Lone Wolf and Cub: Baby Cart to Hades (1972) Poster

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1972 Japanese film

Alone Wolf and Cub: Baby Cart to Hades

Directed by	Kenji Misumi^[1]
Screenplay by	Kazuo Koike^[2]
Based on	A manga by Kazuo Koike and Goseki Kojima^[ii]
Produced by	Shintaro Katsu Hisaharu Matsubara^[2]
Starring	Tomisaburo Wakayama Go Kato Yuko Hama
Cinematography	Chishi Makiura^[2]
Edited by	Toshio Taniguchi^[2]
Music by	Eiken Sakurai^[two]
Production visitor	Katsu^[2]
Distributed by	Toho
Release engagement	ii September 1972 (1972-09-02) (Nippon)
Running time	89 minutes^[2]
Country	Japan

Solitary Wolf and Cub: Baby Cart to Hades ( 子連れ狼　死に風に向う乳母車 , Kozure Ōkami: Shinikazeni mukau ubaguruma , "Wolf with Child in Tow: Perambulator Confronting the Winds of Death"), is the third in a series of six Japanese martial arts films based on the long-running Solitary Wolf and Cub manga series about Ogami Ittō, a wandering assassinator for hire who is accompanied past his young son, Daigoro.^[3]

Plot [edit]

Ogami Ittō, the disgraced former shōgun 'south executioner or Kogi Kaishakunin, is traveling by river on a boat with his young son Daigoro floating backside in the baby cart. A young woman at the front of the boat, conspicuously distraught, accidentally drops a bundle into the water, which Daigoro retrieves for her. Ittō, draws his sword partway and notices in the reflection on the blade that some bamboo reeds are trailing the gunkhole, meaning that Ittō is being followed by operatives of his mortal enemy, the Yagyū Clan. Later, as Daigoro is relieving himself in a bamboo glade, Ittō slices at several alpine bamboo stalks, causing hidden ninja assassins to fall from their elevated perches and to exist bloodily killed past him.

A group of four watari-kashi (wandering lower-grade hired fighters, working from one daimyō to the next, are idling along the road at a rest stop. Hot and bored, they spy an attractive young woman and her mother being escorted past a retainer. Three of them run to take reward of the women, but one of their ring, Kanbei, a rōnin (a samurai who has lost his retainership) and the more honorable of the four, remains. The three knock the escort unconscious and proceed to rape the 2 women. The servant regains consciousness and is furious when he sees the triad violating his mistresses. He attempts to beat them with his bamboo pole, merely is slain by Kanbei, who too slays the ii women in order to silence them. Kanbei makes his three companions draw straws, saying the 1 who draws the short straw will be killed in guild to take the blame for the rapes and murders.

Ittō happens upon this grim scene as Kanbei is slaying the losing watari-kashi. Ittō kills the other two rapists when they attempt to attack him because he tin can speak to their crimes. Kanbei recognizes Ittō and requests a duel at present that Ittō is involved. Ittō accepts, and they gear up to fight, just at the concluding second Ittō re-sheathes his sword and calls it a draw. Kanbei is left to ponder why fate will not let him die honorably every bit he would similar.

At an inn, it turns out that the young woman from the boat is to be sold into prostitution. Her pimp tries to take his way with her, but she bites off his tongue and the pimp dies from stupor. The girl seeks refuge in Ittō's room, who steps in to protect her from the local officials. Only the town's existent authorities show up, the yakuza, led by a pistol-wielding adult female named Torizo, from the Koshio clan. Ittō agrees to deed as a substitute for the immature adult female and undergo buri-buri (literally "angrily"), a class of torture that involves the field of study being hogtied and hung in the air and repeatedly dunked headfirst into a tub of h2o, then beaten to unconsciousness by men wielding thick rattan canes. Ittō endures the torture with his typical stoicism. This frees the immature woman from becoming a prostitute.

Torizo asks and Ittō agrees to run across a one-armed homo who turns out to be Miura Tatewaki, former first retainer of the Kakegawa clan, whom Ittō recognizes from the time he had to execute the insane daimyō Kakegawa Ujishige. Miura was forced to restrain the struggling daimyou to make him stay nevertheless, sacrificing his arm in the procedure to Ittō's precise killing stroke. Torizo is, in fact, Miura's own daughter, Miura Tori, who because of the taboo of her being a twin was secretly raised by the Koshio clan. The Miuras want Ittō to kill Sawatari Genba, who sold out the Kakegawa clan to become governor of the commune of Totomi. He is as well the human being responsible for her sister's expiry and the fall of the Kakegawa clan and its 400 retainers.

