it, fighting the slow drift towards sleep for much of the run time, so perhaps the blunt and relatively light-hearted storytelling of the last few Zatoichi installments had me calibrated for something a little different from the fairly dour approach taken here. Perhaps.

Certainly, Misumi’s direction is characteristically assured, with action set-pieces, tense stand-offs and dramatic interplay all a definite cut above those seen elsewhere in the series, but I confess, the screenplay lost me pretty early on, and I found myself struggling to regain interest in proceedings, as the various characters continue to idly hang around the film’s onsen location to no very fixed purpose, whilst the who, how and whys of the various groups of waddling thugs and low level bosses half-heartedly pursuing them never quite coalesced into anything very clear or compelling. There seemed to be a bit of a dreary, low energy kind of feel throughout, with many of the usual visual gags and set pieces that Zatoichi films use to draw us into the action falling a bit flat, and the story ends, once again, with a resigned, “is that it?” kind of a shrug.

To give the filmmakers the benefit of the doubt, perhaps this lethargy is the result of a deliberate attempt on to series away from formulaic genre melodrama and inject a certain amount of grumpy realism into proceedings. Indeed, one interesting aspect of ‘..Chess Expert’ is the greater emphasis it places upon the problems Ichi faces on account of his blindness. Of recent, our hero has proved so adept at negotiating the world around him that his disability almost seems to give him an advantage over his sighted antagonists, but here Ichi experiences a number of awkward and frustrating moments, whether bumping his head on pillars or scrabbling around on the floor for important objects, and even a few of his patented gambling tricks end up back-firing on him.

Perhaps Misumi and Itô were simply getting a bit sick of the quasi-superhuman feats that have increasingly become part of Ichi’s character, and were just trying to bring him back down to earth a bit. Whilst in retrospect I can appreciate this approach as a refreshing change and corrective, for this tired viewer who quite enjoyed the aforementioned superhuman feats, it’s nonetheless a bit of a bummer to see our hero moping around in a relatively powerless position. And, crucially, rather than replacing Ichi’s usual antics with something more interesting (as ‘Fight, Zatoichi Fight!’ managed so marvelously), the filmmakers instead seem content to follow the familiar patterns of the series, but just do everything kinda… half-heartedly?

For the moment then, I’ll reserve judgment on this one. There ARE some excellent moments here that even my sleep-deprived brain could appreciate – Ichi’s nocturnal confrontation with a gang of swordsmen amid the reeds of a muddy river would be a shoe-in for any showreel of the series’ best fight scenes, and the way the tension between Katsu and Narita is handled in the second half of the film, with each master swordsman awaiting the first sign that the other might be about to ‘draw’ whilst continuing to assume the mask of friendship, is really terrific.

But by and large… I dunno. The movie just never quite came together into anything that really grabbed me, and, just as in the previous installment, talent both behind and in front of the camera seemed wasted, with no one really sure where they were heading with this whole thing.

Perhaps then, '..Chess Expert' really is just a muddled and mediocre addition to a series whose QC standards are looking increasingly shaky by this point. Or perhaps, with Chris D’s words still echoing in my mind, I’ve got to consider the possibility that whilst I was struggling to keep my eyes open wondering who the hell these guys Ichi was fighting were again and what plot point all those meaningful close-ups of a fish-hook were meant to signify, there was actually a great wealth of dramatic nuance and subtle detail bubbling just below the surface, waiting to impress the more perceptive viewer.

Sadly, repeat viewings of any film are a bit of luxury for me at the moment, so oh well – c’est la vie. Instead, we’ll be hoping for the best as we plough straight ahead into ‘Zatoichi’s Vengeance’ (not to be confused with Zatoichi’s Revenge), which hit screens in Japan in May 1966. See you then!

This Month’s Zatoichi: Zatoichi & The Doomed Man (Kazuo Mori, 1965)

Whilst some of the ten Zatoichi installments we’ve looked at so far in this series have undoubtedly been better than others, even the least impressive of them have stood up as entertaining and well-made movies that I could easily recommend as thoroughly satisfactory stand-alone viewing experiences. With film # 11 however, that remarkable run finally comes to end, and it saddens me to report that Kazuo Mori’s ‘Zatoichi & The Doomed Man’ (original title ‘Zatoichi Sakate Giri’, rough translation: “Zatoichi’s sideways sword style”) is, frankly, a right bloody mess.

Ostensibly, this is the tale of Ichi encountering a falsely condemned man whilst spending a night in a provincial jail on an illegal gambling rap, and subsequently setting out to clear the poor chap’s name before he hangs. However this extremely simple plotline – good for perhaps thirty minutes screentime at best – is never really developed in any very interesting fashion, whilst meanwhile the film is padded out to feature length by a lot of largely rudderless faffing about.

