Part Zatoichi, part Dirty Harry and part Dirk Diggler, Hanzo 'The Razor' Itami (Shintarô Katsu) is an incorruptible Edo-period lawman, highly skilled in the martial arts, and a big hit with the ladies, who are more than happy to tell him everything after receiving a thorough pounding from his over-sized trouser truncheon. In fact, Hanzo is so bad-ass, that he regularly tests his endurance to the limits, suffering extreme pain during prolonged bouts of self-inflicted torture, and dousing his massive member in hot water before bashing it with a stick and ramming it repeatedly into a bag of rice.
After apprehending a small-time criminal (by crushing his nose into a bloody pulp), Hanzo learns that a contract killer named Kanbei has somehow escaped from the island to which he was banished. As he follows a trail of deceit and corruption that leads all the way to the Inner Castle, home to some of the region's most powerful people, Hanzo upsets a few officials, inflicts major damage on those crazy enough to take him on in a fight, and interrogates a few lovely ladies in his own inimitable style.
Although I admittedly lost track of proceedings from time to time (over complicated plot or stupid viewer—you decide), the cool 70s trappings (surreal visuals, split screen, funky soundtrack etc), inventive soft-core coupling, incredibly bloody action (including ruptured eyeballs and assorted nasty wounds spurting geysers of blood), twisted humour, and general craziness ensured that Hanzo was a consistently entertaining piece of exploitation from start to finish.
