BOHACHI BUSHIDO: CODE OF THE FORGOTTEN EIGHT (1973)
Stop me if you’ve heard this one before; an enigmatic warrior arrives in a strange town and is enlisted by a nefarious local outfit to do the dirty work of a scheming villain… but his personal ideals interfere with the business at hand. The world of Samurai movies (and indeed Westerns) offers plenty of examples of this story. Which means a fresh take requires a certain kind of flair, or interesting take on the formula, to make it memorable. In this particular case Teruo Ishii’s vision is to take the material from an adult manga (from the writers of Lone Wolf and Cub) and fill much of the film’s running time with nudity and torture. Are the results a case of style (and sadism) over substance?