The film’s first half basically plays like a broad comedy, as Ichi is pursued and harangued by a number of opportunistic comic relief characters, chief among them being Osaka-accented comedian Kanbi Fujiyama, who plays an unscrupulous monk keen on wringing favours out of the local yakuza by impersonating the famous Zatoichi, with predictably messy consequences once the real big Z hits town.

All of this is mildly diverting, and sometimes quite amusing in a cartoon/sit-com sort of way, but generally the comedy feels a lot more forced than the natural and characterful humour of earlier Zatoichi adventures. Even the ever-reliable Shintaro Katsu seems like he’s trudging through this one on autopilot much of the time, his exceptional gift for inventive physical comedy rarely in evidence as we are instead left with the impression that Ichi is simply feeling a bit worn out and grumpy by this latest round of tomfoolery.

With no strong narrative drive to propel things forward, interest fades in the film’s second half, as the comedy takes a back seat to yet another scheming, toad-like oyabun awaiting his comeuppance, his routine scheming prompting Zatoichi to half-heartedly massacre another thirty or forty luckless swordsmen with no great amount of drama or enthusiasm, culminating in an abrupt ending that seems more a shrug of the shoulders than an actual conclusion – which seems appropriate, in view of a script that has relied almost entirely on the notion of characters randomly bumping into each other at opportune moments. So, we’ll assume that poor bastard on death row got his name cleared in time, but hey, who knows? We made it to the end credits, and that’s seemingly all that matters.

Probably the best thing one can say about ‘..Doomed Man’ is that the cinematography, as ever, is excellent, with DP Hiroshi Imai (who also worked on The Great Yokai War) capturing some beautifully lit landscape shots of spectacular locations around the coastal area in which parts of the film were shot, and even taking the take to make some of the always slightly shoddy set-bound exteriors look quite misty and beguiling.

When investigating the long-running Japanese movie series’ of which Zatoichi is perhaps the preeminent example, one often comes across the odd ‘total dud’ entry like this one – a film that seems to have been rushed into production on such a tight schedule that it stumbles its way to the finish line with a barely coherent script, no directorial vision, a disengaged cast and, basically, no reason to exist at all except to hit cinemas on a particular, preordained date.

That the Zatoichi series had managed to make it through about fifteen hours of screen time in less than four years by this point without succumbing to this phenomenon is a remarkable achievement, and a testament to the level of creativity and quality control in operation at Daiei studios. As such, we can hardly blame either Daiei’s top brass or this film’s personnel for letting one duffer through the gate given the overwhelming amount of truly great genre cinema the series had given us previously, and really, the odd crash & burn picture is just the inevitable downside of cinema transformed into a mechanised industry, with targets and deadlines set in stone from on-high. (In general, the plus points of such an approach far outweigh the negatives I think… but that’s another argument for another day.)

Exiting this movie, the worry is of course that the dramtic slump in quality could signal the start of an ongoing trend rather than merely being a one-off blip - but that fear is lessened by the knowledge that Zatocichi #12, English title ‘Zatoichi & The Chess Expert’, marks the welcome return of the series finest director, Kenji Misumi (see #1 and #8). Show ‘em how it’s done, Kenji-san.

This Month’s Zatoichi: Zatoichi’s Revenge (Akira Inoue, 1965)

Like the preceding Adventures of Zatoichi, Akira Inoue’s ‘Zatoichi’s Revenge’ (whose Japanese title translates as the rather more specific ‘Zatoichi’s Two-Cut Sword Style’) adds nothing new to the series by now thoroughly established formula, as Ichi, wandering once again into a remote town where he spent a lot of time in his youth, discovers that his beloved massage teacher has been murdered as part of a nefarious plot to force his virtuous daughter, along with those of the other townsfolk, into prostitution at the local magistrate-endorsed brothel.

The elements are all here: another slimy, toad-like magistrate and oyabun duo to be taken down, another surly, ultra-skilled ronin lining up to take a crack at the great Zatoichi, and various likeable everyday folks in need of a helping hand.

Unlike the equally formulaic ‘Adventures..’ though, ‘..Revenge’ does at least proceed with enough verve and style to overcome its routine plotting to some extent. In his only entry in the series, little known director Inoue handles things with a great deal of energy, mixing extensive handheld camerawork with strong, dramatic compositions, whilst Akira Ifukube’s rollicking, Spaghetti Western-esque score is, as ever, hugely enjoyable.

