Chokugeki! Jigoku-ken

I'm currently battling a long standing and gravely serious addiction to 70's B-pictures. Blaxploitation, kung-fu, pinky violence, spaghetti westerns, monster movies, Russ Meyer flicks, Italian crime movies - the effects of such an addiction can be gargantuan. However, the crime of many artifacts from the dead era of true 'trash' cinema is that they simply tend not to quite live up to their own hype. See, all these movies had was poster art, outrageous titles, taglines and perhaps one star attraction (like Sid Haig, Franco Nero or star of The Executioner, Sonny Chiba).

However, there is on occasional a movie that comes you way which meets and exceeds your wildest fantasies - Mario Bava's Rabid Dogs, Larry Cohen's Q The Winged Serpent, Giuliano Montaldo's heist film Grand Slam, Sergio Corbucci's Death Rides a Horse - these are all movies that are actually as good as they sound. The Executioner is one such film - it will surpass your wildest grindhouse dreams.

This movie is so stacked with raw humour, outrageous action scenes and sheer entertainment factor that it almost goes beyond belief. I simply can't overstate the pleasure that awaits you with this one - get some friends together, get some beers out, maybe roll yourselves a 'camberwell carrot' or two, and bask in the absurdity and outlandishness of this - Sonny Chiba's FINEST, most hilarious film.

It'll will restore your faith in exploitation films... and maybe, just maybe it will be the best 90 minutes of your entire life.

This film starts out with an older guy and a young (and very attractive) lady recruiting three karate experts to take on a dope ring. Sonny's character was trained in the ninja arts, but has fallen on hard financial time. One of his cohorts is an ex-cop who is now a hit man and the other is a sleaze ball who Sonny has to break out of prison. After some cheap attempts to develop the plot and Sonny kicking ass, they go after the syndicate head while he's having some kind of party.

It's a little weak on the plot and there's way too much of the sleazy guy trying (in vain) to hook up with women, but it does have some pretty cool karate action. Sonny and the ex-cop banter back and forth, which gets a little annoying after a while. The sleazy guy doesn't really do much, except for shamelessly hitting on women (his character didn't advance the plot a whole lot), and some of the other karate experts were unremarkable.

Recommended only to true blue Chiba fans.

A group of gangsters are sent on a mission where upon they will fight lots of kung fu battles and scream a lot. There will be double crosses and chases and lots of kicks and flips.

The tone of this movie is all over the place with wackiness and goofiness mixed in with the fighting and violence. It's nowhere near as good as some of Chiba's best but it still has his level of charm and brutality that is enough to get your through the brief run time. Maybe Chiba super fans will get the most out of it, but otherwise I'd say stick to stuff like THE STREET FIGHTER for better era Chiba madness and fun.

In order to bust a gang of drug smugglers the law can't touch, two cops hand in their badges and hire a ninja and a pervert to take the bad guys on! Hey, don't look at me, I didn't write it :p I keep trying to like Sonny Chiba films, but have been consistently disappointed (I've liked films he's been in, such as Stormriders, but not films he's starred in). But I keep trying, because it's clear a man of such martial arts talent *should* be able to pull out some great films. Finally I've found one that, for me, realises Chiba's potential - THE EXECUTIONER - and I realised that the problem with most of the other Chiba films I've seen was a complete lack of ninjas! Chiba plays the heir to the leadership of the Koga ninja clan, whose grandfather puts him through arduous training as a child so that the clan's skills will survive. When he's old enough to leave the roost he finds his ninja skills are really not that much use, and just about makes a living as a second-rate private detective. The former cops hook him for their mission with the promise of billions of yen's worth of drug money once they take the dope from the Yakuza that are supplying it.

The 70's knew what people wanted when they went to the cinema - sex and violence! THE EXECUTIONER has little ambition more than to provide us with some of both, though definitely more of the latter. The influence of Bruce Lee is strong, but Bruce would probably never have been involved with something this sleazy. Chiba is like Bruce minus the philosophy and principles - a "bad ass", in other words. There's not a lot more to say about the film really... the plot offers little in the way of surprises, but quite a few cheap thrills and some genuine laughs (the film doesn't seem to take itself too seriously), and Chiba pulls a guy's rib right out of his chest. What else do you want????

I recently watched two immortal Sonny Chiba Karate classics from the great Toei Company in one night, one being "The Street Fighter" (1974) and the other this gem named "Chokugeki! Jigoku-ken" aka. "The Executioner" from the same year. I couldn't possibly say which of these two I enjoyed more, both deserve their status as true greats of Japanese 70s exploitation. Whereas Shigheiro Ozawa's "Gekitotsu! Satsujin ken" is a raw and ultra-brutal film in which the almighty Mr. Chiba plays a ruthless killing-machine of an anti-hero, Teruo Ishii's "The Executioner" is also very violent, but a lot more humorous. I was a fan of director Ishii before seeing this film for some of his awesome contributions to the Pinky Violence genre (such as "Female Yakuza Tale", 1973), and this awesome flick even increased my admiration for the man. "The Executioner" is an incredibly entertaining flick that delivers everything an Exploitation lover could possibly desire - from martial arts and brutal, bloody violence, to wonderfully odd, typically Japanese humor, eccentric characters, sleaze and gratuitous female nudity, a funky score and great cinematography - "The Executioner" has it all.

Three men, the skilled ninja Ryuchi Koga (Sonny Chiba), the deadly assassin and former drug detective Takeshi Hayato (Makoto Satô), and the criminal and death-row escapee Ichiro Sakura (Eiji Go) are assigned to crush a drug ring which, due to diplomatic connections, is unaccessible to the law... All three leading men fit their roles very well, Chiba, of course, being the main attraction. The film obviously took a lot of inspiration from Spaghetti Westerns, most obviously from Sergio Leone's 1966 masterpiece "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly" (the best Western ever made, and probably my personal choice for the best film ever). The 'introduction' of Satô, for example, was almost taken over exactly from Lee Van Cleef's introduction in "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly" - only that this one features explicit gore and loads of sleaze. The character relations are also somewhat resemblant of those in GBU, although the distinction between 'good' and 'bad' is even more vague. Eiji "Tokyo Drifter" Go is the one responsible for most of the funny bits. Sonny Chiba's martial arts are, as always, absolutely amazing, and they come along with loads of brutality. Chiba plays a more likable character here than in the "Street Fighter" films, but he's kicking ass the violent way all the same. Beautiful Yutaka Nakajima, who also played the female lead in "The Street Fighter", is once again a welcome addition in her role here. To sum up: "The Executioner" is brutal, stylish, action-packed and fun in equal measures, and an absolute must for fans of Japanese Exploitation cinema. Sonny Chiba, we worship thee!