Sword of Doom
by Kihachi Okamoto
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VHS Tape Cover Information
Actor: Michiyo Aratama, Tatsuya Nakadai, Toshir? Mifune, Y?ko Naito, Yuzo KayamaDirector: Kihachi Okamoto
Cinematographer: Hiroshi Murai
Editor: Yoshitami Kuroiwa
Producer: Kaneharu Minamizato
Producer: Masayuki Sato
Producer: Sanezumi Fujimoto
Writer: Kaizan Nakazato
Writer: Shinobu Hashimoto
Edition: VHS Tape
Format: NTSC
Running Time: 119 minutes
Release Date: 1991-03-28
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Publisher: Embassy/Nelson Ent. - O.B.
Studio: Embassy/Nelson Ent. - O.B.
VHS Movie Reviews of Sword of Doom
Movie Review: An MST3K Candidate
Summary: 3 Stars
To help me review this offering, my daughter of 26 years (and an MST3K fan) sat with me through the whole thing. I appreciated this as you need someone to bounce stuff off of. Her opinion was of great value.
How do I describe this film? It has all of the obligatory items normally associated with a a bad Samurai flic. These include revenge, betrayal, the required rape (and to make it better she becomes his live in common law wife), wandering plot line, new characters introduced throughout the movie, cultural differences incomprehensible to the western mind, no real difference between the good guys and the bad ones. It has gore in the extreme! The TV dripped blood when it was over. To make it even better, they never seemed to know when they had made the point and continued the fight scenes well past their natural ends. Indeed, one would expect that the end would close at least one of the multiple plot lines that hopped and skipped through the film.
Japanese films are much like a Russian novel. It's difficult to keep track of the characters. If you end up liking one, you can bet that they will be mindlessly slaughtered in the next scene. The other feature is that the movie jumps from scene to scene in a confusing way. Indeed, half the fun is trying to guess which scenes have any relevance to the actual story line. In Sword of Doom, I'm not sure any of them did. They set you up for the big fight at the end between the brother of the man that was killed near the beginning of the film and the villain. Never happens. NEVER HAPPENS!!! I swear that they got to the end of the movie and just ran out of film. They stopped the film one scene short of actually finishing the movie. My daughter and I just sat there STUNNED! She looked at me and said "Thats it????". I have no idea what the point of the movie was. No idea at all!
And to make it better, it does have a whore house in it as well as some kinky sword play.
Some random plot points.
Girl (#1) and grandfather making a pilgrimage stop to rest on top of a mountain pass. She goes for water, he prays to Buddha for Buddha to take him away so that his beloved granddaughter can find a man and have a better life. The evil samurai shows up, hears the prayer and kills the guy to answer the prayer. As evil guy walks away he bumps into a thief and takes a swing and a miss with his sword.
Another woman (#2) meets evil guy and begs him to allow her husband to win the non lethal match scheduled the next day. Her families honor is at stake. He agrees to let him win IF she will have sex with him. After the deed, somehow her husband finds out and divorces her. The nonlethal match becomes lethal with evil guy killing the ex husband. On the way out of town he kills most of the students at the local sword school.
Next scene has #2 shacking up with evil guy 2 years later. She has had his baby. Don't get used to this girl, she eventually tries to kill him and he then ends up killing her and the baby.
In yet another sub plot, evil guy is looking for brother of dead hubby to kill him in order to prevent brother from seeking revenge. He joins a conspiracy, and ends up watching all of the conspirators die at the hands of Toshiro Mfune (head of the sword school that brother studies at) while he does nothing to help. Brother sends a challenge, but evil guy loses his nerve and does not show.
Woman #1 ends up being taken in to her uncles house, but while he is away, wife sells the whelp (#1) to the local Lord and chief pervert who likes to undress his dates with a sword. She escapes only to be sold by wife again to a man who takes her to become a geisha in another city (Kyoto).
Evil guy joins another conspiracy and they go to Kyoto. He ends up killing most of that group while in the whore house, girl #1 who is in Geisha training dies. Movie ends abruptly before brother (also in Kyoto - looking for evil guy) gets a crack at him.
Not Oscar material, but certainly an MST3K candidate.
Summary of Sword of Doom
Boasting some of the most impressive swordplay in the history of samurai epics, Sword of Doom is a visceral masterpiece of violent style and powerful substance. Illustrating the timeless adage that "an evil soul wields an evil sword," this highly stylized classic is driven by the fierce and fearsome performance of Tatsuya Nakadai as Ryunosuke, a sociopathic samurai whose soul--and sword--are vicious instruments of evil. Having mastered a highly unconventional style of fencing, Ryunosuke welcomes an exhibition match at a fencing school run by master swordsman Shimada (Toshir? Mifune, in a small but pivotal role), where he kills his opponent after promising not to. Flagrantly violating all codes of honor, Ryunosuke eventually finds himself challenged from all sides; even his own henchmen rally against him, and director Kihachi Okamoto stages confrontations that are as beautiful as they are graphically violent. As Ryunosuke descends into pure, bloodthirsty insanity, Sword of Doom ends with a freeze-frame that's unforgettably intense. --Jeff ShannonArt House & International VHS Video
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