(Once again, I’m a bit reluctant to start pulling Spaghetti Western comparisons in these reviews, given the rather complex tug of war that was taking place between the Eastern chambara and Western, uh, western genres during the 1960s, but the prevalence here of flamenco guitar flourishes and brooding brass alongside extreme eye close-ups, tense stand-offs, dramatic, tinted flashbacks to past events and visual storytelling involving significant close-ups of coins and medallions etc. etc. – all of this will likely flash viewers in the Western hemisphere straight back to the same year’s ‘For a Few Dollars More’, a comparison that we can reasonable assume to be more the result of accident than design, given the embargo placed on Japanese distribution of the ‘Dollars’ trilogy by Kurosawa's legal challenge to 'Fistful..'.)

Whereas Leone always seemed rather contemptuous of the ‘everyday folk’ supporting characters in his films though, they are by contrast the heart and soul of most Zatoichi adventures, and the main thing most viewers will take away from ‘..Revenge’ is a remarkable performance by comic film & TV actor Norihei Miki, who absolutely steals the show here in the role of Denroku the Weasel, a wiry, booze-addled card sharp torn between loyalty to his scumbag employers and his more noble aspirations to aid Ichi in sorting them out and to keep his own daughter out of their clutches.

Building a complex and hugely likeable individual out of what seems like only a very sketchy script outline, Miki proves himself a masterful character actor here. As Chris D. sagely notes in the booklet accompanying the Criterion box set: “Miki was an actor who, like Katsu, was able to incorporate unforced humour into his performances, keeping the silly and the obvious out and embodying real people”. Straight talk as ever from Mr D.

Also of note in ‘Zatoichi’s Revenge’ is the inclusion of some slightly rougher, exploitation-ish business than usual, introduced via the forced prostitution storyline. Though extremely mild in comparison to the hair-raising excesses that began to consume Japanese popular cinema a few years later, the scenes here of women being imprisoned, beaten and leered at by the baddies are still nearer the knuckle than anything we’ve seen in previous Zatoichi adventures. (In regard to this, it is perhaps worth noting that Inoue, moreso than some of the other Zatoichi directors, seems to have been primarily an exploitation man, with several women’s prison movies gracing his relatively brief filmography on IMDB.)

And… that’s about all I can find say about ‘Zatoichi’s Revenge’ to be honest, except to once again state that by this stage in my viewing, even a mid-table Zatoichi flick like this one is as comforting as a plate of hot toast and a pot of tea. And, as with plates of toast and pots of tea, I find myself immediately looking forward to the next one: that being Kazuo Mori’s ‘Zatoichi & The Doomed Man’, which saw release in Japanese cinemas in September 1965. See you then!

This Month’s Zatoichi: Adventures of Zatoichi (Kimiyoshi Yasuda, 1964)

Arriving at a remote market town a few days before New Year’s Eve with the intention of watching the first dawn of the new year from the summit of a nearby mountain, Zatoichi regrettably finds his social skills stretched to breaking point as he attempts to deal with a disorganized rabble of supporting characters who between them seem to represent all of the various archetypes we’ve seen in the series thus far.

In no particular order, we have a sister pining for her brother (an exiled village leader who has just escaped imprisonment), another woman searching for her long lost father, a corrupt magistrate and his toadying local gang boss who are busy exploiting the local market traders with unfair taxes, a pair of lovable orphan acrobat kids, an obligatory surly lone wolf sword-master out for Ichi’s blood, another somewhat shabbier low rent ronin who’d prefer to keep out of his way if possible, an irascible drunk who may or may not be Ichi’s own long-lost father, and even a few guest-spots for a traditional comedy double-act whom one assumes must have been quite popular in Japan at this point.

Perhaps annoyed by the fact that none of this lot seem able to pull together much in the way of a compelling central storyline between them, Ichi patiently waits it out for eighty minutes then hits the bad guys’ HQ and arbitrarily kills a bunch of people before finally getting to enjoy his bloody sunrise in peace.

By this point, it would seem surplus to requirements to write a great deal about this rather middling entry in the Zatoichi series, whose Japanese title literally translates as the slightly more exciting-sounding “Zatoichi Storms the Government Checkpoint”. Basically I think, the problem here lies with scriptwriter Shozaburo Asai’s “throw everything at the wall and see what sticks” approach to plotting, and director Yasuda’s corresponding failure to really get to grips with the resultant dangling plot threads, or to figure out where to best concentrate his efforts, resulting in a sense of inertia and vague pointlessness that permeates the whole movie.

There seems to be some sort of vague theme of parental responsibility and the search for absent fathers running through the various storylines, but the film fails to really develop this is any satisfactory manner, and the sub-plot about Ichi finding echoes of his own father in the town drunk seems like a slightly cynical tug at the audience’s heart-strings, even if strong performances from the players concerned ensure that it plays out fairly well.

