Mandom Rocks Japan – Shogun Assassin!
by Todd Wieneke
Say you have a pretty rad car. In fact, you got two of ‘em. Not the fastest things on four wheels but they’ve got pep and style to spare. But dang it all to heckfire, they’re foreign and Joe America doesn’t particularly care for foreign things. What now? Well, turns out you’re a smart cat; you know how to make lemons into lemon sorbet. So you distill the two cars to their essence, break ‘em down harder than Terminator X ever did, add a lil’ sumthin’-sumthin’ that makes them domestic-friendly and voila, you’ve crafted one jaw-droppingly-cokedick-awesome of a Plymouth Superbird (with a 440 Super Commando V8 under the hood, natch) that’s so badass it would make Richard Petty eat his big ol’ hat and crap it out and then eat it again. That, ladies and gentlemen, is Shogun Assassin.
Way back in 1980, when only the special kids wore helmets to ride their bikes and Crack was limited to v-neck tops and plumbers (hopefully not at the same time), two righteous mates named Robert Houston—aka Bobby in Wes Craven’s The Hills Have Eyes—and David Weisman – best known as the producer of Kiss of the Spider Woman but I’m more interested in his “art direction” on the criminally under-seen mondo-doco The Killing of America— decided to license a pair of little-known samurai flicks from Toho Studios for 50,000 USD. The films—Sword of Vengeance and Baby Cart at the River Styx– were the first two in a series based upon the popular manga Lone Wolf and Cub, essentially about a ronin (masterless samurai) and his young son wandering the countryside on a revenge-fueled Death March during the waning years of feudal Japan, causing all sorts of bloody mayhem… well, more often than not the mayhem pursued them but there was always hard-R violence and geysers of crimson fury. How Houston and Weisman became aware of the films—by that point almost 8 years old– is anyone’s guess but they knew they had a potentially hot property. All it needed was a little tinkering…
First and foremost, they decided to make it one film, with the barest elements of a story to string together the violence and insanity and bursts of carnality. Then they added an English language dub that’s buoyed by a mesmerizing voiceover from Gibran Evans, the then-7 year old son of artist Jim Evans, who designed the “I will buy it from you immediately if you have one to sell (no, really, I will)” Shogun Assassin theatrical poster; then they added a formidably Moog-centric score produced and penned by Mark Lindsay, former singer of ‘60s pop act Paul Revere and the Raiders, a score so funky it was later used verbatim in the equally awesome Cirio Santiago martial arts actioner, Firecracker. In the end, they scored a lucrative distribution deal with Roger Corman’s New World Pictures and the grindhouse circuit was never the same again.
Shogun Assassin, how do I love thee? Well, you’ve managed to have been sampled prodigiously on GZA’s still-relevant 1995 album, Liquid Swords. You were the movie that Beatrix Kiddo’s daughter watched regularly in that Tarantino flick about Uma Thurman’s feet. You made me think twice about approaching any baby carriage, lest it have been modified with an array of knives and spears. And you introduced me to Tomisaburo Wakayama, aka the titular Lone Wolf, aka the real-life older brother of Shintaro Katsu aka Zatoichi the Blind Swordsman… but don’t let Tomisaburo-san’s slovenly, doughy, hung-over appearance fool you: the man was a 4th degree black belt in judo and practiced kenpo (karate), kendo (old-school swordsmanship) and laido (new school swordsmanship) —he knew a thing or two about putting the hurt on. But the film’s greatest lesson? Violent defiance of the State. Just as pertinent now as it was in 1980. Thank you, Shogun Assassin, and welcome to the Table of Mandom.
