Legend Of The Eight Samurai
Japanese Title: Satomi Hakkenden
Director: Kinji Fukasaku
Actors: Shinichi "Sonny" Chiba, Hiroku Yakushimaru, Hiroyuki Sanada
Year Released: 1983
Genre: Samurai, Action
See Also: Shogun's Ninja, Samurai Reincarnation
When I was 10 my dad took me to see Conan The Barbarian. He thought it was pretty much the best movie ever made. At the time I was in full agreement, but had I seen Legend of the Eight Samurai when it came out, Conan would have been knocked from its top spot. It seems that Kinji Fukasaku has also seen Conan, judging by all the fantasy elements that he's worked into the normally formalized jidai geki (period picture), least of which is a giant attack snake. But more on that later.
Legend of the Eight Samurai is based on material culled from the massive, Edo-period novel Nanso Satomi Hakkenden ("Eight Dog Warriors of the Satomi Clan"), the same source for Fukasaku's Star Wars-rip-off, Message From Space. In amongst the 98 volumes of novel was a back-water story about a princess in distress and her roguish love interest. Sound familiar? It undoubtedly sounded perfect for an audience still hungry for anything Star Wars and a production company (the now megalithic Kadokawa) trying to compete with television and the burgeoning home video market.
Our princess in distress, Shizu (Hiroko Yakushimaru), is on the run from the evil (and when I say evil I mean like undead, skin-flaying evil) clan Hikita. They want Shizu's skin to help restore the face of Motofuji (Yuki Meguro), the clan's leader, who's been waiting for a graft ever since his clan was burned alive by Shizu's ancestors, the Satomi clan, one hundred years ago. On board to add extra evil is Motofuji's mom, a scary-ass high priestess MILF that it appears Motofuji really does, um, you know, F. On the road, Shizu comes across Dosetsu (the ubiquitous Sonny Chiba) and Daikaku, descendents of Satomi retainers from back in the day. They were each born with a mystical crystal in hand, and they're looking for the possessors of six more crystals. Together they will be able to defeat the Hikita and their lax morals.
Don't get too hung up on the plot. It's hard to know if the things the movie pulls out of its ass, like a bad guy-killing flying scroll, are from the original text or just splashy ideas Fukasaku and co-writer Toshio Kamata are coming up with as they go along. It's better to sit back, relax, and enjoy the sets and costumes which are, admittedly, fantastic. Legend of the Eight Samurai had a budget of $1 million, a huge sum for Japanese film at the time, and it's all up on the screen. The Hikita castle is especially outstanding, jammed with multiple pools of colored water and a throne room that puts Indiana's temple of doom to harakiri-inducing shame. The special effects are, surprisingly enough, kept to a minimum, but when the movie gets ambitious, watch out. There's an old woman who claws off her face, revealing a giant centipede (William Burroughs would undoubtedly approve), and of course that giant attack snake I mentioned earlier. Hey, it may require the actors to gather it up themselves and roll around with it, but what other samurai flick is going to go that extra, giant-snake mile?
Where the movie obviously didn't blow its budget is on the music. Frankly, it stinks. Weedy and thin, it rarely goes with what's happening on screen. A smooth jazz sax solo at a climactic moment is particularly cringe-inducing. And the faux-Toto ballad (sung in English, no less!) that accompanies the turgid love scene between Shizu and Shinbei (Japan Action Club regular Hiroyuki Sanada) has to be heard to be believed.
All in all, a fine samurai epic with Conan and Star Wars overtones that contains scenes with a giant snake and centipede, and has bad '80s music. Shall I order your copy for you now, or would like to wait until you find one used?
Otaku Alert: Toshio Kamata, who co-wrote Legend of the Eight Samurai with Kinji Fukasaku, also penned G.I. Samurai and the epic (and frustratingly unavailable) Heaven and Earth.
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