Lone Wolf and Cub

I’ve always loved movies, ever since I was a kid. A lot of my childhood was based around watching films, whatever I could whenever I could. One of my fondest childhood memories was staying up late to catch the weird and wonderful films they’d play past midnight. That’s how my love of westerns was born, from staying up to 3am with my dad and younger brother watching ‘A Fistful of Dollars’. It’s also how I got my love of Asian movies, particularly the weirder, sexier, gratuitously violent ones. Back in my childhood of the nineties, foreign cinema was still a niche (you certainly wouldn’t be seeing any in the cinema) and was not often played at primetime slots on regular television. Instead they tended to play these so called ‘world movies’ late at night. Only they didn’t tend to play the family friendly, mainstream, ordinary movies. No, instead they played the most violent, gruesome, explosive, sex-filled titles they could, filling the late night with action and horror films with more blood than sense, and all of it uncensored. And I absolutely loved it.

Those were the golden years for me. I loved staying up late to catch those movies, or taping them on VHS. It wasn’t just the promise of ultra-bloody violence and bare breasts, two things I held in high regard (and still do), but the promise of something exciting, new and, most importantly of all, different. That was how I got my first exposure to Godzilla movies, to the weirdness of Takashi Miike and my favourite schlocky kung-fu horror/adventure film ever, ‘The Seventh Curse’.

But perhaps the most common staple of late night movies, and the basis to some nostalgic memories, was the Lone Wolf and Cub series: six films detailing the gloriously violent adventures of an assassin who pushes his infant son around in a pram decked out in various weapons. They were ridiculous and gruesome and a lot of fun. As the years have gone by, nostalgia has built up in that way it does and made me determined to go watch those movies again. So I’ve tracked them down on DVD and watched through them. I’m going ambitious here and reviewing the entire series. Well, maybe not ambitious – the films are all pretty similar – but whatever.

Let’s start with the series’ premise, as outlined in the first film. Ogami Itto is the executioner for the Shogunate, a position of great power and respect. A stoic and exceptional swordsman, possessing a body shape that can only be described as ‘tubby’, Itto assists lords ordered or forced to commit seppuku, decapitating them and acting as an agent of the Shogun’s will. The Yagyu clan, the Shogunate’s order of spies and assassins, are secretly evil with a Shadow-Clan sect led by the cunning Retsudo. They want to eliminate Itto and take his post as executioner for themselves, so they frame him for treason against the Shogunate and murder his wife. Itto doesn’t take it lying down – he decides to become ‘a demon’ by dedicating his life to slaughtering the Yagyu clan. He even takes his three year old son Daigoro with him on his murder crusade, pushing him along in a baby cart and becoming an assassin for hire to fund his revenge. Thus they become the ‘Lone Wolf and Cub’. That’s the premise for the series, though each one typically involves Itto travelling somewhere and being hired to perform an assassination while the Yagyu make attempts on his life.

In the first, ‘Sword of Vengeance’, Itto is hired to assassinate a group of brigands who are planning on killing a local lord. He finds himself seemingly unarmed and outnumbered, though reveals he has some tricks up his sleeve (or, more accurately, in his baby cart). Throughout the film we get Itto’s entire backstory that details his conflict with Retsudo and the Shadow-Yagyu clan. It’s a fun movie, but really it’s nothing more than an introduction for the series. A lot of the film (which is fairly short, as is every film in the series) is made up of flashbacks detailing Itto’s situation, so the main plot is less interesting. It’s like the first episode of a TV series; it introduces you to the set up and characters and leaves it open for what will happen next. Even the main conflict of the episode, the brigands, end up nothing more than an excuse for Itto to show off the weapons in his deadly baby cart. He slaughters them like they were nothing (though that’s true of most of the threats in the films). It is a fun movie, and acts as a mission statement for the series.

In the second, ‘Baby Cart at the River Styx’, Ogami is hired to assassinate a spy who has stolen the secrets to a much sought-after dye that will ruin a village if it gets out. The spy is being guarded by three brothers who are expert fighters. At the same time, a clan of ninja have teamed up with assassin Sayaka, who has her own team of lady fighters, to hunt down and kill Itto. The action in this one is pretty much relentless – Itto is constantly fighting either ninja or lady fighters even before he gets his mission. It gets to the point where Itto basically collapses due to the exhaustion of constantly having to fight people. It’s also the goriest in the series, with every fight ending in people getting mutilated. One scene, showing the skills of the lady assassins, has a guy get cut apart until he’s nothing more than a torso (which still moves). The final fight, in the sandy dunes of a desert, is good looking as well, culminating with one of the biggest blood geysers I’ve ever seen in a movie. I think this is my favourite one of them all – it keeps it tight and exciting throughout, has the best gore and action and is just really fun.
 

