#841: MISUMI, Kenji: Baby Cart At The River Styx (1972)

MISUMI, Kenji (Japan)
Baby Cart At The River Styx [1972]
Spine #841
Blu-ray

Mere months after the release of Sword of Vengeance, its core staff — producer Shintaro Katsu, director Kenji Misumi, screenwriter Kazuo Koike, and lead actor Tomisaburo Wakayama — returned to deliver Baby Cart at the River Styx, which took the action and graphic violence of the Lone Wolf and Cub series to delirious new heights. Baby Cart at the River Styx was fated to become an exploitation-cinema classic — and a violent "video nasty" pariah in the UK — when it formed the bulk of the English-dubbed Shogun Assassin compilation film released by Roger Corman's New World Pictures in 1980.

In River Styx, Itto Ogami and Daigoro continue their quest for vengeance through meifumado, the spiritual way of "demons and damnation," pursued constantly by the Shadow Yagyu clan and the shogun's spies.

This time, the shogun's Kurokawa ninja enlist the help of the female assassins of the Yagyu clan, led by the deadly Sayaka (Kayo Matsuo, the best of the series' strong female characters), who makes plans to attack the wandering father and son.

Meanwhile, Ogami accepts a job to kill a member of the Awa clan who holds the secret to the production of a rare indigo dye. Ogami's task will not be easy, as his target is protected along the road to Edo by the Hidari Brothers, fearsome masters of death who wield mailed fists, a club, and a metal claw.

For a film filled with so much blood and fury, Baby Cart at the River Styx is an unnervingly quiet experience, with sometimes only the echo of lethal sword hits on the soundtrack. The stuff of countless samurai fictions — ninja, sword duels, political machinations — here becomes something akin to a free-flowing stream of consciousness, punctuated by bouts of deadly surrealism. Blood leaks from the desert sand, daikon radishes contain flying daggers, and enemies continue to chatter long past the point of bodily death. Less a samurai picture than a fever dream caught on film, Baby Cart at the River Styx is the quintessential Lone Wolf and Cub movie.

81 minutes

Color
Monaural
in Japanese
2:40:1 aspect ratio
Criterion Release 2016

Director/Writers

Based on the manga by Kazuo Koike and Goseki Kojima.

Screenplay by Koike.

Kenji Misumi was 51 when he directed Baby Cart at the River Styx.

Other Misumi films in the Collection:

#679a: The Tale Of Zatoichi (1962)
#679h: Fight, Zatoichi, Fight (1964)

#679l: Zatoichi And The Chess Expert (1965)
#679q: Zatoichi Challenged (1967)
#679s: Samaritan Zatoichi (1968)
#679u: Zatoichi Goes To The Fire Festival (1970)
#841: Sword Of Vengeance (1972)
#841: Baby Cart To Hades (1972)
#841: Baby Cart In The Land Of Demons (1973)

The Film

A

Film Rating (0-60):

60

The Extras

The Booklet

Thirty-six page booklet featuring an essay and film synopses by Japanese pop-culture critic Patrick Macias.

Commentary

None.

Interview 1

With Koike, writer of the Lone Wolf and Cub manga series and screenwriter on five of the films.

L’âme d’un père, l’âme d’un sabre

A 2005 documentary about the making of the series.

Interview 2

In which Sensei Yoshimitsu Katsuse discusses and demonstrates the real Suio-ryu sword techniques that inspired the ones depicted in the manga and films.

Interview 3

With biographer Kazuma Nozawa about Misumi, director of four of the six films.

Silent documentary

From 1937 about the making of samurai swords, with an optional new ambient score by Ryan Francis.

Trailers

Extras Rating (0-40):

39

60 + 39 =

99

By Director

By Spine #