Sleepy Eyes of Death 8: Sword Of Villainy

Who Wants To Be A Villain Heir?


Sleepy Eyes of Death 8
aka Nemuri Kyôshirô 8: Burai-ken
Japan 1966
Directed by Kenji Misumi
Anime Eigo Region 1

Series regular Kenji Misumi returns to direct the eighth of the Sleepy Eyes Of Death movies but... it’s a curious beast of a film and I’m not convinced this quite convoluted tale of conspiracy against the government actually started out as a Nemuri Kyôshirô movie in the first place. Everything looks like its been written for something completely different and the main series protagonist has just been slotted in after the fact. I’d like to know more about the production history of this movie and, also, the events which take place on screen as they seem to be inspired by a true incident in Edo period Japan, including a great fire in Edo which I can’t find as taking place anywhere near the main timeline of this picture.

The film opens with slow harpsichords on a soundtrack by none other than the master composer of Japanese film Akira Ifikube (creator of the “voice” of Gojira  aka Godzilla and also the musical scores for many of the Gojira movies... a man known as the John Williams of Japan) and continues on throughout the running time of the movie in a fairly leisurely style in much the manner of the handful of scores he did for another series of successful chambara films which were around at the same time, the Zatoichi series. I think I would be hard pressed, especially after only one viewing, to hear any real difference in his scoring fo those Blind Swordsman movies and this one, to be honest.

The plot begins in a conspiratorial manner as rival factions are after the secrets to the method to distill “stink-water” (a natural oil found in swamps) to make a clean-burning energy.. and not something which is going to be useless and uncommercial in lamps because it gives of a sooty black smoke when burned if incorrectly distilled. This eventually hatches into a plot to destroy the whole of the Edo district in Japan (as it was formerly known before it came to be called Tokyo). It’s also the story of a villain who wants to do this while hiding it as a commercial opportunity to the people he needs to help him while at the same time trying to keep a promise to a little girl (which is the only thing which really gives this particular movie any real heart).

The thing is... it takes maybe a quarter of an hour before Nemuri Kyôshirô actually turns up in the narrative and even then they have to shoehorn him into the plot by making him a “coincidental double” of the dead man who managed to perfect the top secret distillation method to begin with. Nemuri really doesn’t do much in this movie and he seems to be really innefectual in the progression of the plot, too. Sure, he saves a few lives and slaughters a fair few more, but for the majority of the course of the movie, it just seems like the writers are finding ways in which they can have the character interact with a bunch load of other characters who are themselves, in reality, driving the story forward without his help. This really shows up towards the end of the movie where Nemuri falls into a trap and finds himself helpless to come to the rescue as explosions rock a few warehouses and Edo is set on a course to burn down completely. Again, although I know there have been some major fires in Edo, there’s nothing on the books that I can find which match the mid-19th Century kind of dating that this movie has. if you’re a reader with any knowledge of this historical incident, please leave it in the comments section at the bottom of this short review.

Nemuri then gets free at the end in order to deal with the main villain (and the pathos of his unfulfilled promise to the little girl) and to slaughter all his subordinates while the general battle around the convoluted and, I suspect, highly political plot, takes care of everything else.

Because of the lack of a cohesive, Nemuri Kyôshirô led plot, this is actually my least favourite of the Sleepy Eyes Of Death films so far. It is, however, one of the reasons why it is also one of the most interesting... coupled with the typical “lazy Chanbara” style Ifikube scoring and some absolutely stunningly designed frames. There’s some stuff in here where the director chops the single frame up artificially into about 8 sections, for example, so that a range of characters in a room can each have their own sectioned of area of space in relation to everybody else. Stunning stuff.

If you like the Sleepy Eyes Of Death movies then Sword Of Villainy is definitely a must-see, simply because it’s so different in tone and style to the previous seven in the series. If you’re looking for a film to jump onto the series with, though, this certainly isn’t it. I suspect (since I can find no information to either confirm or refute my suspicions) that this movie did not start off life as a Nemuri Kyôshirô movie. I reckon this one was probably being developed as something else and the studio needed another Nemuri Kyôshirô installment quick to keep the impetus going (this must have been quite a succesful film series for the studio). So probably not the best one to start on since it doesn’t really give you a flavour of what the series is really like.

Sleepy Eyes of Death 7: The Mask Of The Princess

Mask Of Red Death

Sleepy Eyes of Death 7: The Mask Of The Princess

aka Nemuri Kyôshirô 7: Tajo-ken Japan 1966

Directed by Akira Inoue

Anime Eigo Region 1

This is easily the best in the Sleepy Eyes Of Death series of movies that I’ve seen so far. A quite astonishing film, in fact, for all kinds of reasons.

It starts off with a pre-credits sequence which recalls Noh theatre in costume (if not in actual delivery) in which the film’s arch villainess, the hideously deformed Princess who is forced to wear a mask to hide her face from the fourth installment in the series (reviewed here), returns and proclaims a very nasty revenge on Nemuri Kyôshirô which is quite disturbing, I have to say, in its fervour. Heralded by harpsichord statements on the soundtrack, we then cut to the opening credits followed by Nemuri springing the first of many traps set for him by the lady in question.

During these first sequences, he purchases a maid (a face-saving exercise to cover up for the fact that he is, in fact, buying out and freeing an innocent 15 year old virgin from her service as a prostitute) and she and a noble samurai (who is not what he seems) follow Nemuri Kyôshirô around on his day-to-day business.

His day-to-day business during the course of this movie is, of course, taken up completely with springing and evading the ambushes and traps set by the deadly, exiled Princess who has employed a whole load of ninja’s to take him out. Some of these are pretty exciting set ups, including a seemingly mad girl wearing a sign saying “Nemuri Kyôshirô molested me” who leads him to an abandoned mansion which, at the flick of a switch, has portcullis like cages to totally encase the room Kyôshirô and the girl are occupying.

