This is one of these long forgotten obscure films that was very popular amongst my peers back in the day . . My peers were of course schoolboys in their early teens and when you’re that age a film’s quality is almost down to gore , swearing . nipple count and other low brow criteria . This means the greatest urban vigilante film wasn’t TAXI DRIVER but THE EXTERMINATOR with its graphic scenes of mutilation and torture . By the same yardstick the greatest Japanese film wasn’t by Kurosawa or Kobayashi but this one here . I didn’t see it when it hit home video in the early 1980s where it subsequently banned circa 1983/84 but was constantly told about it by people who enjoyed seeing limbs and heads getting lopped off . After just seeing it I can’t help thinking nostalgia plays a primary part in its very high user rating on this website
There’s no way you can accuse THE SHOGUN ASSASSIN in being boring but at the same time you can’t accuse of being anything more than disposable exploitation schlock . Looking through the Movie Connection link on this page it’s apparently three earlier films spliced together and dubbed in to English . One wonders how much milage there was in the previous films because story wise this one a very basic revenge tale with episodic fight scenes that go over the top . It’s not enough to merely stab or decapitate someone and they must shoot a stream of blood . You know when you get a garden hose and put your finger over the nozzle and the water comes out in a high pressure spray ? Well that what happens here after a sword fight . It does become clearer and clearer the longer the film continues that is all the film rarely contains , a repetitive series of gory sword fights . Bare that in mind if you want to seek out the film due to its high rating . One also might have feared for a customer going in to a video shop in the early 1980s seeing the title and taking it home thinking it was somehow connected to the mini-series SHOGUN starring Richard Chamberlain . It’s hardly family friendly but at the same time the violence is so silly and overdone it resembles MONTY PYTHON rather than some of the more infamous video nasties of the era and one wonders did it really need banned ?
