Weirdhouse Cinema: Shogun Assassin

In this episode of Weirdhouse Cinema, Rob and Joe discuss the 1980 grindhouse mainstay “Shogun Assassin,” a western release compiled from the first two “Lone Wolf and Cub” films by Kenji Misumi, highlighting its sizzling action with added electronic score and captivating narration.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.

Speaker 2 (00:11):
Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema.

Speaker 3 (00:13):
This is Rob Lamb and I am Joe McCormick, and
today we're going to be talking about a film from
the year nineteen eighty, the blood drenched samurai film Shogun Assassin. Rob,
this was your pick. How did you get to Shogun Assassin?

Speaker 4 (00:28):
Oh?

Speaker 2 (00:29):
Wow? Mainly because I had subscribed to Criterion Channel in
order to watch Face behind the Mask for a previous episode,
and they have all these little collections in their little
playlists of movies to check out, and they had one
that was just called synth Scores. So of course I
had to dive in and see what kind of movies
they had included there. And they included one film that

(00:52):
I had heard of but I'd never seen, and that's
Shogun Assassin. And so I started playing it like I
think I was eating lunch by myself at the time,
and it was one of those films where before I
knew what had happened, I'd watched most of the film,
you know, like I had other things I really needed
to do that day, but I was already like sucked
into it. It's just if you've never seen it. I

(01:15):
highly recommend diving in as well, because I think it
will captivate most people who watch it.

Speaker 3 (01:21):
It is incredible in many ways, and I can see
why it would be classified primarily in terms of its soundtrack,
because the music in this movie just it washes over
you like a like a dark rainbow. It's just unbelievable.

Speaker 2 (01:36):
Yeah, so I'm really excited to talk about it here today.
I made sure to open up a can of my
Sun Tory Boss coffee here. I'll show it to you. Hear,
Joe did not buy it from a convenience machine on
the streets of Japan. This one is just from Super
h Mart. But they're not sponsoring this episode, by the way,

(01:56):
But I will be drinking my Sun Tory Boss coffee.

Speaker 3 (01:59):
Wait, what is that coffee or is it some kind
of coffee?

Speaker 2 (02:01):
Plus, it's just a coffee. It's inexpensive, like colbrew black
coffee in a can, nice with a fun ly logo
on it.

Speaker 3 (02:09):
I have to try that one sometime. But oh so,
Chogun Assassin is a movie that I think we've done
films of this kind before, though I can't think at
the moment what they were but this is a movie
that is not an original artistic product, but rather is
made out of other products that already existed.

Speaker 2 (02:30):
Yeah, we've talked about pictures on the show before that
exist in different, sometimes drastically different cuts. We recently did
that with Reptilicus. But yeah, today's episode is an extreme
case of something like this. Nineteen eighties Shogun Assassin is
a Western film release edited together from the first two
films in the famous Japanese Lone Wolf and Cub series,

(02:53):
those two films being both nineteen seventy two releases, Lone
Wolf and Cubs sort Of Vengeance the first of six films,
and Lone Wolf and Cub Baby cart at the River Styx,
the second of six films. Warning that you know a
lot of these film titles. The translation is maybe a
little rough, but that's part of its time. So essentially,

(03:15):
the American filmmakers involved here set out to take the
best parts from these two films and stitch them together
into a single coherent narrative featuring, you know, the best action,
the coolest visuals, and all of this built around a
rather simplified plot. I'll describe the ways that they simplified
the plots a little bit as we proceed, but in

(03:38):
essence they're just repackaging these two films for the grindhouse market.

Speaker 3 (03:42):
I would say this movie is very loosely plotted. You
barely need to follow what's going on with the plot
or the machinations. It is more like a demo reel
of sights and sounds, and those sites are samurai action
with blood jets squirting, and the sounds are the dark
scinthed stylings of our composers who will get to later. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (04:05):
Yeah, the plot is greatly reduced here, but in a way,
it also makes it super fun to then dive into
the full cuts of those first two Lone Wolf and
Cub films, which is exactly what I did after watching
Showgun Assassin. All of the Lone Wolf and Cub films
are available on a Criterion channel as well as of
this recording.

Speaker 3 (04:26):
But I'm curious how significantly different is the mood.

Speaker 2 (04:30):
I think the mood is pretty much the same, And
I think that's the really glorious thing about Shogun Assassin
is that it's easy to imagine all the ways that
a project like this could go spectacularly wrong, the way
that it could be disrespectful to the original pictures, but
I do think that the essential vibe is there. So
if you go from Showgun Assassin and you're like, yeah,

(04:50):
I would like more of this, well, the Lone Wolf
and Cub series is more of this, you know, because
it is, you know, the full plot, the full character
development of everything that is in Showgun Assassin that you love,
except for the score, a different score, but still effective
scores in the original pictures.

Speaker 3 (05:09):
So regarding not the original films but Showgun Assassin specifically,
I've read this movie is esthetic described in terms like
poetic exploitation violence, and I think that's a good way
to put it, because this movie feels like it has
two souls at once. It is at once a work
of art and a piece of trashy grindhouse gore. So

(05:33):
on one hand, there really is a kind of poignant,
almost literary quality to the way details are observed in
a lot of scenes. Just one scene of many that
comes to mind is when the young boy is trying
to bring water from the river to his badly wounded father,
and he's trying to carry it in his hands and
it keeps leaking out between his fingers, so he eventually

(05:55):
carries the water in his mouth to his father. I mean,
it's like a almost kind of beauty, full novelistic detail,
and also in terms of style, there is a quite
exquisite vision at play with the composition of the shots
and very again memorable details, strong misancen. But at the
same time, there is a campy Tom Savini Friday the

(06:19):
Thirteenth sensibility operating in quite high gear in most of
the action scenes, with like a real desire to just
see blood squirting and to get the camera all up
in the ridiculous wounds, the cloven heads and all that.
So it's an interesting combination. It's like some some gore
geek exploitation trash and a thoughtful, meditative historical art film

(06:44):
about a samurai father and son were merged into one entity.

Speaker 2 (06:49):
Yeah, like the arterial sprays and there are quite a
few of them, will make your jaw drop and exclaim aloud.
But at the same time, yeah, there are such beautifully
poetic scenes in this picture, Like I cried, I teared
up at times, you know, I shed tears just to
showgun assassin. So it is both things at once. I

(07:11):
think it's a great.

Speaker 3 (07:12):
Point, especially with the music. The music is a Digros theme,
especially that one was it was making me a little misty.

Speaker 2 (07:19):
Yeah, that is a strong track. We'll come back of
that one for sure.

Speaker 3 (07:23):
Now.

Speaker 2 (07:24):
One thing I promise not to do in this episode
is to painstakingly talk about all the differences between Showgun
Assassin and the first two Lone Wolf and Cub movies.
We'll come back to some of these details in a bit,
but just in broad strokes, I do want to mention
that clips from the first film, sort of Vengeance, apparently
amount to only like twelve minutes of Shogun Assassin, mostly

(07:46):
dealing with the backstory of Lone Wolf and Cup of
our Ronan character and the child.

Speaker 3 (07:53):
Oh well, but that's a lot of what the movie is.
I would bet that when people watch this movie and
then think back and reminisce about it, the primary thing
they probably remember is the feeling created by the opening
five minutes or so. Not that the rest of the
movie isn't good, but that is the feeling of this

(08:13):
movie is really established strongly at the beginning, again powerfully moody,
with this strong synth bass melody that plays under Diegoro's
the Child, the Child's narration as he describes the backstory,
and we see these scenes very rapidly cut together. They
condense a lot of story into not much space. But

(08:35):
it's quite effective in my opinion.

Speaker 2 (08:38):
Yeah, that narration by the child is quite excellent, and
that is something that is original to Shogun Assassin. There
is not something like that in the Lone Wolf and
Cub movies. We don't really have his insight or reflection
on what happens here.

Speaker 3 (08:55):
Though his narration continues throughout this movie. I mean like
he gets to tell us how, you know. We see
them pushing the cart through the jungle and they look
around and see monkeys screaming at them, and the kid says,
this is how I get my education.

Speaker 2 (09:09):
Yeah, so I'll come back to some of the details
about the differences, at least the ones that are really
key to understanding what's happening in the picture or why
things are, you know, proceding the way they are. But yeah, basically,
though more time is spent with the characters, of course,
more time is spent with the politics and the background.

(09:29):
More time is spent laying out the duties that ogami
Eto has. That's our main character, the Showgun's executioner. In fact,
the first ten minutes or so the first Lone Wolf
and Cub movie is just ogami Eto about to execute
a young lord, like a child that is the same

(09:50):
age as his own son, on the orders of the Showgun.
This is of course the sort of thing that if
you are a recent viewer of the excellent Hulu FX
mini series Showgun, which is of course more historically based
perhaps in some ways than Showgun Assassin, you'll be familiar
with this sort of thing. But it does just a

(10:12):
great job in the original picture, just laying out like
this is the kind of work he has to do,
you know, he has to do bloody deets for the
Showgun out of a sense of honor and duty, and
at night he prays for the souls of those that
he has killed. And then finally, I should also mention
that both of these films had also already been released
in the US by Toho with subtitles, so it's interesting

(10:36):
to think about that as well. This is not It's
not like Shogun Assassin was the absolute first time US
audience has had a chance to see these films. You know,
at least some moviegoers out there already were familiar with them.
But this was kind of like a you know, a
redistribution or repackaging of these films for a new audience,
and it certainly seemed to have found its audience.

Speaker 3 (10:57):
Well, yeah, that makes me think, what is your understanding
of the original reception history of this movie. Was it
literally like a you know, midnight movie grindhouse kind of
kind of thing.