The third, ‘Baby Cart in Hades’, has Itto get hired to kill a corrupt lord who has a small army at his disposal. Itto also meets Kanbei, an honourable samurai who is now working for highway bandits and questioning his path, who wishes to duel Itto. This movie is much slower than the preceding film, to the point where not much happens for the entire first hour (barring a long scene where Itto is tortured just to show how tough he is). The other films typically dealt with two conflicts at the same time – the Yagyu threat and Itto’s assassination assignment – but this one focuses solely on the assassination, which in itself isn’t very interesting. The finale attempts to make up for this by being a big step up compared to the first two films in terms of body-count – Itto fights about fifty guys. It’s still fun in parts, and the scenes with Kanbei are really well done (with philosophical discussions as to what living by the sword really means), but overall it’s less interesting (and less gory) than the other films, and one of the weakest in the series.

 

In the fourth, ‘Baby Cart in Peril’, Itto is hired to kill a female assassin named Oyuki. She is out for revenge against those who have wronged her, and distracts her opponents by fighting bare chested. Itto also comes against Genrudo, Retsudo’s outcast son who had once almost bested Itto for the position of executioner (a sort of retcon as to why the Yagyu hate Itto so badly). Retsudo also turns up (the first time since the first film) to attempt to kill Itto personally. The scenes with Genrudo are kinda weak (they build up his fight but it’s over in seconds not even halfway through the film), but Oyuki is an interesting counterpart, similar to Kanbei from the previous film, and the finale against Retsudo and his forces, fought in a rocky trench, is cool. This is a good one – it brings more gore and action and is overall a better movie than its predecessor.

The fifth, ‘Baby Cart in the Land of Demons’, is another weak one. Itto is hired to retrieve a document that holds the fate of a clan whose wayward lord has made multiple poor decisions – he is also hired to ‘clean house’ for the clan’s benefit. There’s a subplot involving Daigoro and a lady pickpocket that has nothing to do with anything, other than to fill in time at the beginning. There isn’t as much gore or action here, and the story just plods along. Itto has a weird sort of philosophical debacle that stalls the main narrative. One of his numerous targets is a priest who questions Itto’s resolve so momentarily he abandons his mission, only to later have no problem lopping off the head of a five year old girl. It also has largely the same problems as the third film – a weirdly plodding pace and strange detour scenes (a part where Daigoro is publicly flogged mirrors Itto’s torture in being drawn out and not very interesting).

‘White Heaven in Hell’ is the final film in the series, though it doesn’t actually end the story. This time Itto comes against the Yagyu directly. Retsudo, with the reputation of the Yagyu Shadow-Clan tarnished, finally mobilises his full forces against Itto, including his dagger-wielding daughter Kaori, his crazed illegitimate son Hyoei, dozens of ninja and soldiers and he even gets the assistance of the Earth Spiders, zombie assassins who can burrow through the earth. The Earth Spiders stalk Itto and kill everybody he talks to or meets on the road, making life hell for him. There is no assassination plot in this movie as it focuses on the Yagyu trying to kill Itto, which makes it feel a bit sparse – we don’t even get that much of Itto or Daigoro, they’re almost side characters outside of the action scenes. There’s not much to it overall, and not even the weird detours into what’s going on in the Yagyu family (mostly detailing how Retsudo’s quest to kill Itto has completely ruined it) can spice things up much. A lot of the encounters are a bit weak – Hyoei dies pathetically in an uncomfortable way (while bleeding to death from a sword slash he rushes home to rape his sister for some reason, then Retsudo kills them both), and the Earth Spiders are taken out so anticlimactically it’s a joke (even Itto says it’s pathetic). The finale is ridiculous goofy fun though (Retsudo leading an army of skiing soldiers to attack Itto, who is using the baby cart as a sled), so they end things in a fun way with the biggest battle in the series (though not the goriest) and the biggest bodycount, though it doesn’t give any real closure when it ends.

 

Ogami Itto is a freaking hardcore psychopath. When you get right down to it, Lone Wolf and Cub is a story about a man who takes his infant son to watch him kill people. The best part has to be Itto, following his wife’s death and decision to get bloody revenge, making his one-year old son decide his fate. He presents the baby bubby Daigoro with a sword and a ball – if the boy goes for the ball, Itto will kill him and send him to the afterlife with his mother (something Itto considers to be the more peaceful option), while if he goes for the sword he’ll take him on his murder crusade. Itto even acknowledges that his infant son is unable to understand or comprehend what he’s telling him, but does it anyway.

A big fun inconsistency is that despite being considered an honourable swordsman and follower of the samurai code, Itto cheats and fights dirty all the time. If he isn’t using nasty hidden weapons on his cart, he uses decoys, lures and various tricks to mess up his opponents. Another piece of fun is how, despite his reputation (and the hundreds of folks he’s killed without blinking), people still either underestimate him or think they can beat him in a fight (even when they’ve seen him just murder somebody). Another inconsistency comes in Itto’s ‘protection’ of his son. In most cases Itto tends to leave Daigoro to his own devices, or Daigoro will wander off (usually towards food or music). The situation usually sorts itself out in a lot of these films. In fact, Daigoro himself is something of a non-entity – despite the title and main premise of ‘assassin and his son’ Daigoro never really says or does anything. He’s like a prop at times.