This all sounds like pretty good boy’s own adventure stuff... and it is. The sheer nastiness of the threats aimed at Kyôshirô are quite sinister and worrying and this really lends the movie some edge. For example, his 15 year old maid is kidnapped and almost doesn’t miss having her face burned off with acid as a lesson to our hero... and this is also the movie where Kyôshirô shows real concern (following on from the brilliant character development in the previous film in the series) and you really begin to feel for him as a person.

But that... all that... pales in comparison to the sheer brilliance of the shot design and cinematography of this one. We’re almost entering giallo territory here people! Some of the stuff in this one is absolutely breathtaking and although it’s quite blatant and stylistic, the way shots transform themselves and shift composition “in-camera” using depth of field combined with slight movement to shift characters from different, visibly blocked out areas in shots, it all seems completely effortless. Effortless but obviously well worked out and brilliant. The way the director cuts up little partitions in the shot to frame characters in and then change the perspective within those set ups to emphasise different things was absolutely amazing to watch. This one feels like it is to the Sleepy Eyes Of Death series what On Her Majesty’s Secret Service is to the Bond series... an absolute, art masterpiece.

I don’t know how the series will ever top this one but I was absolutely gripped from the disquieting opening scene right up to the rather “cut and dried” ending... if you’ll pardon the expression. All the way through this one, as you watch and breathe in the kalieidoscope of dazzling shot designs, you feel like everything is at stake and that Nemuri Kyôshirô must come through for the girl who is in his care and that this road leads to his redemption. If you are wanting to get hooked on this series of movies then, although this is technically a sequel to an earlier entry, this really is the one to do it with. If you like chanbara then the sheer artistry and talent on display in this one makes it unmissable. So don’t miss out on it!

Sleepy Eyes of Death 6: Sword Of Satan

Devilled Edge

Sleepy Eyes of Death 6: Sword Of Satan

aka Nemuri Kyôshirô 6: Masho-ken Japan 1965

Directed by Kimiyoshi Yasuda

Anime Eigo Region 1

Warning: Spoilers slicing satanically into your brain!

Director Kimiyoshi Yasuda follows on from directing the ninth of the Zatoichi movies, Adventures Of Zatoichi, with this quite strong entry in the Nemuri Kyôshirô cycle and, I have to admit I was surprised I enjoyed this one so much because I thought the same director’s work on the third movie in the series was less than stellar (reviewed here...).

Visually, this one seems to be a lot more engaging than his previous Nemuri Kyôshirô movie, Full Circle Killing but it also retains the strong story element which many of the earlier movies were a little lacking in. This one starts off very well in the pouring rain and for quite a while there, it does maintain its own unique and sinister little atmosphere when compared to previous installments.

In this story, a mysterious masked lady begs Nemuri to sleep with her for money but all he does is listen to her story (after paying her) and casts scorn on her misfortune. The next day she has killed herself, leaving behind a young son who a clan have been trying to kill as an heir to the shogunate but who now want the boy to stay with their clan and be th next shogun in line... or their clan is doomed. This is the first film in the series where Nemuri Kyôshirô actually develops a real conscience and is actually regretful of his earlier words which were, ultimately, the words which convinced the boys mother to end her own life.

As the clan comes to take the boy, he leaves him in hiding while he pursues a few other things, including a black mass to which the boys appointed guardian is kidnapped to for ritualistic, naked slaughter. This movie is “all about the boy” as they say, and with Nemuri as his protector, you can be sure various factions in this movie want Nemuri dead and the boy for themselves.

And if that wasn’t enough, Nemuri is also being pursued by a vengeful lady assassin who was related to somebody he killed in an earlier picture. She is easily stoppable but relentless and tries varying methods to bring down our hero, such as having a bald headed nun seducing him and trying to sleep with him, which really doesn’t work out that well for all parties concerned, as you can imagine.

There’s also the old “small deadly creature let loose in the room” ploy (a snake in this case) which, to be fair, has always been a requisite ingredient in pulp fiction (I personally tend to associate Fu Manchu and Sherlock Holmes with being experts in this field). Given the timing of the movie in close proximity to the first cinema-released James Bond film, I suspect this element owes more to the box office success in Japan of Dr. No and its tarantula scene than it does to anything else. It’s not a very good snake scene, I should probably add, and it’s over very quickly and without any real menace or worry on the part of both our main protagonist or the audience, is my guess.

The assassin is quite fixated on her revenge against our angst-ridden hero, even trying to kill him after saving her life from a bunch of samurai who want her dead. And she’s not the only one to hate Nemuri. The little boy who he has sworn to protect hates samurai and would much rather grow up to be a carpenter. What’s more, and this is quite understandable since Nemuri is kinda responsible for his mother’s death, the kid does not want Nemuri’s protection and shuns and rejects our main protagonists noble intentions towards him as much as he possibly can.

This is a Sleepy Eyes of Death movie like no others before it in that the hero is not just on a journey as typified by the traditional “road chanbara” of the time, but also a journey within himself as he realises the way his actions have affected others and is given, in some cases, physical manifestations of these consequences... such as the orphaned boy and the vengeance filled assassin. And the most haunting and taunting of these manifestations is the mask of the boys mother who killed herself after her scornful rejection by Nemuri, which he carries around with him on his belt as a reminder of the harm he has caused due to just a few unkind words.

This is a film which is as much about a small journey of redemption for our lead character as it is about the numerous action sequences which pepper the movie. One of the more satisfying entries in the Sleepy Eyes Of Death movie series and one which has left me looking forward to the next one. Only two more left to watch out of what’s been released so far, though. I hope Anime Eigo get around to bringing out a third box soon.