Speaker 2 (11:07):
That's my understanding. This was like a grindhouse sensation, you know,
in which the expectations for cinema were you know, at
the extreme. People were tuning in to see those brilliant
arterial sprays, the violence and some of the psychedelic sequences,
you know. But and and it's through this that Shogun

(11:27):
Assassin ended up really resonating with various various folks, everyone
from like you know, Quentin Tarantino, members of Wu Tang
clan and so forth. There's a lot here that's been
sampled elsewhere and so forth. So I think it it
also does a great job of just you know, introducing
the world of Lone Wolf and cub to a different audience,

(11:48):
a wider audience, if you will.

Speaker 3 (11:49):
You can think of it kind of like one of
those sitcom episodes where they do a clip show from
the other episodes, but here it's it's a clip show
of Lone Wolf and Cub, so you get a you
get a flavor of the different adventures.

Speaker 2 (12:00):
It's hard to imagine another project doing something like this, though,
Like can you imagine taking say Predator one in Predator
two and then editing them together into one film.

Speaker 3 (12:11):
It would be easier if they had the same main character.

Speaker 2 (12:14):
But yeah, I guess. Or how about Godfather one and
two edited into a single ninety minute film? Call it
Mafia Assassin.

Speaker 3 (12:26):
Brilliant? I love it.

Speaker 2 (12:28):
That's maybe more app because in an effort like you
would have to like boil out, you know, reduce it
and remove all of most of the politics and get
down to just like an ultra simplified like you know, plot,
which is what we have in Shogun Assassin. Well, on
that note, why don't we go ahead and listen to
a little trailer audio. This is from the This is
the trailer to be clear, to Shogun Assassin, not the

(12:51):
original Lone Wolf and Cub films. We're not going to
listen to all of it because it is it's kind
of long, but I want to make sure we get
a little bit of that music and of course, the
nearer saying the title of the picture.

Speaker 4 (13:06):
Return to the vanished kingdoms of ancient times, the journey
through a lost empire of man, wizards, wish and barbaric passions.

Speaker 5 (13:30):
Behold the saga of a legendary warrior, a loving father
who has the power of a dozen armies in one.

Speaker 4 (13:40):
Sweep of his mystic blade.

Speaker 6 (13:44):
This is a story of honor, disgrace, vengeance, massacre.

Speaker 5 (14:00):
A man who became a demon Shogun Assassin.

Speaker 2 (14:11):
All right, so, if you would like to watch Shogun
Assassin and perhaps all six Lone Wolf and Cub films,
it's all currently streaming on the Criterion channel. I've been
really digging this resource recently. There's also a great looking
Criterion collection box set of the six films. Showgun Assassin
itself has been released on Blu ray and DVD, but

(14:34):
I think that one might be harder to grab right now.
But of course, if you have some sort of rental
service at your disposal, be it Videodrome here in Atlanta,
whatever your local video rental option is, or even maybe
the public library, as a listener brought up in the
recent Listener Mail episode, Yeah, don't discount your public library
they might have some Showgun Assassin waiting for you. All right, Well,

(15:05):
let's talk about some of the people involved here before
we get into the plot and so forth. So again,
this is a nineteen eighty film release composed edited together
from two nineteen seventy two films. We can't do justice
to all the folks involved in these different projects, so
I want to mostly single out some of the key
folks from the first two Lone Wolf and Cub films,

(15:27):
as well as key people responsible for the Showgun Assassin cut. Okay,
all right, So starting I think at the top where
where credit is deserved. The director of both Lone Wolf
and Cub films one and two this is Kenji Masumi,
who lived nineteen twenty one through nineteen seventy five. Very

(15:49):
well regarded Japanese film director, best known certainly internationally for
his work on four of the six Lone Wolf and
Cub films that's one, two, three, and five, as well
as his Zatouichi films. His other movies also include nineteen
seventy two's Hanzo the Razor, Sword of Justice and nineteen
sixty six's Return of Damigen. This is a Tokusatsu film

(16:13):
about a giant demon god. I haven't seen these films,
but this was the second in a series that had
started earlier that same year. Like a big statue type dude.

Speaker 3 (16:25):
Well, like a giant statue of a samurai warrior.

Speaker 2 (16:28):
Yeah, exactly, with a scowl on his face and so forth.

Speaker 3 (16:32):
See screenshots of one scene where he appears to be
walking through a parted see ooh, I don't know. I'll
have to flag this one. Come back to it, all right.

Speaker 2 (16:44):
We also have to credit the creators of Lone Wolf
and Cub, two individuals worth singling out here. The first
as Kazuo Kooki, who lived nineteen thirty six through twenty nineteen,
writer creator of He's the legendary Japanese manga writer, novelist, screenwriter, lyricist,

(17:06):
and entrepreneur apparently best known for co creating the Lone
Wolf and Cub series, not only writing it but also
adapting it for the screen. In both of these the
pictures that are used to create Shogun Assassin. He'd continued
to do this with numerous other works of his that
were adapted to the screen, including nineteen seventy two's Hanzo

(17:26):
the Razor. He also wrote a Wolverine story for Marvel.
I think I think it's from two thousand and three
X Men Unlimited Volume one, issue fifty and he is
a member of the Eisner Hall of Fame. And then
the artists that were the manga artists that worked with
him on this was Goseki Kojima, who lived nineteen twenty
eight through two thousand. Yeah, he worked with him on

(17:50):
the Lone Wolf and Cub film, so very much a
part of the original alchemy of bringing this idea of
life on the page. All right, now, turning to the
folks heading up Showgun Assassin, we have we have a
Shogun Assassin director and writer Robert Houston born nineteen fifty five.

(18:11):
So this individual is an Academy Award winning director for
a two thousand and four short form documentary titled Mighty
Times The Children's March. This was produced by HBO and
the Southern Poverty Loss and are dealing with the Birmingham,
Alabama civil rights Marches of the nineteen sixties. Long before this, though,
he played Bobby in Wes Craven's nineteen seventy seven Mutant

(18:34):
Mayhem movie The Hills Have Eyes. What I included it
a still for you here Joe's If anyone remembers, he's
the blonde kid in the T shirt. Okay, yeah, that's him.
That's our director.

Speaker 3 (18:47):
Wow, Pads crossing, I had no idea.

Speaker 2 (18:51):
Yeah. He appeared in a handful of late seventies and
early eighties pictures before heading up the Showgun Assassin project
for producer David Weisman, which would ultimately be released by
Roger Korman's New World Pictures. His subsequent directorial and writing
credits include an array of thrillers, erotica, an episode of

(19:11):
Doogie Howser MD, and of course, Academy Award winning documentary
shorts How Strange. Yeah, all right, now. David Weisman, who
had just mentioned he is credited with as a writer
and a producer on this. He lived nineteen forty two
through twenty nineteen. He was apparently part of a splinter
group from Andy Warhol's factory back in the sixties, and

(19:32):
he went on to produce such films as nineteen eighty
five's Kiss of the Spider Woman. All right, now, getting
back into the original Japanese cast, the actors who bring
this picture to life, it's lone Wolf and cubs. So
let's start with Lone Wolf the character of Ogami Eto,
the Shoguns executioner turned ronan. He's played by Tomisaburo Wakayama,

(19:58):
and he lived nineteen twenty nine through nineteen nine two.

Speaker 3 (20:01):
He brings a lot to this movie in that he
is an absolutely lethal action hero, but he does not
I don't know he he doesn't have a very active aura.
He brings a lot of stillness and patience. Do you
know what I'm getting at here? Yeah?

Speaker 2 (20:20):
Yeah, And I think it's it's something that's easy to
sort of not really process all the way, especially if
you're just watching Shogun Assassin, and maybe if you just
sort of have it on in the background or something.
But it begins to make more and more sense once
you really absorb the character, because you know, he he
doesn't talk much, but it is a full body performance

(20:43):
of kind of this mix of silent honor and determination,
but all of it burning within this scowling husk of
shame and sorrow, Like he is a man who's been
brought low, who's been betrayed, who is marked for death,
you know, and all these circumstances are out of his control,
but inwardly he's remaining true to his principles while the

(21:05):
whole world either turns their their backs on him or
turns their blades on him. And then when he does
unleash his fury, oh man, it's just this fluid artery
severing machinery.

Speaker 5 (21:17):
You know.

Speaker 2 (21:18):
It's the and right down to when he's finished, like
the fluid sheathing of his sword. You know, it's like
a final signature on a regal contract of death.

Speaker 3 (21:26):
Yes, his presence in the action scenes is very much
like a he is a machine where the valve is
closed and then suddenly it explodes open and there is
a release of activity and then it closes again.

Speaker 2 (21:41):
Yeah, it's it's such a great performance. And when you
when you learn a little bit more about Wakayama, like
his background makes sense when you see this, because he
was an accomplished kabuki actor, uh and a judo practitioner
that you know that ended up then getting into film acting.
So I can you can, I can see that, like

(22:02):
that control of the body, fluid movements, and and then
like his his ability to use these often like just
smoldering facial expressions, you know, like where he's not just scowling,
he's not just like well, I'm gonna look like a
like like a badass for this scene. Like, no, there's
the there there's stuff going on behind the eyes and
you can sense it.

Speaker 3 (22:22):
Yeah, there's something more sad and also in a way
threatening about the kind of the blankness that he often brings.