On the plus side, production values here are, as ever, top notch, with a bold new orchestral score from Taichirô Kosugi standing out, and intermittent examples of some of the most vivid photography yet seen in the series (which is saying something). Crowd scenes are rich with detail and incident, and the film gives us a nice glimpse into the traditions and good cheer that surround New Year’s celebrations in Japan, even if the set-bound nature of much of the action is regrettably obvious in places.

Shintaro Katsu is on fine form as usual, even if he does seem to be more or less treading water here, failing to really push the limits of his character the way he did in the last few films, and elsewhere, highlights come in the form of some superbly choreographed, blink-and-you’ll-miss-it sword exchanges between Ichi and the wolfish ronin, with some classic Zatoichi visual gags incorporated into the fight scenes. Real laugh-out-loud stuff, even if the “Ichi cuts stuff in half and nobody notices” trope has just about been milked for all its worth by this point.

At the end of the day, even lesser Zatoichi installments still make for fine entertainment, so I don’t want to rag on this one too harshly. At best, it has a kind of cheery “comforting communal viewing” feel to it, making it the sort of thing I can imagine going down very well on festive TV schedules over in Japan, but, well – as far as the wider series goes, it ain’t a stand-out, let’s just leave it at that.

Functioning as a kind of “new year’s special”, presumably planned to cash in on that season’s big movie market in Japan (damn, I should have reviewed it next month), ‘Adventures..’ (I really want to call it “Zatoichi Storms the Government Checkpoint”) marked the end of a phenomenally busy year for the franchise. Next month, we’ll be striding boldly on into a bright new 1965, with Akira Inoue’s ‘Zatoichi’s Revenge’, which debuted in April of that year.

This Month’s Second Zatoichi: Fight, Zatoichi, Fight! (Kenji Misumi, 1964)

When Zatoichi surrenders his ride in a palanquin chair to a young mother struggling with her newborn baby, a tragic misunderstanding sees the poor woman falling victim to the blades of a pack of heartless, Ichi-hunting samurai. Feeling responsible for her death, Ichi takes on the responsibility of looking after her child, vowing to return him safely to his father in a distant village, hooking up with a troubled female thief (Hizuru Takachiho) en route for a journey that proves more cathartic than our hero might have anticipated

Returning to the Zatoichi franchise for the first time since he helped to create the character in 1962’s Tale of Zatoichi, director Kenji Misumi here continues to contemplate the same weighty themes that anchored that film, turning in perhaps the most accomplished, grown up and emotionally affecting Zatoichi film to date.

In contrast to its excitable English title, this is, it must be said, a very uncharacteristic Zatoichi film - one in which the fight scenes and sword-skill set-pieces (frequent and impressive though they are) are largely incidental, taking a clear second place to the more compelling human drama being enacted between Zatoichi, Takachiho, and the ill-starred baby they both find themselves looking after.

Whereas this potentially unpromising “three yakuza and a baby” plotline could easily have devolved into sappy, comic relief-ridden nonsense in the hands of a lesser director (or a lesser star), Misumi’s cast-iron understanding of human empathy and his eye for simple, effective visual storytelling steer us true throughout.

Cinematically speaking, there are moments of pure poetry to be found here – slow, meditative tableaus that serve to calm and contextualise the more turbulent passions of the characters, an approach very much in keeping with the unique atmosphere Misumi created in ‘Tale..’.

Also reminiscent of that earlier film is Misumi’s clear establishment of a ‘two tier’ system of human relationships within the film, which sees Ichi and the broadly admirable characters with whom he interacts existing on an entirely different plain from the beastly, avaricious yakuza and their associates, who are portrayed as not just irredeemable but practically sub-human in their unthinking cruelty. An absurdly simplistic duality of course, and one that fails to acknowledge the shades of grey necessary for any decent story of crime or conflict. But, this is a different kind of story, and as an evocation of the “uncaring world” in which lonely characters like Zatoichi tend to find themselves lost, it is a backdrop that works very well.

I don’t want to go overboard with the auteurist gushing here, but the two Misumi-directed Zatoichi films I’ve watched thus far strike me as presenting a very pure and honest form of cinema that immediately sets them apart from the era’s other chanbara films. Doing his best to avoid both exploitation movie box-ticking and the equally manipulative pretentions of art cinema, Misumi emerges instead with something that just seems, I dunno… basic, and good, like a nice loaf of bread. A film that rings true.

Though I have extensively sung the praises of Shintaro Katsu in prior Zatoichi reviews, you’d better get used to it I’m afraid, because in every film I see him in (whether Zatoichi or his other appearances), he impresses me even more, adding new notches and nuances to his characters at every turn, without ever succumbing to contrivance or showiness. In particular, the more personal nature of the story this time around gives him a bit of a challenge to get stuck into, and, never an actor content to merely coast by on his pre-existing star power, he gives it his absolute all.

