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![]() ![]() It’s in this spirit that I begin a journey with my mercifully unaware four-month-old daughter along the ‘Demon Way in Hell’, and binge-watch all six Lone Wolf and Cub movies. My daughter, obviously, had no idea what was going on, but I will be sure to frequently remind her of this time when she’s much older. ![]() Mainly because they were subtitled and I wouldn’t wake my wife, but also because it felt appropriate to go back and rediscover the films that first made me appreciate world cinema as a younger film nerd. In the first weeks of her birth, I would get up to feed our baby at 3am and together we’d watch Seven Samurai, Yojimbo or Hidden Fortress. Chanbara is onomatopoeia for the sound of blades striking together.Īlthough to be fair, I have just become a father AND I’m a huge fan of old Akira Kurosawa samurai films, so I’m basically the exact target audience. There’s also a surprisingly touching father and son relationship at its centre, which offsets all the lopped-off heads and limbs, and makes the whole experience hugely affecting.Ĭhanbara (チャンバラ) literally translates to “sword fight” and has come to denote Japanese samurai cinema, which is itself a sub-genre of Jidaigeki (or “period drama” – usually set during the Edo period of Japanese history between 1603 – 1868). Lone Wolf and Cub contains the most extraordinary mixture of period samurai drama (“Chanbara”), exploitation thrills and gob-smacking levels of bloodshed. Accompanying Ogami is his three-year old son Daigoro, who he pushes around in an impressively weaponised pram, tooled up with an infinite supply of knives, swords and the other deadly surprises. Thankfully he’s not alone following the ‘Demon Way in Hell’. After his wife is murdered by ninjas, Ogami is forced to wander the countryside as an assassin-for-hire while seeking vengeance against those who betrayed him. They’ve now become my new obsession.īased on the long-running manga series of the same name, the six classic Lone Wolf and Cub films were shot between 1972 – 1974 and feature Itto Ogami (Tomisaburo Wakayama) an executioner for the Shogun, who is betrayed by his own clan and framed for treason. The episode is also a loving homage to the Lone Wolf and Cub series of films, which also centre on the journey of a sword-wielding father and child during the Edo period of Japan – something I was completely unaware of until Lone Wolf and Cub was announced for a lavish re-issue by Criterion this month. ![]() It’s a perfect episode full of warmth and pathos, and through Bob and Louise’s shared love of these old samurai movies, we explore the deepening relationship between the pair. The hopeful duo finally succeed by holding a screening of a 70s martial arts film (the ‘Hawk and Chick’ of the metatextual title), which stars the estranged father and daughter as a pair of nomadic samurai tied together by a familial bond of vengeance. ‘Hawk and Chick’ features Bob and his rabbit-hatted daughter Louise working together to reconcile an ageing Japanese actor with his own long-lost daughter. There’s an episode of Bob’s Burgers that I dearly love, perhaps a tiny bit more than all the others. An epic journey through all six movies, featuring samurai cinema’s most hyper-violent and touchingly depicted father and son duo. We take an in-depth look at Lone Wolf and Cub.
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