Legend of the Eight Samurai, 1983.
Directed by Kinji Fukasaku.
Starring Hiroko Yakushimaru, Sonny Chiba, Hiroyuki Sanada, Yuki Meguro, Masaki Kyômoto, Kenji Ôba, and Mari Natsuki.
SYNOPSIS:
A princess is hunted down by a rival clan, who were destroyed and have been reanimated as demons.
Based on the expansive 19th century novel Nanso Satomi Hakkenden (or The Eight Dog Chronicles), Kinji Fukasaku’s Legend of the Eight Samurai makes its UK Blu-ray debut thanks to Eureka, who have been doing sterling work as of late with their Asian genre releases, so does this continue the trend?
Absolutely it does, because if you have ever dreamt about an energetic mash-up of Star Wars, Flash Gordon and Raiders of the Lost Ark (with a little bit of Conan the Barbarian thrown in for good measure) but set in Japan, then you may have just found your new favourite movie, as Princess Shizu (Hiroko Yakushimaru) is the last surviving member of the Satomi clan and is hiding from the invading Hikita clan.
The Hikita clan are led by the evil queen Tanazusa (Mari Natsuki) and her son Gonnokami (Yuki Meguro), who also happens to be her lover, just to really hammer home how evil she is, and they placed a curse on the Satomi clan before perishing in a fire years before. Now somehow back from the dead (it is never fully explained), the Hikita’s vow to capture and skin Shizu, as they use the skin of Satomi princesses to repair their own disfigurements, but Shizu has found help in the shape of Dosetsu (legendary martial arts star Sonny Chiba), who tells her about the legend of eight ‘dog warriors’ – the only warriors who can break the curse, thanks to their special glowing balls (not like that) – and that he is one of them. On a quest to find the other seven before the Hikita clan catch up with them, Shizu and Dosetsu must do battle with witches, demons, snakes, giant centipedes and each other in order to break the curse and destroy their sworn enemies once and for all.
Containing all the ingredients required for an epic fantasy adventure, Legend of the Eight Samurai starts as it means to go on with a huge matte painting of the Satomi clan’s castle as hordes of Hikita soldiers gather outside. It’s a glorious image – a dark, stone castle set against a blood-red sky – and it sums up the movie as a whole by being huge, epic, evocative and also slightly shoddy; not in a bad way, as this was 1983 and way before CGI could create something flawlessly convincing, but thanks to the curse of HD you can see the joins and that it isn’t super realistic, which gives it charm and an expectation.
And that expectation is fulfilled, as the rest of the movie is just as huge and slightly shoddy as that fake background, and when combined with the energy that you can almost feel coming off the screen like sweat off an exhausted athlete, you have the makings of something special.
The strong cast give it their all, with multi-million selling Japanese pop star Hiroko Yakushimaru giving a particularly wide-eyed and likeable performance as Princess Shizu, as does John Wick: Chapter 4 star Hiroyuki Sanada as Shinbei, a wannabe warrior who kidnaps the naive young princess but may not be as evil as he initially seems. However, the best performance award must go to Mari Natsuki, who not only looks stunning as the evil Tanazusa but also delivers each line with malicious relish, being both seductive and terrifying. The best visual in the movie sees Tanazusa bathe in a lake of blood in order to regenerate, adding not only an erotic edge, but also tapping into a classic horror trope, so this movie really does cover all bases.
Yes, some of the effects are ropey, but actors trying to unravel themselves from giant rubber snakes will never not be highly amusing, and every actor on the screen sells you their particular piece of the overly-convoluted mythology so well that you won’t really want to sit back and try and work out who is who and why they are trying to kill someone else – they just are. Luckily, the HD curse only really stretches to some of the backgrounds as everything else looks surprisingly good, even down to the huge rubber centipede that attacks Shizu, which would probably have looked worse in a po-faced Hollywood action movie, and the Blu-ray overhaul gives the movie a sharp image, full of vibrant colours and lots of detail, even in the darker scenes.
Despite the dynamic direction and breathless action, Legend of the Eight Samurai does have a bit of a lag in the middle, and at 136 minutes long it does feel like it could have been tightened up here and there, but once the scene for the final battle is set and our eight hero warriors square up to the Hikita clan in Castle Grayskull (alright, it isn’t but it may as well be), it’s a heads-down-and-see-you-at-the-finish-line fight to the death that is never anything less than adrenaline-filled excitement. Okay, some of the battles may not be as fast and full of impossible moves like a lot of modern martial arts fight scenes, but this is fighting and not a choreography class, and it tops off a wonderfully executed action-fantasy adventure that draws on the best of the Hollywood blockbusters of the time and blends them into something that feels familiar but is also fresh and thrilling.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★ ★ ★
Chris Ward