The strange, stumbling care Ichi takes with the baby, and his growing love for the child, is brilliantly portrayed by Katsu, without a hint of the mawkishness that usually accompanies such material, as the gentle (but, you will note, also actually funny) humour generated by his attempts to look after the baby (stealing clothes from scarecrows to act as diapers, etc) gradually develop into a deep and genuine warmth as we see realize the extent to which Ichi cares for his surrogate son. (Rather than being bluntly hammered home to us as per a modern Hollywood-style flick, this point is succinctly made via scenes such as the one in which Ichi hires a prostitute to take care of the baby for the night whilst he catches up on sleep next to her, but then frets so much about his ‘son’s wellbeing that he ends up staying awake whilst the lady-of-the-night dozes.)

As a consequence, the gloom that overtakes Zatoichi and his female companion when they finally reach the child’s father’s village and realise they must soon give up ‘their’ son and return to their respective lives of itinerant loneliness is palpable, and the scene in which Ichi says his private farewells to the baby prior to setting out to return him to his family is absolutely heartbreaking.

Of course, being a Zatoichi film, things don't work out quite that simply, especially after the baby’s father is revealed to be another yakuza scumbag. But still, the old weight of Ichi’s lonely destiny raises its head once more, as the impossibility of his raising a child as a blind fugitive constantly pursued by rampaging swordsmen eventually becomes clear to him, and he must do the decent thing, just as he had to accept the impossibility of his settling down to married life with gentle Otane in ‘Tale..’.

When Ichi eventually leaves the child in the care of the local priest, and makes his weary exit into the sunset, carrying the baby’s favourite plaything for a memento as he walks away, I think it’s safe to assume there wasn’t a dry eye in the house at this film’s original screenings (there certainly wasn’t in our house, I can tell you that). Transcending the usual clichés of genre melodrama and appealing to something deeper within all of us, it is just crushingly sad moment.

A real change of pace for the Zatoichi saga, and, I suppose you might say, an unexpected gem of low-key human drama hidden within the shell of a bodycount-heavy action flick, ‘Fight, Zatoichi, Fight’ (the interchangeable English title seeming more inappropriate than ever in this instance) is simply a great movie about people and the way they feel about stuff whilst living in the world, with no caveats or genre-specific schematics needed.

My admiration for Misumi, for Katsu, and for this wonderful series in general grows even stronger as we prepare – presumably – to step back onto the action/adventure treadmill when Zatoichi On The Road director Kimiyoshi Yasuda takes the reins for the final Zatoichi film of 1964, ‘Adventures of Zatoichi’, which hit screens in Daiei’s Tokyo cinemas on 30th December that year.

This Month’s Zatoichi: Zatoichi’s Flashing Sword (Kazuo Ikehiro, 1964)

N.B. As observant readers will have noticed, my attempt to write about one Zatoichi film per month has slipped up a little during this summer’s regrettable posting collapse. Thankfully though, this delay has occurred at about the point when, having hopefully got to grips with the basic tenets of the series, it seems to make sense to move toward shorter, more capsule-style reviews, meaning that, hopefully, I’ll be able to throw in at least one additional review in October or November, getting us back on schedule before the end of the year. So that’ll be a big weight off your mind, I’m sure.

One result of the relentlessly prolific pace with which genre films were produced in Japan in the mid 20th century is the common phenomena of two entries in an ongoing series being made back-to-back by the same (or very similar) cast and crew, presumably working to a single, fixed budget and schedule. Sadly what often tends to result from this scenario is that the first film consumes the lion’s share of the time, enthusiasm, ideas and money, whilst the second limps out shortly afterwards looking like a bit of an afterthought - the work of exhausted filmmakers pushing to get another movie finished using whatever leftovers remained from the first production. (For a textbook example of this, see the vast difference in quality between Stray Cat Rock: Sex Hunter and the concurrently shot Stray Cat Rock: Wild Jumbo.)

I can’t guarantee that is what happened with the two Zatoichi films directed by Kazuo Ikehiro in 1964, but we can at least float it as a possibility, given that, in comparison to the frankly magnificent Zatoichi & The Chest of Gold, ‘Zatoichi’s Flashing Sword’, released four months later, is somewhat underwhelming.

