Nemuri Kyôshirô manji giri

Hiroki Matsukata plays Nemuri Kyoshiro in he last of the series of movies. I think he does well in this movie where I would say we see the most cold hearted Nemuri Kyoshiro in the series. He is absolutely not a gentleman in this movie. And there is a fairly high number of rapes in this movie. In general this is really not a good movie to be a woman in.

Swordplay I thought was good and the story okay.

Would I recommend this? Well if you like old swordplay movies I think you will be entertained. This episode is not close to the best in the series and is very dark in my opinion. But I did enjoy watching it.

Hiroki Matsukata is no Ichikawa Riazo, but Matsukata's second - and last - outing as Kyoshiro Nemuri does improve on the actor's first attempt.

The plot involves dolls that a clan is keeping for the Shogun. Nemuri goes on a journey to get two dolls repaired. Members of a rival clan attempt to assassinate Nemuri and steal the dolls. One of these assassins has red hair like Nemuri. As a story, this last entry in Daiei's Kyoshiro Nemuri series holds together better than the previous one, although there are some inconsistencies. In addition, this film portrays Nemuri in the worst light of any of these films and has quite a bit of sexual violence, so a word of caution is needed.

Fylfot Swordplay is not a great film, but it is an okay ending to the series. It is nowhere in the same league as Sword of Seduction (#4), Hell Is a Woman (#10), Castle Menagerie (#12), In the Spider's Lair (#11) , and a Trail of Traps (#9) the best entries in the series.