SWORD OF DOOM
A film review by Mark R. Leeper
Copyright 1989 Mark R. Leeper
Capsule review: Black samurai film noir about a psychotic swordsman and several other reprehensible people. They all meet a bad end; so does this film, which ends ambiguously and with several unresolved subjects. Rating: +1.
Kihachi Okamoto's 1966 SWORD OF DOOM is aptly named. The film is about swords and about doom and about more doom. This is a relentlessly downbeat samurai film noir exercise. It is well photographed--stunningly in some scenes--but I found myself wishing it would end sooner so I would not have to watch these people nay more. At the center of the story is an essentially mentally deranged swordsman who kills for sport and to perfect his style and for just about any other reason that comes to mind. He learned the technique from his father who invented it, taught it to his son, and then repented of all the damage it had done. Tsukue is to have a style match with Utsugi but, though his technique is superior, he agrees not to kill Utsugi. However, when Utsugi's wife Hana comes to Tsukue to beg for her husband's life, Tsukue again agrees but only if she will have sex with him. She reluctantly agrees. Her husband finds out about the arrangement and divorces his wife. In spite of giving his word twice, Tsukue finds himself compelled by bloodlust to kill Utsugi anyway. Tsukue take his opponent's ex-wife whom he maintains in a constant state of fear, even after she bears him a son. The film also concerns a beautiful young woman sold by her mother to a nobleman who uses her sadistically as a sex toy. When she is rescued by her uncle, the mother sells her into concubinage. The major characters are mostly either vicious or weak.
Tatsuya Nakadai plays the evil Tsukue as a man possessed by inner devils. Outwardly passive-looking, even when fighting, he is a man deep within himself and yet always at war with the world. He reminds one of psychotic performances by Robert Mitchum and Richard Widmark. The script claims he kills by an evil technique and that an evil mind is mirrored in an evil sword. There are powerful visual images to show the anger in Tsukue in spite of his passive face. In one scene he is in a dusty room with one beam of light from the sun. He is practicing strokes where the tip of his blade stops within the beam. The swirling dust makes the sword look as if it is smoking.
I have never failed to enjoy any samurai film, but SWORD OF DOOM comes as close as any with its bitter and downbeat tone. Rate it a +1 on the -4 to +4 scale. (Two additional notes: Toshiro Mifune plays Shimada, the teacher of a fighting school who has a mutual fear of Tsukue. Director Okamoto went on to direct AKAGE (a.k.a., RED LION) in 1969 and ZATOICHI MEETS YOJIMBO in 1970.)
Mark R. Leeper
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