Hardcore is also the best way to describe the series in general. Hell, the first film begins with a child being executed (by Itto), has a woman get raped to death, has Itto be forced to have sex with a prostitute under duress and is really gory to boot. The violence in the series is bloody to a ridiculous degree. Every sword slash is immediately followed by massive sprays of blood, and heads and limbs are regularly lopped off. The movies don’t shy away from grim stuff, with murder, suicide, rape and torture being featured prominently, though I’d say the movies tend to take a bit of a lax approach to it all. They’re ultimately silly movies, even if they take the ideas of honour and feudal politics seriously.

 

While I wouldn’t call it masterclass filmmaking, the movies are good looking for what they are (essentially pulpy 70s samurai movies) with authentic, historically-accurate looking costumes and sets. Many locations are also quite impressive in their beauty, as Itto’s long journey takes us to rocky beaches, desert dunes, snowy mountains, lush forests and rushing rivers. Coupled with the set and costume design, it tends to look pretty great. They really capture the feel of natural Japan.

The weirdness of feudal Japan’s politics and culture come into play in a big way. In the first, when the Yagyu initially come to kill Itto, Itto gets away by wearing robes with the Shogunate’s symbol – the Yagyu aren’t allowed to strike him because doing so will be considered treason (you can’t damage even the symbol apparently). What you can and can’t do in various political feudal situations is a big deal in a lot of these movies, as is the correct way of keeping face and the way of the samurai. There are a lot of characters who are perfectly fine with dying, with many sacrificing themselves unto Itto’s blade so their masters can be sure of his identity. A lot of villains also use themselves as sacrificial pawns, allowing themselves to be stabbed or struck down to distract Itto (a ploy that gets used in almost every movie and absolutely never works).

While by the series end hundreds of men will have been cut down and hacked up, women really get a rough deal in the series. While it might be historically accurate in some cases (some of the films detail, in depth, the trials and tribulations that being a woman, performer, prostitute or wife in feudal Japan entailed), basically every film involves something really bad happening to women. The movies don’t pull punches either, there’s a lot of rape and murder of innocent women thrown in. Even weirder are the scenes where Itto has to interact with a woman (because the man seems unintentionally awkward around them). In the first he has to sleep with a prostitute under duress (which is funny because he’s so stoic and tubby), while in the second he strips his female nemesis nude so they can use their body warmth to survive the freezing cold. It’s really weird, but the film handles it so seriously it’s funny.

While there are only six Long Wolf and Cub films made in the early seventies, they did have a resurgence of popularity in Western countries in the eighties in the form of ‘Shogun Assassin’, an American dubbing that took the second film and edited some of the action scenes from the first film in. It changed the story, simplifying it vastly by removing all of the political and cultural aspects and had Daigoro narrate the events (because American films absolutely love to have a narrator explain everything). In that respect they at least used Daigoro for something more than a prop, but at the same time the story of revenge is silly because of a lack of understanding and weird changes. Itto’s fee for assassinations (which was 500 gold pieces in all six of the original movies) is now ‘ten gold pieces’ (why so low?), Retsudo is now ‘the Shogun’ (which means nothing in the edited film’s context, especially since Retsudo just looks like an old bearded homeless person), and Itto’s assassination target is now ‘the Shogun’s brother’. While I won’t claim the original films had perfect, in-depth stories, this oversimplification is really silly, especially with the added narration. The film is still fun, since they just got the best film in the series and mashed in scenes from the original then dubbed it over, but the Japanese versions are still better.

Lone Wolf and Cub is a fun series. It was fun when I was a kid, and it’s still fun now. One comment easily made is that the films sort of lack a sense of improvement or progression – they’re all pretty similar in feel and there isn’t too much of a difference between them besides the almost TV-series like ‘conflict of the week’ plots, but it’s understandable when you realise how quickly they were churned out. All six films were released in a three year period, between 1972 and 1974, which is insane when you think about it. I know a lot of filmmakers and film studios tend to want to ride the popularity train fast and hard, but that’s overkill in such a short period of time (though Godzilla largely did the same thing with almost yearly film releases). But even that doesn’t really mar the overall quality – they’re still well made, with beautiful scenery and sometimes really atmospheric moments, but the urge to rush them out seems to have dulled the creativity.

So that’s Lone Wolf and Cub done. I won’t be bothering with a review score, though I consider the first, second and fourth films the best (followed by the sixth, while the third and fifth are weaker). If you could only watch one, go for the second – it’s the most fun and gruesome of the lot.