logo (02/19/83)
'Harakiri' is an older black and white Samurai film. It is incredbile. One is lead thru a serious of emotions, attitudes, and allegences. The film is impactful. I strongly reccommend it. The story is about the life circumstances for a couple of ronin (unemployed samurai). There are a few places that would be problematic for those who are squeemish about blood. A general comment about samurai films, for those who haven't been: Although there is often quite a bit of death and fighting, the violence is usually non-explicit. No arms falling off, often no blood stains on clothing. The camera is cut away just before the blow lands. This may be less true of B grade samurai films and of martial arts films. Can anybody comment one way or the other on that? I also reccommend 'Kagemusha - The Shadow Warrior', a relatively recent film by Kurasawa. David (Reisner) uucp : ...!ucbvax!sdcsvax!logo arpanet : sdcsvax!logo@nosc
nrh (02/27/83)
#R:sdcsvax:-3500:inmet:6500003:000:2016 inmet!nrh Feb 25 12:22:00 1983 A long-time Samurai enthusiast, I'm in a position to comment about the gore level of these films. There's no simple rule for determining in advance how bloody a particular film will be. "Yojimbo", Kurosawa's CLASSIC standard-setting Samurai film, is quite bloody in three places (that I recall) but this is done for effect, and the three scenes (a dog carrying a severed hand, a man who is the victim of a violent beating, and the blood oozing out from under a fatally-wounded samurai) would be hard to eliminate without weakening the film's impact or timing. On the other hand, this is pretty routine stuff for the high-quality and very enjoyably campy Zatoichi series. Both of these productions are mild indeed compared to the ludicrously- violent "Lightning Swords of Death" series. Spraying blood and severed limbs are pretty routine. In this series, the two main characters slaughter at least one medium-sized army (perhaps 100 people) per film. Amusing side note: The "Swords of Death" series is sometimes released as "Babycarriage in the land of Demons", "Babycarriage in the Snow", etc. The reference is to the lethally-equipped babycarriage used by the hero to carry his young son. I believe it was in this series that I saw the depiction of a man being sliced in half (lengthwise). Fortunately, this was a long shot with no detail visible from the shooting distance. On the other hand, I've never seen a Samurai film as grotesque as "Alien" or "The Thing". The severed limbs in Samurai films tend to be pretty cleanly severed. There is little, if any, affectionate dwelling on the insides of people's abdomens. There are violent and painful deaths, but the tend to last only a moment. Believe it or not, I'm a fairly squeamish person. I do enjoy these films, but less for the gore than for the combination of action/adventure, subtle plot, wonderful camerawork, and the hints of Japanese culture (about as much, I suspect, as the hints of western culture that creep into a Western).
mclure (03/09/83)
#R:sdcsvax:-3500:sri-unix:1400009:000:585 sri-unix!mclure Feb 24 23:55:00 1983 Can someone help identify the following movie? I saw it as a youngster and it has stuck in my mind ever since. A skilled samurai has a good friend who is murdered at the hands of the head of a samuari "school" as punishment for something. The hero goes to the school to seek revenge. The resulting battle of this one man against the whole school, winding in and out of the corridors, smashing through rice-paper screens out through the court-yard is amazing. Eventually the hero succumbs but only after dispatching dozens of lesser samuari. Stuart ucbvax!menlo70!sri-unix!mclure
mclure@SRI-UNIX.ARPA (09/18/84)
This is an advertisment for my favorite Samurai movie.
It is showing Tuesday & Wednesday of this week at the New Varsity
at 7:30pm. The name is "Hara Kiri". Below is the description, etc.,
from the New Varsity poster.
Japan 1962, Special Jury Prize at Cannes, 1963,
Subtitled, No Rating
Directed by Masaki Kobayashi.
Stars Tatsuya Nakadai, Akira Ishihama, Shima Iwashita.
A young unemployed samurai requests permission to commit
seppuku on the grounds of a wealthy household, hoping to
be given some money or a job. Instead, he is ruthlessly
forced to carry through with the suicide. His father-in-law
comes to avenge the young man's death, leading to a breath-
taking climax of swordplay.
If this is the movie I think it is (I saw one matching this
description years ago), it is emotionally overwhelming, more so than
the various Kurosawa-directed movies and other Samurai that I've seen,
at least to me.
If you're a Samurai fan, or don't like Samurai in general, give
this one a shot. You might come out of the theatre exhausted as we all
did at the end of the original Star Wars!
Stuart