Sawatari wants to hire Ittō to kill visiting minister Itakura, only he refuses. While giving the sideslip to Sawatari's retainers, Ittō is attacked by Yagyu ninjas, who have had been post-obit him. The side by side day, Ittō has to face the governor'due south personal bodyguards, ane of whom is a sharpshooter and quick-depict artist who wields a pair of American revolvers. With the aid of his young son Daigoro, who acts as a decoy, Ittō kills the sharpshooter, taking his pistols. The other bodyguard is dispatched in a sword duel.

Ittō's battle culminates in his facing the governor'south army, perchance 200 men, singlehandedly. For the first time, the babe cart is revealed equally holding an entire arsenal of weaponry, including spears, daggers, a bullet-proof shield, and a small battery of guns. All of the governor'due south men are killed, as Ittō first kills one-half of them with the baby cart's firepower and the balance with his sword and other weapons. The governor is the last to die when Ittō, losing his sword equally he falls down an embankment, takes out the sharpshooter'southward pistols and shoots him.

Word of the coming fight has been passed to neighboring districts, and the rōnin Kanbei appears just after Ittō has slain the governor, and again demands a duel. Though boxing-weary, this time Ittō accepts. The fight is over in an instant: Ittō is sliced across his back, but Kanbei is mortally wounded, impaled on Ittō'south Dōtanuki katana.

Equally Kanbei dies, he tells Ittō the story of why he became a rōnin: When his master's convoy was ambushed, Kanbei, seeing his forces outnumbered, seized an opportunity and ran ahead to assail the enemy head on, surprising them, and saving the lord's life. However, considering he had left his lord'due south side, he was dishonored and expelled from the clan. When Kanbei asks what is the true "Way of the Warrior", and if he had done wrong by attacking, Ittō replies that Bushido is not to only live or dice only to alive through death. He confirms that he would take acted simply as Kanbei had. The dying Kanbei asks the former Kogi Kaishakunin to deed as his "2nd" during his seppuku, which Ittō is honored to do.

As Ittō leaves, pushing the cart belongings Daigoro, Torizo, who had been watching everything from a altitude, begins to run afterward him. She is stopped by her men, who implore her non to approach Ittō, proverb he is non human but a devil.

Bandage [edit]

Tomisaburo Wakayama every bit Ogami Ittō
Akihiro Tomikawa as Daigoro
Go Kato as Kanbei
Yuko Hamada every bit Torizo
Isao Yamagata as Sawatari Genba

Product [edit]

Yoshinobu Nishioka - Art direction

Release [edit]

Lone Wolf and Cub: Baby Cart to Hades was released theatrically in Nihon on 2 September 1972 where it was distributed by Toho.^[ii] An American version was released by Toho International with English subtitles in August 1973.^[4] It was later released with an English-language dub by Columbia Pictures under the title Lightning Swords of Decease in August 1973.^[iv]

The film was released to home video in its original Japanese version with English subtitles equally Alone Wolf and Cub - Babe Cart to Hades by Samurai Cinema, a division of AnimEigo.^[4] An alternate version titled Shogun Assassinator ii: Lightning Swords of Expiry which was closer to the Columbia release was released on home video in 2007.^[iv]

Reception [edit]

In a contemporary review, Tony Rayns (Monthly Film Bulletin) stated that the moving-picture show may resemble an art motion-picture show to a Western audition where "Misumi and his writer are concerned to revalidate the samurai code equally as earnestly as movies similar Harakiri question it; the event aligns itself directly with those of, say, Mishima's book Sun and Steel."^[5] Rayns continued that Misumi'due south manner is "typically Japanese" in its "static, slow, contemplative view of the action, reserving bravua furnishings for the moments of climax." and that "Though graphic, the violence is not presented exploitatively; any 'kicks' to be difficult are confined to the placid close-ups of a severed head or limb, the hideous/magnificent aftermath of violence."^[five]

References [edit]

Footnotes [edit]

^ "映画監督三隅研次" (in Japanese). National Flick Annal of Japan. Retrieved November 22, 2020.
^ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f ^g ^h ⁱ Galbraith IV 2008, p. 284.
^ "子連れ狼死に風に向う乳母車". Kinema Junpo. Retrieved 11 January 2021.
^ ^a ^b ^c ^d Galbraith Iv 2008, p. 285.
^ ^a ^b Rayns, Tony (1974). "Kozure Ohkami (Lightning Swords of Expiry)". Monthly Motion picture Bulletin. Vol. 41, no. 480. p. 276. ISSN 0027-0407.