A Lenda dos Oito Samurais

Every once and awhile (Normally among the younger generation, such as myself) you will see a movie and think "Wow, every movie I have ever SEEN has stolen ideas from this!" You will probably be overjoyed, having finally found that one adrenaline pounding action flick that you've always searched for. Thats how I felt when I first saw "Yojimbo" anyway. "BUT!", you say, "this isn't about "Yojimbo"! You need to explain the "Legend of the Eight Samurai"!" And indeed I do, but first, the comparison has to be made. If "Yojimbo" is the movie that every martial arts director has in some way emulated, "Legend of the Eight Samurai" ("LOTES") is the movie that every Japanese made videogame has, in some way, borrowed from. Stop reading if you want to be surprised, but I will present the partial list of comparisons between this film and classic videgames.



Plot Summary: There are a group of warriors (Almost any videogame) who possess Eight Glowing Crystals (The original final fantasy, other crystal-heavy games) which must save a Princess (Mario, Zelda, Lolo, etc.) from an Evil Evil Demonically Resurrected Warlord With Weird Magic Monster Stuff (Castlevania, Final Fantasy, etc.). Along the way, an unlikely hero (almost every videogame ever) will enlist the help of a Ninja Assassin (any videogame from the 80's), the One Bad Guy Who Turns Good at the Last Minute(any Final Fantasy Game), the One Guy Who Can Somehow Use Gunpowder(any Fantasy Setting Game), the Young Boy(every game from Pokemon to Zelda). In the course of the movie, the heroes will fight a giant centipede (everything from Abraxis to Zelda), miracously cure all of their wounds with only One Night of Sleep (EVERY game). Actually defeating the final badguy requires the life sacrifice of many characters (Most games), one Ultimate Powerful Bow and Arrow that was forged by good for, well, I don't really know (Zelda), and the ending has the credits roll while a confusingly translated Japanese Pop song plays.

Now, that may have sounded funky, but you REALLY have to see this. If you aren't convinced already, here's one more incentive: it has Sonny Chiba! If you've never heard of Chiba, you should look into his work. The goriness (and hillarity!) cannot be done with more attention to detail than in a Chiba movie.

I started watching this movie because of Chiba. I kept watching because of the Big Freaking Centipede. In the end, I felt like I understood the source of every videogame and anime plot since 1975. You should see this movie even if you don't play videogames. At the least, you'll find it entertaining for the action sequences and the occasionally (And suprisingly well translated) bits of dialogue.

LEGEND OF THE EIGHT SAMURAI, on its most base level, is every kid's dream movie: it has eight (count 'em!) mystical warriors, immortality, monsters and evil deities, sacrifices and heroic deeds, and a pointless breast or two. Unfortunately, the elements of the film fail to tie together into a good, coherent film.

The movie deals with a princess destined to destroy some evil undead guys (unfortunately, they're not zombies, which are always B-movie gold). Told through a confusing Chinese manuscript back story, she is apparently the reincarnation of a martyred girl from generations ago. Over the course of 133 long minutes, she is joined by the titled eight warriors (although I think only two of them even come close to being samurai...), including Sonny Chiba as the typical fighter-dude, a huge cave-dweller and his son, a female ninja assassin, and an evil general who sees the light side...or something.

As earlier mentioned, this movie is one of those martial-arts epics that attempts to cram everything that should be cool into one two-hour feature. This story might work exceedingly well as a video game (Final Fantasy, anyone?) but just as FINAL FANTASY: THE SPIRITS WITHIN failed to convey a sense of a coherent world, LEGEND OF THE EIGHT SAMURAI also tends to focus more on (poorly conceived) set pieces and monsters than atmosphere and action. There are a few good moments to be found in the ending storm of the bad-guy fortress, but the sacrifices made and the triumph attained mean nothing to the viewer due to the huge amount of material thrown in their face. My rating: 6/10

LEGEND OF THE EIGHT SAMURAI (1983) is a live-action Japanese costume fantasy retelling the oft-told tale of eight warriors identified by their receipt of magic crystal balls sent by a long-dead princess to insure protection of her descendants. Here, the eight warriors who receive the crystal balls come together to protect the fugitive Princess Shizu of the Satomi Clan, which has been all but wiped out by the supernatural descendants of the Hikita Clan. The action is larded with fantasy elements, including a couple of monsters (a giant centipede and giant snake) and the long-lived evil matriarch Tamazusa (Mari Natsuki) who stays alive a hundred years after her 'death' at the hands of the Satomi Clan by taking special baths in blood.