Speaker 2 (22:31):
So yeah, just just a wonderful performance, you know. He
he's mostly known for, you know, for for these films,
the Lone Wolf and Cub films. He's in all of
these Original Six pictures. He also had some starring roles
and some other Toho Martial Arts films, but outside of Japan,
he only ever appeared in two Western films. He pops

(22:54):
up as a coach in nineteen seventy eight's The Bad
News Bears Go to Japan. What, Yeah, I haven't seen
that one. But then he also has has a turn
as a as a key yakuza boss in Ridley Scott's
Black Rain from nineteen eighty nine. Now I haven't seen
that one either. It's, you know, one of Ridley's like

(23:14):
non sci fi fantasy film, so I've never gotten around
to it, but I've seen some stills. He looks like
he has a really smoldering presence, and I think he
gets to deliver a monologue that features the title of the.

Speaker 3 (23:26):
Picture Oh Wow, nineteen eighty nine. Michael Douglas, Andy Garcia,
Kate Capshaw. Yeah, oh this looks worth seeing.

Speaker 2 (23:37):
I remember seeing trailers for it as a kid and
thinking like, oh, it's more Blade Runner, and then I realize, oh, wait,
it's not Blade Runner. This takes place in the real world,
and then I don't watch it.

Speaker 3 (23:49):
But hey, the poster is hilarious. I see Michael Douglas
there with his arms folded, like, yeah, what do you want.

Speaker 2 (23:56):
Yeah, it's like something like an American cop must go
to Japan to track a Yukuza killer or something. I
don't know, but it may be great if you love
it right in and let us know.

Speaker 3 (24:07):
All right.

Speaker 2 (24:07):
So that's our lone wolf, our cub.

Speaker 3 (24:11):
I'm sorry, I'm imagining Michael Douglass doing like Fish out
of Water scenes where he like tries sushi for the
first time, Like, oh, what is this?

Speaker 2 (24:20):
I mean it was the nineteen eighties, but I hope
that's not what Black Rain is. But I know maybe,
so all right. Digoro is played by Akihiro Tamakawa born
nineteen sixty eight. Child actor, cute kid, but like these
are pretty much his only credits. But still I cannot
stress enough how cute this kid is just such a

(24:41):
cute kid. Show any clip that features Lone Wolf and
Cub to anyone in your vicinity, and that will at
least be their one of their comments.

Speaker 3 (24:52):
Cute kid.

Speaker 2 (24:54):
A lot of spraying blood.

Speaker 3 (24:55):
And so forth. He's even cute when he's operating like
the switchblade NYE in his baby carriage.

Speaker 2 (25:01):
Yeah, he gets to kill two. It's one of the
interesting details, all right. The chief antagonist of this picture
is this is kind of confusing.

Speaker 3 (25:15):
Yeah, I was mighty confused by.

Speaker 2 (25:17):
This because when you watch Shogun Assassin, they talk a
lot about the Showgun, and they present the Showgun is
kind of like this evil, paranoid, corrupted ruler who is
just exacting his vengeance and paranoia on the entire nation.
Like that's very much three and that's you know, ed

(25:38):
works within the context of Shogun Assassin. But the character
who they identify as the Showgun is absolutely not the
Showgun in the Lone Wolf and Cub series.

Speaker 3 (25:50):
I was so confused because the movie, the way it's edited,
makes it clear that he's supposed to be the Showgun.
Because like when the narration mentions the show, they always
showed this guy's face. And then I was reading summaries
of the plot that like, say, no, this guy isn't
the Shogun. He's like the head of the Ninja assassins.
And I was like, well, that kind of makes sense

(26:12):
because he doesn't really look like he doesn't have shogun regalia, no,
not at all, And so yeah, it was I had
no idea what was going on here, but I did
call him the Shogun in my plot summary, So yeah,
that's what we're gonna go with.

Speaker 2 (26:26):
Yeah, it's totally fair to call him the showgun within
the confines of Shogun Assassin, but within the confines of
the larger Lone Wolf and Cub series and the other
six movies, this character is Yagyu Rotsuto, and he is. Yes,
he's the head of this group of ninja assassins. He is.

(26:46):
He's not the showgun. He's one of the Shogun's many vassals,
but he is working his own political agenda within the system.

Speaker 3 (26:55):
He really just doesn't have shogun energy either. He does
have big bag energy, but for a Western equivalent, he
feels more like a like a resputant type character. Like
he's supposed to be a wicked mad monk or something.

Speaker 2 (27:09):
Yeah, because that's the look he has, like this like
demon white hair and scowl like he out scowls are
our Ronan here, you know, like he's just it's a
scowl off between these two. But yeah, Gratzudo is such
a great villain in this picture. Even even though he's
largely an orchestrator, we don't see him directly do anything.

(27:31):
And that's ultimately kind of the tragedy here. Because this
character is the long term antagonist of the series. There's
not going to be any payoff with him. This guy
is not getting assassinated. No, despite the title Showgun Assassin,
the Showgun's not getting it in this picture.

Speaker 3 (27:48):
Yeah, the target of our protagonist in the last scene
in the movie is some guy that's like, who is this?

Speaker 2 (27:54):
I think in Showgun Assassin they present him as the
Showgun's brother. Yes, but in the actual movie, the second
Lone Wolf and Cub film, it's like a.

Speaker 3 (28:02):
Guy who is.

Speaker 2 (28:05):
Betraying an Indigo company in order to give trade secrets
to the Showgun. So it's like an entire subplot that
doesn't really direct I mean, it does impact the Shogun,
but it's not the Shogun's brother.

Speaker 3 (28:17):
No, the in Shogun Assassin, they describe him as this
evil lord who's the brother of the Showgun and is
oppressing the people who hire the Lone Wolf.

Speaker 2 (28:26):
But now he's like a corporate defector.

Speaker 3 (28:30):
But like I don't recall if we ever meet him
much in the movie before this, I mean maybe a little,
but yeah.

Speaker 2 (28:36):
Yeah, so at any rate, you can call him Shogun,
you can call him Ratsudo. But this character is played
by Yunosuki Ito, who lived nineteen nineteen through nineteen eighty,
a well regarded Japanese character actor who appeared in more
than two hundred films from between nineteen thirty two and
nineteen seventy nine, with parts ranging from hammi performances, which

(28:58):
I'm to understand are referred to as radish performances in
Japanese culture, because yeah, apparently he wrote a memoir and
it was like, you know, like memoir of a ratish
performer or something, you know. But he played everything from
like comedic characters to memorable villains. His credits include Kuisawa's

(29:19):
films Ikiu in fifty two, Sandjuro in sixty two, High
and Low in sixty three.

Speaker 3 (29:25):
He is.

Speaker 2 (29:26):
He's also known for a dual role in the classic
ninja film Shinobi Nomono, which I think this is one
that we mentioned in passing in our episodes on the Ninjas.
This is a picture from nineteen sixty two and it
was an award winning performance. There's also a picture called
obamb exclamation Point from nineteen sixty four that's said to
be a great example of his comedic work. I included

(29:48):
a still from Obomb where you can see him like
plugging his ears with his fingers and you know, clear
comedic performance here he's.

Speaker 3 (29:56):
Doing kind of a Don Knat's face.

Speaker 2 (29:58):
Yeah, yeah, that style of comedy. So yeah, I love
Eto so much in this as the villain Ritsudo, but
sadly he did not return to play the part in
subsequent films. But here we have just this brooding, demonic
visage of a man just grating with hatred. And I
have to say the English dub in Shogun Assassin, I

(30:21):
feel it does very accurately capture the essence of his
original Japanese language dialogue as well. Just that just that grating,
like teeth grinding level of a venom in his voice. Yeah,
just like you want this guy or you maybe you
don't want this guy to show up outside your door
everything every time you do something wrong, like there in

(30:41):
your place.

Speaker 3 (30:42):
Yeah, they they fit him in well as the Shogun
with the narration, at least because, as Digoro explains that
the Shogun was paranoid and saw enemies everywhere, and this
guy looks like that. He's his eyes are always shifting
back and forth real quick to you know see he's
coming from any corner. He looks suspicious and frightened and angry,

(31:05):
and also has that general look of someone who's like
the not wellness of their mind has affected their body,
Like he looks kind of decrepit in some way.

Speaker 2 (31:15):
Absolutely so, Again, Shogun Assassin does not have time for
all the politics. They simplify everything. But it's a good
at it in terms of just presenting a picture that
the grindhouse audience can enjoy in a villain they can
ooh an a at.

Speaker 3 (31:28):
This movie has so many villains.

Speaker 2 (31:31):
Oh yeah, because we also have we have numerous heads
of different Ninja Assassin clans and I'm not even we
can't even get into all of those but one of
the key ones. But I would say the key one
that also ends up becoming an ally of sorts is
the Supreme Ninja. This is Yagyu Sayaka, played by Keo

(31:51):
Matsuo born nineteen forty three, our female ninja master of
exceptional skill. She's perhaps best known for this role, but
she was also in nineteen sixty nine's Outlaw Gangster VIP
nineteen sixty four is Gata Flesh. In nineteen seventy is
the Vampire Doll.

Speaker 3 (32:07):
So she plays the head of a clan of ninja
who are all women who sort of they do the
operate in disguise and sneak attack stuff. And her ninja
are said to be the best, and she is. I
would say of all the enemies that Lone Wolf faces
in the movie, she is the one who gets closest
to getting the better of him.

Speaker 2 (32:27):
That's right, That's right. But also I think she gets
a little too close.

Speaker 3 (32:30):
To his heart. Yeah, she gets in with a net.
It's hard to beat a net, you know. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (32:36):
Yeah, she's effective in combat against and they have a
great fight scene. I mean, all the fight scenes are great.
But other thing worth mentioning is that in Shogun Assassin
she is I believe dubbed by comedian and actress Sandra
Bernhardt nineteen fifty five. I'm not saying it's a great dub,
but apparently this is Sandra Bernhard all right. There There

(33:01):
are some other like heads of different ninja groups that
we could mention if we have more time, but I
do want to mention that we have not one, not two,
but three Masters of Death in this picture that show
up late in the movie as essentially like the main bosses.

