Mekura no Oichi midaregasa

I saw a Mandarin dubbed English subtitled version of this film intended for Chinese audiences christened LADY TIGER AND SWORD.

Sister Oichi is a blind swordswoman hired to carry an important scroll of unknown contents, (since she can't see them), to a local scientist. On the journey she helps a pair of homeless teenage siblings and is challenged by a great number of swordsmen who try to take the scroll from her. We eventually learn that the scroll contains a formula for a powerful bomb. A wicked government general has sent an army to attain the scroll against the 13 year old emperor's wishes for the bomb not to be used as a military weapon.

This is another of the many, and understandably, post Hiroshima `big bombs are bad' film plots. CRIMSON BAT may be a poor man's ZATOICHI but Yoko Matsuyama's portrayal of Sister Oichi is pretty fine. Okay so she's no Junko Fuji (Red Peony Gambler) but she has a sweet motherly face which adds an unusual element to her bloody fights. The action & pacing are decent and the setting and costumes are quite lovely.

The Crimson Bat films are an attempt to make a female version of Zatoichi, a blind swordswoman. The films are generally not as successful as the Zatoichi films, partially because Yoko Matsuyama is not the actor that Shintaro Katsu is. Matsuyama is okay, but she doesn't really impress as either a blind woman nor as a swordfighter. Watch Out, Crimson Bat! Is the third entry in the series, and after the second entry (Trapped, The Crimson Bat), the next best entry of the four films.

In this one, Oichi is entrusted to deliver a scroll to a master weapons maker. The old man has retired to practice his art in the countryside. Too bad the local lord is a weapons nut who wants to use the old man's knowledge for personal gain. Oichi meets up with two orphans (a girl and a boy) whose parents have been killed in the lord's experiments with dynamite. Oichi also meets up with not one, not two, but three separate ronin, crossing swords with each before befriending two of the three.

The plot is a bit crowded, but it makes for a quickly paced film. The action scenes are fine, but certainly not astounding. I liked the film well enough, but I am an admirer of samurai cinema. Non-fans should probably drop my star rating one or two stars.

The lady kills an awful lot of people. The movie concentrates on the killing much more than Oichi's first venture which also addressed her feelings for the mother who had abandoned her.

But, as a samurai sword flick, it wasn't too bad. There is a very adolescent girl (I think eighty percent legs) and a boy who looks like he walked off of the set of Dragonballz.

There's not much that I can say about this except that it is one big fight pretty much from beginning to end...