Despite the title, there's no mention of samurai in the film's English-dubbed dialogue. The characters refer to each other as ninjas, even though few ninja costumes or accessories are visible. It's an unwieldy film with over a dozen major characters, none of whom take center stage until well past the film's half-way mark. The main focus of the plot is the gathering of the eight warriors as they meet and realize their destiny to protect the princess and attack Tamazusa's castle to destroy the Eternal Spirit who keeps alive the evil remnants of the Hikita Clan. Too much of the film is spent on gathering the eight, a task which is not completed until 100 minutes into the 133-minute film. When things finally get going here, the main characters turn out to be Princess Shizu (Hiroko Yakushimaru) and the reckless young Shinbei (Hiroyuki Sanada) who kidnaps Shizu at one point and travels quite a distance with her before they're reunited with the others. Both are too callow and unformed to be of much interest, while the more exciting characters, such as the loyal retainer Dosetsu (Sonny Chiba) and the female fighter Kano (Sue Shiomi), get far less screen time.

The climactic battle at Castle Tamazusa is rousing and full of action, but it proves too little too late to compensate for the two hours it took to get there. The earlier action scenes are all too short and choppy to generate much excitement. To make matters worse, the English dubbing is particularly horrendous and the tacked-on music score is all synthesizer-created with three incongruous American pop songs (sung by John O'Banion) thrown onto the soundtrack with utter disregard for the historical and cultural tone of the film.

The film is especially disappointing because it was directed by Kinji Fukasaku, a highly regarded director known for Yakuza (gangster) films and the recent box office hit BATTLE ROYALE (2000). His earlier space opera, MESSAGE FROM SPACE (1978), was a variation of the same story told in LEGEND OF THE EIGHT SAMURAI and featured some of the same cast members, Hiroyuki Sanada, Sonny Chiba and Sue Shiomi (who played the princess in that one). Fukasaku also gave us the U.S.-Japanese co-production, THE GREEN SLIME (1968).

On the plus side, LEGEND OF THE EIGHT SAMURAI is quite colorful and beautifully appointed and the special effects are, for the most part, pretty impressive. (The giant centipede, flung about on wires, is the notable exception.) But the film lacks the formal beauty of traditional Japanese samurai films and seems pumped up in style, with the youthful romance played up, in order to suit the 1980s youth audience. For U.S. fans, the botched English soundtrack and over-length are quite fatal, along with the absence of any exceptional action scenes until the very end. The story comes from the 19th century Japanese novel 'Nanso Satomi Hakkenden,' by Bakin Takizawa, which was also the basis for the breathtaking 13-part animated series, THE HAKKENDEN (1990). Elements of the story also turn up in the original 'Dragon Ball' animated TV series.

Satomi Hakkenden will be understood the moment the viewer realizes that the soulful, classically Japanese score is being played on a cheap Casio synthesizer, and that somehow that is good. Being one of the country's very traditional legends (stolen from China), the writers drew from literary sources to make their movie, and it shows. The movie has heaping doses of melodrama, decapitations, and dead children. It also has characters dressed like a costume shop exploded, giant flying snakes hanging by ropes, a truly terrible 70's power ballad love song, and a plot so stereotypically Japanese it can be considered prototypical.

None of that is to say that the movie is bad. All of those things add to the ambiance of the movie. It also contains incredible special effects for 1983, some of the moments are surprisingly poignant, and the fight scenes are great. The plot may be telegraphed from a mile away, but it is still entertaining to watch it all unfold. If you are at all a fan of Japanese culture, you have seen this movie before, in one way or another. Yet if this sounds at all appealing to you, you owe it to yourself to see the original. Satomi Hakkenden deserves a larger spot in great camp history.

Swords and sorcery films are one of my preferred genres and a pleasant pass time for me and when I came across this lesser known gem of a movie; imagine my surprise when (for me at least) it ticked most if not all boxes. In fact this is not a S&S movie like say "The sword and the sorcerer" or the two original "Conan" movies but it is an enjoyable (cheesey) rendition of the genre. It wold be better to say that this is a genre of it's own, namely Samurai, magic and princesses. OK, so what did I make of this hokey and laughable highly enjoyable film? Well...in a nutshell...I really enjoyed it. Slow to start off but stick with it and it grows on you. Of course we have the well known actor Sony Chiba in this (from "kill Bill" as if you don't know) which is reason alone to see this. There was one song in this that got stuck in my head and I had to know what it was called. Having hit a dead end using Siri on my iPhone to identify the song I headed to the good ol' internet and IMDb where i discovered that the song was written especially for the dubbed version of this movie and not a bonafied standalone song. Nevertheless I managed to get a copy and play it on iTunes now.I would love to know what other people make of this movie and the soundtrack so if you are into sword, sorcery, samurais and light shows (don't ask) then give this a chance. Hopefully, you'll enjoy it as much as I did.