Speaker 3 (33:19):
Their outfits, in particular their hats might be quite familiar
to fans of Big Trouble in Little China.

Speaker 2 (33:25):
Yeah, the Three Storms in Big Trouble and Little China
are clearly based in part in a large part on
the look of the Masters of Death aka the Monks
of Death a ka the Hidari Brothers. They're not sorcerers
like the Three Storms. They are just masters of martial arts,
and they depend on particular weapons. Let's see, what is it,

(33:46):
the like the flying maces, the like the spike gloves.

Speaker 3 (33:52):
Yeah, there's like a like a gardening claws kind of thing. Yeah,
there's a there's like a glove with spikes on the fist,
and there's a club with in it. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (34:01):
So yeah, these are the Masters of Death. The lead
Master of Death is Binma Hidari, played by Minoru Oki
who lived nineteen twenty three through two thousand and nine,
Japanese actor best known for his work in the Lone
Wolf and Cub films, because not only does he play
the lead master or Monk of Death here, but he
returned to the Lone Wolf and Cub series in films

(34:24):
five and six to play his own version of the
chief villain Yagyu ritsudo oh.

Speaker 3 (34:30):
Okay, so he replaces the actor who in this movie
is is twisted into being the shogun.

Speaker 2 (34:36):
Right. Yeah, so the character shows up much later, and
so I believe he is the actor playing the character
when vengeance and or assassination finally does occur.

Speaker 3 (34:47):
Okay.

Speaker 2 (34:48):
He was also in nineteen sixty nine Horrors of Malformed Men,
which we have mentioned on the show before. And I'll
also mention that one of the other Masters of Death
is This is the Karuma Hidari get which weapon he uses.
Is played by Shin Kashida who lived nineteen thirty nine
through nineteen eighty two, a supporting actor best known for
this film as well as Godzilla versus Mecha Godzilla from

(35:09):
seventy four Lady Snowblood two and then two different Dracula films.
Nineteen seventy one's Lake of Dracula in nineteen seventy four
is Evil of Dracula, which I think you could also
maybe referred to as Principle of Dracula. That's one. It's
on my list now. I really want to see Evil
of Dracula. Okay, all right, but let's let's get back

(35:32):
to the music here again. This is what drew me
into watching Shogun Assassin in the first place. And we've
already talked a little about just how about how effective
the synth score is. Now. The original films were scored
by Aikens Sakura and Hideka Sakurai, and I think some
of their original music remains in Shogun Assassin. I could

(35:55):
be wrong on that, but more to the point, we
have this just deliriously great since score added to the picture.
And this is the work of Mark Lindsay for nineteen
forty two and W Michael Lewis.

Speaker 4 (36:07):
So.

Speaker 3 (36:07):
I don't know if I've ever used this term applied
to music before, but sometimes we say of an actor
that we admire that they're really committed to the role,
meaning that they're They're not holding back anything for fear
of embarrassment. They're not trying to be more subtle than
is required. They just go headfirst all the way in.

(36:30):
This is the first movie I've ever seen where I
would say that about the music. The music is just
committed to the feeling. They are not holding back anything.
This just unabashed, pure feeling made into vibrations.

Speaker 2 (36:44):
Absolutely. Yeah, it's just a terrific score. And it's interesting
looking at these two individuals. So, Mark Lindsay was the
vocalist and sax player for the American rock band Paul
Revere and the Raiders from nineteen fifty eight through nineteen
seventy five. Joe, are you familiar at all with Paul
Revere and the Raiders.

Speaker 3 (37:04):
Oh yeah, yeah, I mean this was some of my parents' music.
I remember when I was younger, Like, I remember kicks,
you know, kicks just keep getting harder to find.

Speaker 2 (37:12):
Mm hmm. I this was also some of my parents' music.
I specifically remember going through the records at my grandmother's house.
It would have been like the records of my mom's
and also her sisters, and finding a Paul Revere and
the Raiders album in there. And I remember just thinking, man,
the nineteen sixties just looks so lame, Like this is
the lamest thing I've ever seen, because if you're not familiar,

(37:35):
their whole shtick visually was dressing up as Revolutionary War soldiers.
You know, they had these Revolutionary War costumes, which I mean,
I guess maybe the.

Speaker 3 (37:46):
Best bit I've ever heard.

Speaker 2 (37:48):
Like was it cool at the time. I guess it
was people dug it, But I remember just thinking this
just looks super lame.

Speaker 3 (37:55):
Is there supposed to be Like, so if it's Paul Revere,
is it like the British are coming? Like British invasion music?
Is that something?

Speaker 2 (38:03):
I guess it's like, yeah, it's like a counter to
the British invasion. And that would that would have been
lost on me as a as a child looking at this,
all I knew at the time was that what's the
most boring thing in school? It's a it's American history
at the time. I'm not saying that as an adult,
American history is fascinating, but at the time, the idea

(38:23):
of Revolutionary War themed music was not like a great
cell But to be clear, Paul Revere and the Raiders
not super lame. They had some real gems, some real jams,
if you will.

Speaker 3 (38:36):
I understand it from the school perspective. Yeah, it's like
the band is where their theme is. They're all math textbooks. Yeah,
it was.

Speaker 2 (38:43):
It was like they were a textbook themed So anyway, Yeah,
they have some, they have some some. They have some
great music. I went, I'd never really gotten into their stuff,
but I did make sure that I listened to some
of their tracks. They have a great nineteen seventy one
cover of Indian Reservation so solid group. Mark turned to
scoring in the nineteen seventies for a bet w Michael Lewis,

(39:04):
for his part, was a music producer who got into
scoring with nineteen seventy eight Secrets of the Bermuda Triangle,
and he'd go on to score nineteen eighties New Year's Evil,
nineteen eighty one's Enter the Ninja, and also the TV
series In Search of starring Letter Game foy Oh.

Speaker 3 (39:21):
I saw that when I looked him up.

Speaker 2 (39:24):
Plus a couple of nineteen eighty seven releases Maximum Potential
and Hot Child in the City.

Speaker 3 (39:28):
Sorry, I had to stop and remember what the name
of this other Bermuda Triangle movie I was thinking of
was no. The one I was thinking of is a
made for TV movie from nineteen also from nineteen seventy
eight called The Bermuda Depths, which starred Carl Weathers in
the shortest shorts ever made, and also had burl Ives
as I think a marine biologist or something. But it's

(39:51):
ultimately it's about a giant turtle that attacks a boat.

Speaker 2 (39:55):
I think you made me watch the climax from this picture.

Speaker 3 (40:00):
It looked not the best.

Speaker 2 (40:01):
It looked incredible. Maybe we'll come back.

Speaker 3 (40:04):
To it maybe.

Speaker 2 (40:07):
So anyway, Yeah, the music for Shogun Assassin, I think
it's just tremendous.

Speaker 3 (40:13):
Again.

Speaker 2 (40:13):
De Goro's theme is not only I think the best
track on the score, but it's just an amazing and
emotional number in its own right. Like it's one of
these where I was listening to it earlier today and
I was like, is this one of my favorite songs?

Speaker 5 (40:26):
Now?

Speaker 2 (40:26):
I think this is currently one of the greatest musical
compositions of all time. My opinions will change, obviously, but
right now it's really doing it for me.

Speaker 3 (40:35):
It's so good, Like I said, not holding anything back.
You can imagine somebody being like, oh is this music?
I don't know, should we make it a little more
subtle little but no, it's just it's just the raw
power of feeling unleashed. Something feels absolutely unabashed about it,
and I love it.

Speaker 2 (40:55):
And it's perfect for a film that again, is a
Samurai reduction. You know, did two films reduced into one?
You know, just the most dizzying moments of psychedelia or
bloody violence condensed into a single picture that I mean,
it's really Again, it's a testament that they were to

(41:15):
the film, the American filmmakers here, that they were able
to take part one and part two in this series
and make a single picture out of it that works
this well. Yeah, the score here, by the way to
Shogun Assassin is available wherever you stream your music, and
there are CD and vinyl versions as well. I do
not know if there is like a blood red vinyl
edition of this soundtrack, but there needs to be.

Speaker 3 (41:38):
If you listen to it, at least the version that
I heard on Spotify. It includes some of the narration
from the movie as well.

Speaker 2 (41:45):
Yeah, it's so good. That also made me tear up,
like on an airplane listening to this. You know, people
are like, are you okay? And I'm like, I'm just
listening to the Showgun Assassin soundtrack. Man, that's all. That's
all that's going on here. I'm good.

Speaker 3 (41:58):
This is funny. How similar are experienceiances were? I also
had embarrassing emotional episodes Digo's theme specifically.

Speaker 2 (42:06):
Yeah, all right, let's get into that plot of Shogun Assassin.

Speaker 3 (42:18):
All right, Well, we have already mentioned how strong the
movie kicks off. So the introductory segment has a child's
voice narrating as we see a montage of scenes play out.
And this is the voice of Digoro, the Cub of
Lone Wolf and Cub. So the introductory narration plays over
this dark melody on synthesizer bass, the sound of absolute doom,

(42:42):
and we hear the child's voice say, when I was little,
my father was famous. He was the greatest samurai in
the empire, and he was the Shogun's decapitator. He cut
off the heads of one hundred and thirty one lords
for the Shogun. And as this narration is going on,
we see our protagonist walk into the frame the silent

(43:05):
Ogami Eto. His eyes are down cast, he moves slowly.
He has a blank, lugubrious expression, and then we see
Itto's blade twisting and gleaming in the light, and then
suddenly there's like a shadow playlet entirely in red and
just the silhouettes of the human figures in the foreground,

(43:26):
and we see a man kneeling to receive a death
sentence and another man, presumably our protagonist here, bringing a
sword down on his neck.