Basically, this is the closest thing we’ve seen so far to a completely formulaic, business-as-usual Zatoichi picture, featuring a simplistic, pre-‘Yojimbo’ “goodies vs baddies” style plot set up that demands little in the way of engagement from the viewer, either emotional or intellectual. A tale of Zatocihi wading into a conflict between rival yakuza gangs over a valuable river-crossing concession as preparations for a big annual firework festival take place in the background, this seventh entry in the series is briskly and competently directed with the usual top notch photography and original music, but unfortunately it displays little of the admirable style and audacity that Ikehiro brought to ‘..Chest of Gold’.

In particular, I was disappointed by the fact that the whole story seems to be setting things up for a dramatic final battle taking place against the backdrop of the firework festival – which is surely the perfect excuse for an amazing and memorable sequence, right, especially in the hands of the director who worked such wonders on the preceding film..? The usual dazzling swordplay played off against the flashing lights, shadows and blinding primary colours of the festival, with booms and crashes filling the sky all around? This is gonna be awesome, surely.

Well, sadly, it never materialises, as the film instead goes for a low-key and rather perfunctory ending that sees Zatoichi casually slaughtering a few legions of yakuza within a cramped corridor set, before the film ends abruptly with our hero gloomily contemplating a head wound he received when the bad gang’s boss threw a brick at him. The long-promised fireworks meanwhile remain at a distance, visible to us only via a few bits of haphazard stock footage. A potentially great moment lost to budget and time constraints perhaps..? Who knows.

On the plus side though, this is still, as ever, wholly satisfactory entertainment, as watchable and accomplished as you could wish of a formula genre picture, with some solid fight scenes, likeable comedic shenanigans, plus plenty of the usual beautiful rural locations, fine turns from a handful of seasoned character players, and, best of all, Shintaro Katsu having just as much of a ball as usual, giving yet another rousing demonstration of how Zatoichi ended up becoming such an indelible folk hero of mid 20th century Japan. Most of the best moments in ‘..Flashing Sword’ are those that find Katsu riffing on some new variations of the gentle physical comedy skits and ad-libbed philosophical asides that help make Zatoichi an even more noble and lovable hero with each passing movie. A real giant of the Japanese screen and a uniquely compelling performer, my admiration for Katsu-san grows with each film I see him in, and the thought of spending another twenty five hours (approx) of screen-time in his presence over the coming months pleases me greatly.

Though it was the least satisfactory entry in the series thus far, it is a testament to the sheer level of quality maintained by these films that when I think back on my viewing of ‘Zatoichi’s Flashing Sword’, it still seems like a more rewarding experience than that provided by, say, about 90% of other, non-Zatoichi-related films I’ve seen this year.

Nippon Horrors: Snake Girl & Silver Haired Witch (Noriaki Yuasa,1968)

Whether by accident or design, 1968 seems to have been a bit of a banner year for Japanese horror films, with such weird delights as The Living Skeleton and Genocide appearing from Shochiku, ‘The Snake Woman’s Curse’ unleashed via Toei, and Kaneto Shindô’s arthouse kaidan classic ‘Kuroneko’ released by Toho. It was the struggling Daiei studios though who seemed to be leading the pack in this mini-boom, not only fighting The Great Yokai War, but also managing to squeeze a whole host of late period kaidan pictures into their ’68 release schedule, including Tokuzô Tanaka’s ‘The Snow Witch’ and Satsuo Yamamoto’s ‘Kaidan Botan Dourou’ (aka ‘Bride from Hades’), amongst others.

A somewhat more off-beat entry on Daiei’s ’68 scorecard however comes in the form of ‘Hebi Musume to Hakuhatsuma’ (literal translation: ‘Snake Girl and Silver-Haired Witch’), an interlinked adaptation of two stories by flamboyant horror manga pioneer Kazuo Umezu, brought to the screen by Noriaki Yuasa, a director best-known for his tireless work on the Gamera series.

Shooting in no frills, regularscope black & white (whether for budgetary or aesthetic reasons who knows, though either explanation is plausible), Yuasa here succeeds in pulling off that rarest of feats: a film that mixes full-on horror with childlike whimsy without betraying either side of that equation, meaning that Umezu’s child-orientated tale of what happens when your attic-dwelling big sister turns out to be a blood-thirsty snake monster emerges as a movie both spine-chilling and delightful in equal measure – a singular piece of fantastic cinema that could appeal equally to viewers of all ages, assuming they’re not too adverse to a good dose of horror-y business.

A pre-credits sequence depicting the murder of a maid in the basement home-lab of natural history specialist Dr. Nanjo sets the tone nicely, as the usual ultra-ominous Japanese horror music accompanies an opening shot of a hairy, clawed hand lifting a snake from its cage, swiftly followed by a graphic death-by-snake that proves extremely creepy, if none too convincing.

