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Lone Wolf and Cub: Baby Cart to Hades
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Wikipedia article
{{Infobox film
| name = Lone Wolf and Cub: Baby Cart to Hades
| image = Lone Wolf and Cub Baby Cart to Hades.jpg
| alt =
| caption =
| native_name =
| director = Kenji Misumi
| producer =
| screenplay = Kazuo Koike
| based_on =
| starring =
| music = Eiken Sakurai
| cinematography = Chishi Makiura
| editing = Toshio Taniguchi
| studio = Katsu
| distributor = Toho
| released =
| runtime = 89 minutes
| country = Japan
| language =
| budget =
| gross =
}}
, is the third in a series of six Japanese martial arts films based on the long-running 'Lone Wolf and Cub' manga series about Ogami Itt, a wandering assassin for hire who is accompanied by his young son, Daigoro.
Plot
Ogami Itt, the disgraced former 'shgun's executioner or 'Kogi Kaishakunin', is traveling by river on a boat with his young son Daigoro floating behind in the baby cart. A young woman at the front of the boat, clearly distraught, accidentally drops a bundle into the water, which Daigoro retrieves for her. Itt, draws his sword partway and notices in the reflection on the blade that some bamboo reeds are trailing the boat, meaning that Itt is being followed by operatives of his mortal enemy, the Yagy Clan. Later, as Daigoro is relieving himself in a bamboo glade, Itt slices at several tall bamboo stalks, causing hidden ninja assassins to fall from their elevated perches and to be bloodily killed by him.
A group of four 'watari-kashi' (wandering lower-class hired fighters, working from one 'daimy' 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 by a servant. Three of them run to take advantage of the women, but one of their band, Kanbei, a 'rnin' (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 two 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, but is slain by Kanbei, who also slays the two women in order to silence them. Kanbei makes his three companions draw straws, saying the one who draws the short straw will be killed in order to take the blame for the rapes and murders.
Itt happens upon this grim scene as Kanbei is slaying the losing 'watari-kashi'. Itt kills the other two rapists when they attempt to attack him because he can speak to their crimes. Kanbei recognizes Itt and requests a duel now that Itt is involved. Itt accepts, and they prepare to fight, but at the last second Itt re-sheathes his sword and calls it a draw. Kanbei is left to ponder why fate will not let him die honorably as he would like.
At an inn, it turns out that the young woman from the boat is to be sold into prostitution. Her pimp tries to have his way with her, but she accidentally bites the tip of his tongue off while resisting and the pimp dies from shock. The girl seeks refuge in Itt's room, who steps in to protect her from the local officials. But the town's real authorities show up, the yakuza, led by a pistol-wielding woman named Torizo, from the Koshio clan. Itt agrees to act as a substitute for the young woman and undergo 'buri-buri' (literally "angrily"), a form of torture that involves the subject being hogtied and hung in the air and repeatedly dunked headfirst into a tub of water, then beaten to unconsciousness by men wielding thick rattan canes. Itt endures the torture with his typical stoicism. This frees the young woman from becoming a prostitute.
Torizo asks and Itt agrees to meet a one-armed man who turns out to be Miura Tatewaki, former first retainer of the Kakegawa clan, whom Itt recognizes from the time he had to execute the insane 'daimy' Kakegawa Ujishige. Miura was forced to restrain the struggling daimyou to make him stay still, sacrificing his arm in the process to Itt'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 Itt to kill Sawatari Genba, who sold out the Kakegawa clan to become governor of the district of Totomi. He is also the man responsible for her sister's death and the fall of the Kakegawa clan and its 400 retainers.
Sawatari wants to hire Itt to kill visiting minister Itakura, but he refuses. While giving the slip to Sawatari's retainers, Itt is attacked by Yagyu ninjas, who have had been following him. The next day, Itt has to face the governor's personal bodyguards, one of whom is a sharpshooter and quick-draw artist who wields a pair of American revolvers. With the help of his young son Daigoro, who acts as a decoy, Itt kills the sharpshooter, taking his pistols. The other bodyguard is dispatched in a sword duel.
Itt's battle culminates in his facing the governor's army, perhaps 200 men, singlehandedly. For the first time, the baby cart is revealed as holding an entire arsenal of weaponry, including spears, daggers, a bullet-proof shield, and a small battery of guns. All of the governor's men are killed, as Itt first kills half of them with the baby cart's firepower and the rest with his sword and other weapons. The governor is the last to die when Itt, losing his sword as he falls down an embankment, takes out the sharpshooter's pistols and shoots him.
Word of the coming fight has been passed to neighboring districts, and the 'rnin' Kanbei appears just after Itt has slain the governor, and again demands a duel. Though battle-weary, this time Itt accepts. The fight is over in an instant: Itt is sliced across his back, but Kanbei is mortally wounded, impaled on Itt's 'Dtanuki' katana.
As Kanbei dies, he tells Itt the story of why he became a 'rnin': When his master's convoy was ambushed, Kanbei, seeing his forces outnumbered, seized an opportunity and ran ahead to attack the enemy head on, surprising them, and saving the lord's life. However, because he had left his lord's 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, Itt replies that Bushido is not to simply live or die but to live through death. He confirms that he would have acted just as Kanbei had. The dying Kanbei asks the former 'Kogi Kaishakunin' to act as his "second" during his seppuku, which Itt is honored to do.
As Itt leaves, pushing the cart holding Daigoro, Torizo, who had been watching everything from a distance, begins to run after him. She is stopped by her men, who implore her not to approach Itt, saying he is not human but a devil.
Cast
*Tomisaburo Wakayama as Ogami Itt
*Akihiro Tomikawa as Daigoro
*Go Kato as Kanbei
*Yuko Hamada as Torizo
*Isao Yamagata as Sawatari Genba
Production
* Yoshinobu Nishioka - Art direction
Release
'Lone Wolf and Cub: Baby Cart to Hades' was released theatrically in Japan on 2 September 1972 where it was distributed by Toho. An American version was released by Toho International with English subtitles in August 1973. It was later released with an English-language dub by Columbia Pictures under the title 'Lightning Swords of Death' in August 1973.
The film was released to home video in its original Japanese version with English subtitles as 'Lone Wolf and Cub - Baby Cart to Hades' by Samurai Cinema, a division of AnimEigo. An alternate version titled 'Shogun Assassin 2: Lightning Swords of Death' which was closer to the Columbia release was released on home video in 2007.
Reception
In a contemporary review, Tony Rayns ('Monthly Film Bulletin') stated that the film may resemble an art film to a Western audience where "Misumi and his writer are concerned to revalidate the samurai code every bit as earnestly as movies like 'Harakiri' question it; the result aligns itself directly with those of, say, Mishima's book 'Sun and Steel'." Rayns continued that Misumi's style is "typically Japanese" in its "static, slow, contemplative view of the action, reserving bravua effects for the moments of climax." and that "Though graphic, the violence is not presented exploitatively; any 'kicks' to be hard are confined to the placid close-ups of a severed head or limb, the hideous/magnificent aftermath of violence."
References
Footnotes
Sources
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