Speaker 2 (43:34):
And to be clear, if you have to have your
head cut off, this is the guy you want to
do it. This guy is the ultimate pro.

Speaker 3 (43:42):
It reminds me of our series on the Invention of
the guillotine, where we were talking about how bad a
lot of professional executioners were and like they just couldn't
like it took them way too many tries to get
it done.

Speaker 2 (43:55):
Yeah, a gami eto one swipe every time, guaranteed.

Speaker 3 (43:59):
If you want some oof historical reading, look up Jack Ketch.

Speaker 2 (44:03):
Oh yeah, I remember some of these details. And it
was also I recently visited the revisited the Tower of London,
so I guess I got to read more about some
of these these execution facts. Yeah, but they did not
have the Shogun's mastered decapitator on hand.

Speaker 3 (44:21):
So Digoro's narration goes on he says it was a
bad time for the empire. The shogun just stayed inside
his castle and he never came out. People said his
brain was infected by devils and that he was rotting
with evil. The shogun said the people were not loyal.
He said he had a lot of enemies, but he
killed more people than that. Then we see a castle.

(44:44):
The gate swing open, revealing sort of a court to
a bunch of entourage of people and a ruler. And
here's where I was originally going to break and discuss.
Wait a minute, is the guy we're seeing here the shogun?
But we already had that conversation, not originally, but in
show Assassin, that is what is implied he is the shogun.

Speaker 2 (45:03):
Yes, yeah, So we're just going to continue referring to
him as the shogun just for the simplicity's sake here.
And you know, oh, I do love this narration because
there is a simplicity to it that also works not
only for the project that is Shogun Assassin, but also
the idea that this is a child's recollection and the

(45:23):
child is working from, you know, a much simpler view
of right and wrong and good and evil in his
known universe.

Speaker 3 (45:33):
Interesting yeah, And I guess implied by that, you're saying
this might be sort of a child's memory of the shogun,
in which he looks almost like a monster.

Speaker 2 (45:41):
Yeah, yeah, I think you could lean into that kind
of interpretation.

Speaker 3 (45:44):
So he's got wild, uncombed white hair and beard that's
blowing around in the wind like a mass of cobwebs. Also,
he has flaring white eyebrows, his teeth are clenched, he's
got dark eyes. His eyes just keep jerking back and forth,
suspicions viciously. The shogun is not well. And then we
see the shogun soldiers leading bound men up a mountain

(46:07):
side with their hands tied behind their back, to a
chaotic mass execution in the gravel beside a small tarn.
The narration goes on. It was a bad time, everybody
living in fear, but still we were happy. My father
would come home to mother, and when he had seen her,
he would forget about the killings. He wasn't scared of

(46:29):
the shogun, but the shogun was scared of him. Maybe
that was the problem. And so here we see a
brief glimpse of the family's life at home, the mother
nursing the baby son, at their house, rain pouring into
the small bamboo forest outside, and I think the sort
of weather is a metaphor. Here there's love and comfort inside,
but not outside where the weather is bad. And the

(46:51):
father comes home and undresses. He takes his baby in
his arms, and the mother says that she had a
bad dream, but the father calms her and says, to
the bay, maybe what a time you chose to be born?
I grow. The narration goes on at night. Mother would
sing for us while father would go into his temple
and pray for peace. He'd pray for things to get better.

(47:13):
Then one night the shogun sent his ninja spies to
our house. They were supposed to kill my father, but
they didn't. Here we see ninja scaling the wall and
sneaking into their home. And there some if you go
back to our ninja episodes from a while back, we
see some stuff we talked about there, some equipment like
the ninja are carrying swords between their teeth out and

(47:37):
they climb up on ropes on grappling hooks. And so
the father is praying in his temple while with the
baby in his arms, and then he hears his wife
scream from the other end of the house. By the
time he gets there, she's mortally wounded and the ninja
are gone, and the dying mother tells the father that
he must protect their son. The narration tells us that

(47:58):
was the night everything changed. That was when my father
left his samurai life and became a demon. He became
an assassin who walks the road of vengeance, and he
took me with him. And then at this moment we
see a scene of the dynamic that will be treated
as sort of the ground reality for the rest of

(48:18):
the movie. The father trudging along lonely, desolate roads pushing
a wooden cart and the baby son riding in the cart.
Daigo says, I don't remember most of this myself. I
only remember the shogun's ninja hunting us wherever we go,
and the body's falling and the blood.

Speaker 2 (48:38):
Yeah, and this is the like, this is the key
component of Lone Wolf and Cub that has been highly influential.
So if you out there are a fan of the
Mandalorian series, like the Mandalorian is quite clearly and you know,
the creators are very upfront about this, very much inspired
by Lone Wolf and Cub. You know, a warrior protecting

(49:00):
a child, you know, hunted by enemies, but you know,
standing by the child to protect them, and especially with
lone Wolf and Cub I couldn't help. But also compare
it to the two thousand and six novel by Cormick McCarthy,
The Road, in which a father and his son traverse
a doomed landscape where there's ever present danger and the

(49:23):
father's entire existence is to still down to the protection
of his son. Quote he knew only that his child
was his warrant, he said. If he is not the
word of God, God never spoke. You know that kind
of vibe. So, I mean, I don't know the court
McCarthy ever watched Shogun Assassin, but you know, I think
they're scratching the same itch here. But I think it's

(49:46):
something that you know, a lot of us can relate to.
You know, certainly, if if there is a child in
your life, where there has been a child in your
life where you had this role as a protector, like,
it's easy to sort of lean in into this. I
think ultimately you know very distilled idea of what your
responsibility is. You know, in the same way that zombie

(50:07):
films are enthralling because it simplifies good and evil into like,
you know, and in us versus them, it's like this kind
of the lone wolf and cub model reduces everything down
to I must protect my child from ninjas, you know,
and you know, we'll get to some degree that is accurate.

Speaker 3 (50:24):
Yeah, and so, and we get that demonstrated here because
here we go to the very first action scene in
the film, the attack by ninja wearing baskets over their heads,
which is amazingly creepy and memorable. So it begins with
one man running toward the father and son from a distance.
They're on the road. He's pushing the cart there just

(50:45):
in the middle of nowhere, and there's someone running toward them,
sword in hand, his head completely covered in a basket
like a helmet with a mask in the front. There's
kind of a grating in the basket, but you can't
see his face. And there's a long build up as
the ninja draws closer, and then finally when he's in
within striking distance, the father just suddenly flicks his sword

(51:06):
and cleaves the ninja's head through the basket, with the
ninja catching the blade between his hands as he dies,
and then a second ninja leaps out from behind the first,
springs from his dying partner's shoulders and tries to land
a killing stroke while his while the father's sword is stuck.

(51:27):
But the father is too crafty. He pulls a hidden
second weapon from the cart, which is a bamboo pole
with a retractable blade in it, and he skewers the
attacker in mid air. And so then as the first
ninja collapses with his dying breath, he tells the father,
you are marked for death. Wherever you go, you cannot
escape the showgun.

Speaker 2 (51:48):
Ah, it's such a strong start. This scene is not
only is it from the second film Lone Wolf and
Cub Baby cart at the River sticks. It is the
cold open to that picture, like you just go straight
to this encounter. And it's a little longer in the
original cut obviously, But I have several thoughts of this same.

(52:12):
First of all, in the Showgun Assassin cut, I believe
the secondary assassin that leaps over the shoulders of the
first I believe he says Ninja is he, which is
great within the context of Showgun Assassin, But of course
in reality, I don't know that as a ninja you
would say ninja as you attack somebody, but still I

(52:34):
love it. Secondly, yeah, okay, back to the first assassin though, Yeah,
he apparently tries to pull off this maneuver that is
known in Japanese manga, anime, and cinema as a shinkin shiradori.
This is where you catch the blade with between your
palms before it can cut into you, and then if

(52:55):
you're really savvy, maybe you do a special twist to
sort of like throw the attacker to the side. This
has become like a standard not only in manga, in
Japanese cinema, but throughout like action picture the action picture world.
Like for instance, in Blade two, the day Walker pulls
this move off kind of laid in the picture to
great effect, but in reality, I'm to understand this is

(53:18):
impossible for a human swordsman to pull off. I think
there's a MythBusters episode where they look into it, and
I think the word the term shinkin shihradori. I think
it originally referred to some sort of maneuver that keeps
your opponent from even drawing their sword, So like that's
the time to stop it, not with coming through the

(53:39):
air at your head. Yeah, But what makes this sequence
so amazing is that you know, you're going up against
the greatest swordsman that's ever lived. You're trying to counter
his deathly sword strike, and he does not get all
of that counter move. Yeah, it's like maybe he stops
it from cleaving his head all the way through, but
it has already entered the brain point.

Speaker 3 (54:00):
But it almost seems like this was the plan, Like
the plan is that the father will get his sword
stuck in the first ninja and the second one will
use that moment to strike. Did you get it the
same way?

Speaker 2 (54:12):
Absolutely? And that's a little more clear in the original
cut of this action sequence, but I think it still
comes through in Shogun Assassin as well. But yeah, it's
a great start to the combat because this is going
to set the tone.