This leads us into a wonderfully pulpy credits sequence, the camera drifting across a panorama of dinosaur bones, oversized test tubes and other mad scientist ephemera as lightning flashes, rain hammers the windows and somebody on the soundtrack goes nuts on the theremin. Needless to say, the possibility of my not enjoying this film is already fading fast.

As the story proper gets underway, we are introduced to our heroine Sayuri (Yachie Matsui), daughter of the aforementioned Dr Nanjo, a plucky yet rather somber young girl who finds herself leaving the safety of the convent boarding school she has known for many years and returning to her family home, where, uh, things are not well, to say the least.

Sayuri’s mother, we are told, is very ill following a head injury received in a car accident, and as such, she seems a little distant and disconnected, descending the stairs in the manner of a gothic heroine and apparently regarding everything around her with a great deal of uncertainty. Dad meanwhile seems like a nice chap, irrespective of all the weird stuff he keeps in his basement, but unfortunately he announces shortly after Sayuri’s arrival that he must fly to Africa immediately to study a new species of poisonous snake that has been discovered there. Such is the life of a leading specialist in rare reptiles and creepy-crawlies I suppose.

This leaves the balance of power in the household largely resting with bossy housekeeper Shige, and it doesn’t take long for Sayuri to figure out something a little more tangibly strange is going on here. The mysterious stranger who stares at her through a hole in her bedroom ceiling provides the first clue, and when this unseen interloper progresses to dropping live snakes on her pillow, and her mother responds by ordering her to perform her devotions before a household shrine from which a ghostly, living face stares back…. well I think it’s safe to say we’ve reached the “get the hell out of there straight away!” stage in record time.

During its first half hour, ‘Snake Girl & Silver Haired Witch’ sets out quite a smorgasbord of familiar horror tropes, from the weird doctor father, to the reclusive wife who’s gone a bit mad, the clawed monster killer and the ubiquitous ‘watcher in the attic’ mythos (presumably a direct reference to the famed Edogawa Rampo story of that name). Later on, things open up a little to take in elements of the inevitable “mutant / sub-normal family member secretly locked in the attic” sub-genre, throwing in the ever-present silver-haired witch of kaidan tradition for good measure, and even trying out a few riffs on the old “woman with disfigured face becomes monster” routine. Quite a line-up of thrills and chills there for us to get to grips with, and thankfully the script allows all of these ingredients to percolate for a good long while before we’re eventually given something like the full story.

Style-wise, Yuasa matches this surfeit of narrative elements with a wealth of gleefully executed horror imagery. From the threatening shadows and staring, lizard-like eyes of the snake-sister in the attic to the flashes of lightning throwing shadows on wall-partitions in classic kaidan style, the rich chiaroscuro lighting and gothic, western-style furnishings of the Nanjo house and the gratuitous close-ups of snakes and scorpions in Dad’s basement, the atmosphere here is laid on thick enough to slice up and serve for supper.

Whilst the make up and visual effects here are sometimes crude, they are never less than imaginative, and Yuasa proves a capable ring-master for the film’s numerous monstrous goings-on, deploying what we can assume was a fairly limited effects budget for maximum audience impact. In particular, the first full reveal of the snake girl, briefly glimpsed as Sayuri sees her sneaking through the dark of her bedroom at night, is absolutely fucking terrifying. A bit too slow and sinister to really count as a ‘jump scare’ maybe, but I’d still defy any viewer to not be thoroughly shaken up by it – a classic horror movie moment, perfectly executed.

Such shock moments serve to highlight just how resilient our young heroine is in the face of mind-bending horror, as Sayuri seems to retain her composure through a succession of sights and sounds that would send most adults screaming in terror. I mean, when was the last time you saw a horror movie in which a protagonist calmly accepts the notion that she will henceforth share a bed with the were-creature she has previously seen stalking around in the dead of night sporting glowing eyes and reptilian fangs? Nothing seems to phase Sayuri, and her quiet reticence, capable manner and determination to rebuilding a loving family life against all the odds certainly makes her one of the more likeable child protagonists in horror movie history.

Opting to use a child as the central character is of course one of the main things that leads ‘Snake Girl..’ toward its unconventional mixture of kid’s movie whimsy and grown up horror, and, if we’ve mainly been discussing the latter here so far, the former element really comes into its own during a series of absolutely spectacular, kaleidoscopic dream sequences, during which the filmmakers really go all out to try to replicate the oneiric / psychedelic drift and scratchy visual overload of Umezu’s groundbreaking manga artwork.