Speaker 3 (54:24):
So after the intro, we see the father and son
sitting together at a campfire in the middle of a
thick forest. They're eating something white. I think it's rice
balls or maybe buns or something, and they're just sitting
there staring blankly into the fire, and the child's voice
over continues. He says, my father hardly ever talks anymore.
We just go a little farther. Every day at night

(54:47):
we make a fire and have our tea, and we
listen for the ninja who never make a sound. I
like that part. Same Diego says, sometimes he tells me
about the past and about mother. Try not to think
about it. But my father can't help it. Sometimes he
gets lost in the past. And here we're about to

(55:07):
see a couple of flashback scenes from before Lone Wolf
and cub Win on the Run. The first is after
the death of Azami Diego's mother. This is the sword
and ball scene where the father he's grieving. He's not
in his right mind, and he has Digro with him
in his temple. They're both dressed in white, and the

(55:28):
father says, today I begin walking the road to hell,
but you will choose your own path. And he offers
a sword and a toy ball. And so the idea is,
he says, choose the sword and the child will join
his father on the road to hell. Choose the toy
and the child will join his mother in heaven. And
there's some suspense, but the cub he crawls and he

(55:50):
reaches for the sword, and the father is both troubled
and relieved, and he hugs his son and says that
his mother would be proud, and they will defy the
shogun together, assassin and with son.

Speaker 2 (56:01):
It's a great sequence.

Speaker 3 (56:03):
He says that, like it's like the name of their business. Yeah,
well it is.

Speaker 2 (56:07):
It does pretty bod. I forget exactly what the wording is.
But they have that banner on their cart. That's like
sword for hire, son for hire. You need a hold
of toddler, got you covered? You need a local enemy
cut in half. We can talk.

Speaker 3 (56:23):
So the other flashback is what followed immediately followed that immediately,
which is the moment of defiance. So the shogun's emissary
comes to the father and reads a decree that he
must either swear eternal loyalty to the shogun or commit
harakiri with his son. And obviously he's gonna do neither one.
He's got his head down and he starts to laugh

(56:45):
and then slowly raises his face up, looking very stern
and almost evil, and he says, you are wrong. I
have a third choice. And then the other guys they
immediately get like freaked out. Uh oh. And in one
arm he picks up his infants, and in the other
arm he draws his sword and the officials who read
the decree they call for guards. They're like, ah, stop him,

(57:06):
can't you see he's a devil. I'm not sure quite
what was meant by that, but it's yeah, they're seeing
him as some kind of demon. And this leads to
a brutal sword fight one against many to escape the building,
and the father has his son in the crook of
one arm the whole time. It's very stylized violence. We
see a sword blade break off inside a guard's neck.

(57:29):
There are jets of bright red blood that erupt like
geysers from the adversary's wounds. You can see why this
was effective on the midnight movie circuit. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (57:38):
I don't know if arterial sprays like this are realistic
or hyper realistic. I thankfully do not know, but it
certainly sizzles on the screen, and you get this idea
that a human's life blood is just this high pressure substance,
absolutely straining for release by a skilled swordsman like ogami Eto.

Speaker 3 (57:56):
Yeah, a lot of blood jets in this movie. However,
the father cuts his way out of the compound, he
is suddenly faced with the shogun and his entourage. The shogun.
So he like cuts through the gate and the gate
opens and the Shogun is there with all of his men.
The Shogun calls him mad one and says he can
never escape his fate, but he offers him a deal.

(58:18):
He says, you agree to a one on one duel
with my son with the Shogun's son, and if Lone
Wolf can win this duel, he will be awarded his freedom,
and Lone Wolf accepts.

Speaker 2 (58:30):
Now, again, I'm not going to go into a lot
of detail about the differences between the original pictures and
Shogun Assassin, but I do feel like I need to
jump in on this one and point out that in
the original again, Ogami is cornered not by the Shogun
but by Ratsuto and his men, and he's given a
choice here. He's like, Okay, this is the way it

(58:50):
can go down for you, Ogami. Either you go ahead
and commit your honorable suicide right now, or my soldiers
are going to cut you down with their quote wall
of swords. And Ogami says, no, neither of those is
going to happen, and he tears off these outer white
robes and reveals that he wears black robes with the
hollyhock crest of the Tokugawa schokunate. So he's like, look,

(59:15):
I'm wearing the colors in the crest of the shogun.
You can't kill me. You can't even point your swords
at me without dishonoring yourself. And so they're at a standstill,
and so a compromise is made. Okay, you remove those
robes and we will settle this via a formal duel. Yeah,
because otherwise you might say, well, why didn't they just

(59:36):
cut him down? Well, in the original picture it made
more sense.

Speaker 3 (59:39):
Yeah, So we go to the duel from here. The
duel takes place in the afternoon in a meadow of
tall grass blowing in the wind, and we see the
to samurai square off at a distance. The shogun's sun
is scowling, hateful, determined. The Lone Wolf wears the cub
on a basket on his back, and they they draw

(01:00:00):
their swords and charge at one another. But Lone Wolf
has a trick up his sleeve. Here. Right when they
are about to meet on the field, Lone Wolf bows
his head and reveals a mirror mounted on Diigero's head,
which reflects the low sun and blinds their enemy, and
then lone wolf chops off the lord's son's head and

(01:00:22):
his body is just standing there, headless with jets of
blood blasting out of the next stump in slow motion
in the Golden sunset.

Speaker 2 (01:00:29):
Oh it's beautiful.

Speaker 3 (01:00:30):
I mean in a grisly way. It is so beautiful.

Speaker 2 (01:00:33):
And one thing that's pointed out in the sor I'm
going to do one more of these. Well, something that's
pointed out in the original picture is that this is
like a swordsman that is of comparable ability to a gami,
but he has the sun to his back, and therefore
he has an advantage and will probably prevail. But Ogami

(01:00:57):
via the cub and his mirror turns his advantage into
a disadvantage by reflecting the sunlight back into his eyes.

Speaker 3 (01:01:05):
That does make more sense of it, because this part
I was thinking, well, he's just like cutting the slicing
through everybody, like butter. Why is this guy such a challenge,
But it would make sense if we know something about
him and that he has an advantage on the Yeah,
though they do show the sun, they don't talk about it,
but they do show the sun being low and in
his face.

Speaker 2 (01:01:25):
Yeah, either way, even if you don't know all those details,
it is another super stylistically violent execution.

Speaker 3 (01:01:32):
Yeah. So this scene fades back into a scene of
lone wolf and cub at a campfire in the wilderness,
and the camera slowly pulls back from them as father
turns his head. And then on the soundtrack they had
to add this in. We get a guttural, animalistic growl.
It's a wolf growling. Probably just a dog, right. Yeah, anyway,

(01:01:55):
here the introductory I would say this is the part
where the introductory part of the movie gives way to
the main plot. Though, as we said earlier, the idea
that this movie has a plot, it's very loose. Basically,
the plot is the father wanders the country pushing his
son in a wooden cart. They stop at places where
the father can take contracts. He works as an assassin,

(01:02:17):
and he makes money. He makes money to live this way,
but he doesn't seem to really want to become rich
or like find a way out. He sort of seems
to squander the money he makes. From what I can.

Speaker 2 (01:02:27):
Tell, Yeah, I mean I think part of it is
like he's I mean, he has no future, like his
son is the only future that matters, and he will
do everything for him, but like he has lost all honor.
He's a wandering ronan. What is he going to do
with this money except, you know, pay for the next
night's sleep, pay for the next bath, and so forth.

Speaker 3 (01:02:49):
Yeah. So, meanwhile, the Shogun keeps hiring new ninjas and
assassins to send after him and his son. So we
follow several episodes of that where assassins are sent after them.
The main mission of this film, especially in the second half,
is a job that the Lone Wolf takes from a
group of locals asking him to kill a Lord Kirou,

(01:03:10):
the Shogun's cruel brother, who is oppressing them. But Lord
Kirou is guarded by three ninja brothers known as the
Masters of Death, whom we mentioned earlier. The visual inspiration
clearly or at least part of the DNA that inspired
the Three Storms from Big Trouble in Little China, the
large wide hats, the specialized weapons, and the deadly auras.

Speaker 2 (01:03:34):
Yeah, and they do just cut everyone to ribbons. They
jump into action. The Masters of Death are awesome.

Speaker 3 (01:03:41):
Yeah, And so the final showdown at the end of
the movie will be the Father versus the three Masters
of Death and a scene in the desert. Strangely, I
was kind of wondering where that's supposed to take place.

Speaker 2 (01:03:52):
Yeah, I've never been to any of these, but there
are a few different sand dunes in Japan, and I'm
not sure which one we're looking at here, but I
think I've seen it pop up in a few different
Japanese films and TV shows.

Speaker 6 (01:04:03):
Over the years.

Speaker 3 (01:04:12):
Okay, well, I guess we've sort of sketched the general
outline of the plot, but maybe we can talk about
a few scenes that we just wanted to explore in
a little bit of detail. One that I wanted to
mention is closer to the beginning, and it's the scene
where a lone Wolf and cub visit a bath house
in town because so Digoro is explaining in the narration

(01:04:32):
that visiting a town is dangerous because they don't fit
in and the shogun's ninja are everywhere. But then he says,
but sometimes you have to take a chance if you
want to take a bath. So they go to this
bathhouse and the manager tries to turn them away, thinking
that they are penniless beggars, but then lone Wolf flashes
his wad of gold. He does have a lot. He

(01:04:54):
like gets it out of the cart, and the guy
changes his tune. He eagerly goes to wash Digoro's feet,
and then Diego kicks water in the guy's face. And
I like this scene because of the little moments of
the child almost playing, Like the way he stomps around
in the tub. It's clear that for the rest of
his life there is very little room for play, but

(01:05:16):
here you get to see him play.

Speaker 2 (01:05:17):
Yeah, these little moments of play, they're very effective here,
and they've of course been very effective in the Mandalorian,
very much copying this blueprint. You know, the cuteness of
the child, the baby, Yoda, the Grogu, you know, very
much patterned on this.

Speaker 3 (01:05:34):
Yeah. Also there's a moment here at the so they're
like taking a bath. They're soaking in this big wash
tub and it's supposed to be relaxing. You see the
steam rising and they're kind of reclined. But there's an
interesting moment where like the camera pulls back and reveals
the father's arm is draped outside the tub and he's
like gripping his sword. And there's never any attack in

(01:05:56):
this scene. It's just that this is who he must
be now.

Speaker 2 (01:05:59):
Yeah o Gomi and never truly rest. He always has
his sword at his side in a moment that peace
can disappear.

Speaker 3 (01:06:07):
And so there are more plots, like there is a
theme established that Lone Wolf's enemies want to take his
son away from him. They think this will take away
his power, and so there's one plot to steal de
Gooro and this leads to a fight scene in a
river where like these guys come and say, like, where
is your son? We're going to take him, and then

(01:06:28):
the father goes to fight them, and then it's discovered
that they're like hiding armor underneath their clothing, but he
fights them anyway, and it turns into like a final
duel between him and one of the lords who opposes
him standing in the middle of a river. At the
base of this, I was going to say waterfall, but
I think it might actually be a kind of a
man made like spillway sort of thing, and Lone Wolf

(01:06:52):
wins this fight by hiding his blade beneath the water
before he turns to move it.

Speaker 2 (01:06:57):
Yeah, so we get another like super style to kill here.

Speaker 6 (01:07:01):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:07:02):
Also, after this duel is just the Shogun's just standing
on a bridge over the water like I will get you.

Speaker 2 (01:07:09):
Yeah, they keep the dream of an encounter occurring with
the showgun alive, though it's again it's not gonna happen,
not in this film.

Speaker 3 (01:07:17):
Yeah. There's another great scene, which is the scene of
recruiting the Ninja women. So one of the bad guys,
I think this is Lord Kouragawa working for the Shogun.
He meets with a woman who calls herself the Supreme Ninja,
the Supreme Ninja. She commands an army of women who
are all themselves Ninja warriors, and the Lord shows up

(01:07:42):
to task them with destroying Lone Wolf and cub but
she well, first of all, they tell her that he
fought a duel with the Shogun's air, and she says
what was the outcome of the duel? And he says terrible.
But the Supreme Ninja offer the Shogun's emissary a demonstration

(01:08:03):
of her of the prowess of her lady warriors. So
she's like, show me your strongest man, and this silent
fighter and a brown cloak and a conical hat comes forward.
We learned this is Juni, the strongest fighter of I
think it's Lord Kouragawa. Here and so the Supreme Ninja
addresses Juni and says, Okay, you've got to try to

(01:08:23):
find a way to escape from this room. But like
as she says this, her women are gathering around him,
and things are about to go very poorly for Junei.
He tries to escape using a grappling hook in the rafters.
He throws it up to the ceiling and swing out
of the chamber. But the women cut the rope, they
rip off his cloak, they pull swords out of their dresses,

(01:08:45):
and then they just run around slicing pieces off of
this dude, one at a time, so like we see
his fingers hit the floor and then the skin from
his face falls down to the floor like a rubber mask.
Oh it's rough. They cut him into a lot of pieces.

Speaker 2 (01:09:01):
Yeah, this scene is so grizzly and wonderful. They just
systematically take him apart, reducing him to a limbless, faceless
husk that like rolls across the floor, and you know,
then there's nothing left to do but dispatch him.

Speaker 3 (01:09:13):
And then the Supreme Ninja says, this is your best man.
Lone Wolf would swallow him and then begin the most
deranged Harley quinn laughter. It goes on for a long
time and then stops quite suddenly, and she's calm, and
she says, my women will execute him.

Speaker 2 (01:09:30):
So basically this lays the groundwork for the next trio
of sequences, as the has three different groups of the
female Ninja's attempt to take out lone Wolf and cut.

Speaker 3 (01:09:40):
Yeah. So so first, well, this is outside. They're on
the road. Eventually they're pushing the cart between Dikon fields,
and I like how at the Dikon fields the women
are like down in the stream washing the dikon in
the water, and there's this creepy scarecrow with this like
wide eyed face on its headsack. It's interesting environmental details.

(01:10:03):
But actually, before they get to the Dikon fields, there's
an ambush by traveling entertainers on the roadside. And I
thought this was funny because in our in our Ninja episode,
we were talking about some classic story of Ninja running
around and spying by pretending to be traveling entertainers.

Speaker 2 (01:10:20):
Yeah, it's a perfect cover.

Speaker 3 (01:10:22):
So in this case, the father and son go by
and the entertainers are they're like dancers or acropats of
some kind. They're jumping around cart wheeling and somersaulting and stuff.
Whatever these people are they I think they somehow hypnotize
Lone Wolf with the spinning patterns on their clothing as
they spin around. So it gets very strawberry alarm clock

(01:10:44):
for a minute here. But of course these are really
the Supreme Ninja's assassins in disguise, and they try to
launch a sneak attack, but Lone Wolf is too quick,
even though he was briefly hypnotized by the clothing. His
sword flashes and they are done. And this is the
scene where Diego starts counting the dead Ninja.

Speaker 5 (01:11:04):
You know.

Speaker 3 (01:11:05):
He says, I try to count them so I can
pray for their souls. Father tells me not to count them,
but I have to to know how many to pray for.
And then he I think he says, they're up to
three hundred and forty five ninja.

Speaker 2 (01:11:18):
It's quite a count.

Speaker 3 (01:11:19):
Yeah. So then we get to the attack of the
Dikon fields. So they're like going down the road in
the cart and these women come up in different waves.
Like the first wave of women throws these flying killer
hats with blades on them, the blades on the brim
and Lone Wolf fights them off, kills them, and then

(01:11:39):
there are the next wave has knives hidden inside the dikon, which, okay,
I love it.

Speaker 2 (01:11:46):
The dicons are like piercing the cart and all and
oh and I have to mention in the original the
second Lone Wolf picture, when they're preparing the dicons by
the river, they're singing a little song and the lyrics
are something like what the side dish for tonight? Oh
it's dikon.

Speaker 3 (01:12:04):
Uh so yeah. There are these little a lot of
little tricks and secrets and reveals in this fight scene,
like secret knives popping out of the baby carriage, and
our protagonists fight through it all until they get to
the Supreme Ninja. She herself comes out to h to
administer the final attack on Lone Wolf here, which she
does with a net.

Speaker 2 (01:12:25):
That's right, she nets him. The net prevents him from
immediately being able to draw his sword, and of course
he does eventually draw his sword, but they engage in
this short, intense close combat sword fight where it's clear
that they're pretty evenly matched, and we get to see
her effectively pull off that sword clap shinkin Shihradori maneuver

(01:12:49):
against Ogami clapping his sword blade before it can hit her,
and then she even does the twist and sends him
a sprawling So it's a fun little like you know,
evenly matched, you know, very close confines battle here.

Speaker 3 (01:13:03):
But then it gets kind of looney tunes right at
the end, like they sort of fight to a draw.
But when lone Wolf is finally ready to like land
a sword blow on her, he like hits her, but
it doesn't actually hit her. She avoids it by jumping
out of her clothes. She's not naked, she's like still
wearing some kind of full body stalking, but just leaves

(01:13:24):
her original clothes standing there and leaps up in the
air out of them, lands in a field nearby, and
then starts fast motion running backwards as if the tape
were in reverse up a hill.

Speaker 2 (01:13:35):
Yes, oh my god, this outcome is so wild. I
can't stress enough how bonkers it is. I think looney
tunes is the right word, because it's not like she
peels out of her clothing in a realistic manner. It
is like her outer garments are a jet fighter and
she has ejected from them.

Speaker 3 (01:13:52):
Yes, yeah, and then runs like a spring snake in
the can.

Speaker 2 (01:13:56):
Like a spring snake and then the running backwards. I
guess the idea is, like you, she can't lose sight
of her opponent something. So yeah, she's just running backwards
and doesn't take her eyes off of Lone Wolf for
quite a while, like at least a half a mile
running backs across the field. It's amazing.

Speaker 3 (01:14:17):
But she's going really fast, so we don't have to
watch her go, you know, normal normal speed to a
half mile.

Speaker 2 (01:14:22):
And he just sort of like looks at her, like
just watches her.

Speaker 3 (01:14:27):
I've seen that trick before.

Speaker 2 (01:14:30):
Well matched.

Speaker 3 (01:14:33):
Then they also have to fight some more ninja in
the woods. This is a more I don't know. There's
a bunch of guys in the in the hats again,
and in this fight they use the cart as a weapon,
like it's got blades that come out the sides and
chop all the ninja's legs off. But after all this
we come to the part I mentioned this near the

(01:14:54):
top of the episode. We come to the part where
Lone Wolf is injured, and this leads to a sequence
where the boy has to take care of his father,
like his father is hiding in this little hut, and
so I mentioned the scene earlier of the boy trying
to bring him water from the river and he ends
up having to carry it in his mouth. But there
also he goes looking for food and he finds a

(01:15:15):
food offering at a shrine, but then he and he
wants to take it, but he doesn't want to be disrespectful,
so he leaves an offering of his own in its place.
He takes off some of his clothing and leaves it
at the shrine.