Accompanied by a delicious soundtrack of ‘Carnival of Souls’-esque wurlitzer unease, these dream sequences really come out of nowhere, stretching the movie’s sense of reality to breaking point. Once they get going, they really throw the kitchen sink at us too, as poor Sayuri’s sleeping spirit is subjected to a cavalcade of spinning hypno-wheels, floating kabuki masks, slo-mo dream flights through tunnels of pulsing light, leering white-haired hags with detachable floating werewolf hands, a doll-like ‘Alice in Wonderland’ dream avatar, further snake-related hullaballoo and even a somewhat unconvincing rubber spider attack - all employed by the movie’s malign forces in an attempt to freak out unflappable heroine yet further, treating us to some of the most delightfully unhinged in-camera special effects ever seen in Japanese cinema in the process. Really way-out stuff, these sequences will prove obvious highlights for any dedicated weird world movie fans in the audience, and you won’t be surprised to learn that most of the screen-grabs I’ve posted at the top of this review are harvested from them.

Running parallel to all this though, ‘Snake Girl..’ also functions to some extent as a decidedly grown up dysfunctional family drama, following the secret sister / snake girl’s introduction to the story in the solid, ostensibly non-supernatural shape of Tamami (Mayumi Takahashi).

Confined to the attic and kept out of sight of both her father and the world at large on the dubious logic that she’s a bit grumpy and “can’t learn a thing in school” (hey, don’t look at me, that’s the only explanation the fan-subbed dialogue gives us), Tamami’s in her non-snake incarnation is revealed to be a petulant, bullying older sister with heavy self-esteem issues, and the rather uncomfortable intimations of child abuse relating to her confinement are quickly swept aside as the film begins to focus instead on Sayuri’s valiant attempts to befriend her troubled sister, and upon the hidden power that the aggressive Tamami seems to wield over the more fragile adult women of the household.

And where, you might ask, does the noble Dr. Nanjo fit into all this? Well, curiously enough, Sayuri’s father is treated throughout as a compassionate, nigh on saint-like figure, with the film inviting us to believe that he is completely ignorant of all these malicious goings-on in his household, even as viewers familiar with the perhaps more cynical logic of Western horror films will no doubt be left screaming at such an eminently questionable loose end in the plotting. (I mean, reclusive scientist father with a basement full of caged snakes and over-sized chemistry equipment + daughter who seems to transform into a snake monster at night = you do the math!)

At a push, the combination of this saintly father figure and the equally estimable ‘big brother’ character (a happy-go-lucky young guy who works at the Convent school and turns up at irregular intervals to offer Sayuri nuggets of upbeat life advice) could seem to push ‘Snake Girl..’ (presumably accidentally) into that weirdly misogynistic realm of socially conservative melodrama that will sadly be all too familiar to viewers of vintage Asian and Indian films. (Y’know the kind of thing – where the men in a family remain lofty, noble figures, unaware of the conflicts and machinations of the weak and/or scheming women stirring up trouble beneath them, and so forth.)

After the movie takes this turn toward more domestic concerns in its second half, the responsibility for providing scariness increasingly shifts to the aforementioned silver-haired witch, whose appearance, cool though it is, eventually sets things up for a regrettably rushed and silly conclusion that very nearly destroys the not inconsiderable wealth of audience goodwill the film has built up by this point, with an inexplicable action showdown on a convenient building site scaffold (anyone else get sick of that particular trope?), and a fairly witless Scooby Doo-esque wrap up that seems to imply that all the preceding events were the work of purely human villainy, irrespective of the numerous instances of blatantly supernatural business we’ve already been shown. All a little suspicious if you ask me, especially with the good Doctor getting off scot-free on his convenient post-showdown return from Africa.

At the end of the day though, such flaws (presumably the fault of either rushed scripting or the difficulties of combining two separate manga stories into a single narrative) are eminently forgivable in the face of ‘Hebi Musume to Hakuhatsuma’s manifest strengths.

Whereas the same studio’s ‘The Great Yokai War’ seemed uneven and confused in its mixture of juvenile and adult impulses, Yuasa’s film skillfully blends them into a cohesive whole whilst also taking on board all of the visual ambition and imagination of the aforementioned film, resulting in a gloriously atmospheric dose of pulpy horror, delivered with a charm and conviction that – prior to its conclusion at least – easily wins it a space alongside such eerie, all-ages classics as Jaromil Jires’s ‘Valerie and her Week of Wonders’ and Richard Blackburn’s ‘Lemora: A Child’s Tale of the Supernatural’. Splendid viewing in other words, and another great addition to Japan’s oft-neglected legacy of horror/fantasy cinema.

(The poster below advertises a triple feature, combining ‘Hebi Musume to Hakuhatsuma’ with ‘Gamera vs Gaos’ (1967) and ‘Warning From Space’ (1956). Respectfully borrowed from Tokyo Scum Brigade.)