Speaker 2 (01:15:28):
Yeah, this is a very sweet section, and of course
we have that great Digoro's theme playing, and yeah, we
see him, you know, bring water and then food back
to Ogami as Ogami lays, perhaps dying we don't know
at this point, but helping him to recuperate.

Speaker 3 (01:15:47):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (01:15:55):
Oh.

Speaker 3 (01:15:56):
This leads to the part where Daikoro gets kidnapped to
the Supreme Ninja and the Shogun's Lord. They decide, okay,
we've got to steal him to steal the Lone Wolf's power.
So they take Digor away and they lure the Lone
Wolf out to find them in the middle of the night,
and he finds them standing around a well where Digoro

(01:16:18):
is suspended by a rope over the opening to the well.
How's lone Wolf going to get out of this one. Well,
he so, I think there's a clever little thing that
I missed the first time around, but I was rewatching
the scene and I realized what it was. So he
says something to Digoro, and then Digoro kicks his sandal
off and it falls down the well. And I think

(01:16:41):
that is letting the father know how long the drop is,
like the timing of the drop, because what happens is
he draws his sword and he quickly slashes a bunch
of the bad guys and then stomps on the rope
as Digoro is falling to stop him from falling, to
stop him before he hits the water at the bottom.

Speaker 6 (01:16:58):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:16:58):
Yeah, And this is another thing where it's I mean,
the editing here is tight and effective. In the original film,
I think maybe more instantly make sense what's happening, but yeah,
you still get the sense of it here.

Speaker 3 (01:17:10):
Yeah. So he slashes all of his enemies here except
for the Supreme Ninja who's just standing there watching, but
she does not attack, and neither does Lone Wolf, and
they kind of regard each other, and then Lone Wolf
frees his son and they walk away and Daigo says
in the narration that was the first time I ever
saw my father spare an enemy, So I think there's

(01:17:34):
some mutual respect.

Speaker 2 (01:17:36):
Absolutely, Yeah, and we'll come back to this character again too.
But from here we kind of proceed into mostly dealing
with the Masters of Death.

Speaker 3 (01:17:47):
There's a long sequence on a boat. I don't think
we need to go into all the details of the
boat journey and the fight on the boat, but there's
like rebels who are fighting against someone and the Masters
of Death mess them up on a boat. There's eventually
a fire and everybody has to jump off the boat.

Speaker 2 (01:18:02):
Yeah, and after the everyone has to jump off the boat.
This is I think where we eventually get this sequence
where the Supreme Ninja, Lone Wolf, and Cub meet up
again and they're all wet and cold and they huddle
together for warmth, which is a scene where you don't
really know where this scene is going at first. Is

(01:18:23):
this going to be like some sort of you know,
just pure exploitation moment, But it ends up being quite
sweet in its own way, Like there's these three lost
individuals huddling for warmth against in a dark world.

Speaker 3 (01:18:36):
Well, yeah, it's complex there, because so he doesn't harm
the Supreme Ninja, and she doesn't want to harm him anymore,
but she has to go away, and he knows that
that means her death when she goes back to the
Shogun to like report what has happened.

Speaker 2 (01:18:50):
Yeah, so it's bittersweet. And this is of course another
thing where this is a little more complex and nuanced
in the second film, but we get a nice, you know,
edited down version of it here. But I think they
ultimately spare us nothing of the violence inflicted by and
upon the Masters of Death. All of that makes it
to the finished picture.

Speaker 3 (01:19:10):
Oh yeah, yeah. So the final conflict in the film
is we get the Masters of Death leading their person
they're serving as a bodyguard for in this sort of
caravan through the desert. They're going up and down these
sand dunes, and then suddenly there is an attack first
I think by some rebels against this group, and the

(01:19:31):
Masters of Death just chop them up. They don't do well.

Speaker 2 (01:19:35):
Are these the ones that they're initially hiding under the
sand to pop up and get the Masters of Death?
The Masters of Death are just like stabbing them in
the sand.

Speaker 3 (01:19:43):
Yeah, it's kind of dune. Yeah yeah, But this finally
leads to the Masters of Death must face off against
Blown Wolf, and I mentioned this earlier, but in this
part the music infuses it with such vigor. There is
this relentless synthe size or vamp and a high lead
over this galloping drum beat. It's really good. Like the

(01:20:07):
movie itself, I think pre dates this convention in video games,
but it feels like boss music. It's like in Mega Man.
It's the kind of music that kicks in in Mega
Man when you like enter the chamber to fight Spark Mandroll,
don't you know what I mean. Like, it's like it
picks up the tempo and it's like really trying to
get your blood pumping now.

Speaker 2 (01:20:27):
Yeah, yeah, it is pretty relentless. At the end of
the day, we know this can only go down one way.
They may be Masters of Death, but they are not
going to come out on top against okami Eto. His
his skill and his heart is just too powerful for
them to overcome. So he stylishly defeats one of the

(01:20:50):
three brothers, then the other of the three brothers, and
finally it's a He's squaring off with the final of
the Masters of Death. This is the guy with the
claws claws. Yeah, yeah, and you know they have a
nice back and forth and then ultimately Lone Wolf cuts
him on the neck with this like perfect cut. That

(01:21:12):
and the spray, the arterial spray out of this cut
is like a fine mist. This part of the of
the film that this is another like just super weird,
great moment. And it's like this serene eroticism of death.
A cut so perfect that one's life blood leaves the
body in a kind of like high pressure howling mist

(01:21:32):
like a dream. Such a cuts like the ultimate aspiration
of any killer. And oh the irony. The master of
death himself dies by this cut without ever getting to
inflict its perfection himself.

Speaker 3 (01:21:44):
Yeah, there's a line in the film where they're talking
about about like the sound of a winter wind blowing
or something.

Speaker 2 (01:21:51):
Yeah, he says, I have the quote here when cut
across the neck, a sound like wailing winter winds is heard.
They say, I'd always hope to cut someone like that
someday to hear that sound, but to have it happen
to my own neck is ridiculous.

Speaker 3 (01:22:07):
Ridiculous, It's wonderful. But doesn't he also say something like
he's like it was an honor to have been killed
by you. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:22:14):
Yeah, because again, if you want to have your next sliced,
this is the guy you want doing it. You want
it in the hands.

Speaker 3 (01:22:20):
Of a master. Oh but then we also do in
a kind of anti climactic way, we get to see
a lone wolf doing a grizzly finish to his contract,
and then the movie's just kind of over.

Speaker 2 (01:22:32):
Yeah. Yeah, we get like one final line from the boy.
He says, what I guess, I wish it was different,
But a wish is only a wish.

Speaker 3 (01:22:42):
No justice for the Showgun.

Speaker 2 (01:22:43):
No again, if you if you were attracted to this
film because you thought a showgun was going to be assassinated, No,
doesn't happen. And the character that is labeled the showgun,
he also does not get his come uppance in this film.
I think it ultimately happens later on in the series,
but played by a different actor. Yeah, but now I

(01:23:05):
kind of want to finish that journey. I'm going to
have to, you know, on my own time, go through
the next four of these pictures. I enjoy the first
two and of course Showgun Assassin so much.

Speaker 3 (01:23:14):
Well that sounds great. I might have to check them
out too.

Speaker 2 (01:23:17):
It's a fun ride, a demon ride to hell.

Speaker 3 (01:23:21):
Oh hey, but one last thought. I think I said
this earlier, but even if you don't watch this movie,
which you know it's a hyper violent kind of thing,
it might not be your style, and that's fine. I
would recommend checking out the soundtrack if you can. The
music is great, especially if you love synthesizer stuff.

Speaker 2 (01:23:37):
Absolutely to terrific score. But I have to warn you
the score, it may suck you in. The Next thing,
you know, you're watching Showgun Assassin, then you're watching the
Lone Wolf and Cup series. That's how it gets started.
All right, Well, this was a lot of fun. I'd
love to hear from everyone out there. I know we
have listeners who are very well acquainted with the Lone
Wolf and Cup series and are more familiar with the

(01:24:00):
Samurai and Ninja pictures than we are. So hey, write in,
We would love to hear from you. We'd love your
thoughts on Shogun Assassin, Lone Wolf and Cub the series. Oh,
if you've read the manga, write in about that as well.
I have not, so I don't have any familiarity with it,
but of course it is considered legendary in its own right.
Just a reminder that Stuff to Blow Your Mind is
primarily a science and culture podcast with core episodes on

(01:24:23):
Tuesdays and Thursdays, but on Fridays we set aside most
serious concerns to just talk about a weird film on
Weird House Cinema. And if you want to keep up
with what we're doing on Weird House Cinema, you can
always follow us on a letterbox dot com. Our username
there is weird House. You'll find a list of all
the films we've done so far, and sometimes a peek
ahead at what's coming out next. And hey, we are

(01:24:43):
in December, so you know what that means. We're gonna
get at least one Christmas movie in there? Is it
gonna have Santa in it? Can make no promises. Will
there be a Christmas tree somewhere in the background of
a scene? Probably that's probably probably how it's going.

Speaker 4 (01:24:57):
To go down.

Speaker 3 (01:24:58):
Has it been a year since I come in?

Speaker 2 (01:25:00):
Piece it has? Yeah? That was our Christmas action film
from last year. Wasn't it that one had Christmas music
in it?

Speaker 3 (01:25:08):
I think it was.

Speaker 2 (01:25:09):
Christmas was more a part of the texture of the
picture than some people give it credit.

Speaker 3 (01:25:15):
Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer, JJ Posway.
If you would like to get in touch with us
with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
a topic for the future, or just to say hello,
you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow
your Mind dot com.

Speaker 1 (01:25:36):
Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.