Comic book adaptations are one of the biggest genres at the moment. Since the emergence of Bryan Singer’s X-Men, Hollywood producers have been clamoring to get men back in tights and on screen faster than Joel Schumacher can kill off a booming franchise. Leading the way are Marvel Comics franchises, and most notably the aforementioned X-Men. In fact Marvel seems to have cornered the market lately with blockbusters like Spiderman, Blade, The Hulk, The Punisher, and Daredevil. This summer, The Fantastic Four comes to cinemas to try and keep up Marvel’s good fortune. Other Comic adaptations like League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Hellboy, and Bulletproof Monk have also graced the screen in recent years with varying results. In the coming months, DC comics will throw their hat back in the cinematic ring with a resurgence in their formerly lackluster franchises with Superman Returns and Batman Begins. Even projects dealing with uncharacteristic comic book property have reached theatres and gotten some critical praise with From Hell, Road to Perdition, Ghost World and now Sin City.
Even before this recent interest in these types of films, the comic book hero has been the subject for many different types of cinematic figures. The 40’s and 50’s featured Superman and Batman serials and the 70’s and 80’s brought us those heroes in big budget feature films. Americans are used to seeing these types of films and often they score big numbers at the box office. Internationally comic book heroes have also been a staple of some countries’ film industries for decades.
In Japan, the Manga comic book style has had a great influence on many of their films with adaptations of their books such as Guyver and Azumi. A flurry of these types of films were put out in the 1960’s featuring many sword-wielding heroes of Japanese comics such as Lady Snowblood. One of the best series to come out of this time period was the Lone Wolf and Cub series.
Created in 1970 by Kazuo Koike and Goseki Kojima Lone Wolf and Cub, is a series of comics dealing with the life of Ogami Itto, the supreme executioner for the Tokugawa Government, the ruling body of Japan from 1600 through the 1860’s. Though Itto is a man of great honor and adheres to the strict samurai code of Bushido, he is betrayed by a rival ninja clan, the Yagyu, that desire to usurp Itto’s position in the government and make themselves more powerful. One hundred and forty two separate sixty page issues of graphic violence follow Itto and his son Daigoro’s journey of revenge to its bloody conclusion. The series was vast and epic, and adapting such a story to a single film would be impossible. What followed was a series of films that would follow assassins Lone Wolf and Cub into battle and create a cult of cinephiles that is still in love with the films to this very day.
Lone Wolf and Cub: Sword of Vengeance Starring Tomisaburo Wakayama and Akihiro Tomikawa. Directed by Kenji Misumi.
The first Lone Wolf and Cub tells the origin of the series and sets up Itto’s home life as his status affords him an estate that allows him to provide for his wife and new child handsomely. These early scenes are important for establishing what Itto is about to lose. He cares greatly for his wife, Asami, and when he is home he wants to separate himself from the violence of his every day life. Itto’s home is stately, but there is still love there.
The plot against Itto is put into motion with the death of Itto’s wife. The samurai comes home to find Asami dead, but no assassin present. Things get worse the following day as a government official enters Itto’s house with a search warrant. Three men had killed themselves during the night and signed a petition in blood that Itto secretly hated the Shogun, Japan’s supreme ruler. Itto dismissed the men’s accusations, but a search of his house did indeed include a shrine to the death of the Shogun.
Framed for an affront punishable by the death of both him and his son, Itto fights his way through the officers into a local river. At the river, poised over a small waterfall, the samurai dispatches opponents using the lighting quick action of his sword. Eight go into the river, locked in battle, but only one returns. Itto’s last opponent, the official issuing the warrant, is discovered to be the heir of the Yagyu ninja clan. Upon ascertaining this, Itto ascertains that the Yagyu are behind his political assassination.
When officials return to demand that Itto commit ritual suicide, Itto is ready for them. Dressed in the white traditional robes of seppuku, Itto is a demon of death, killing all in his path. Only a confrontation with the head of the Yagyu Clan, Retsudo stops the killing spree. The two make a deal that Ogami will leave the capital of Edo and the Yagyu agree not to pursue him. This is all on the condition that Itto and his son survive a duel with another Yagyu heir. The proceeding duel is a masterfully done sequence of poetry and violence as Itto and his son join in battle to deceive and decapitate their Yagyu opponent. Itto’s road to vengeance takes him and his son on the assassin’s path. The duo become Lone Wolf and Cub, Assassin and son for hire.
Their first assignment involves stopping the assassination of a feudal lord by dispatching the killers hired to murder him. When Itto finds the ruffians, they have taken over a village, and have killed or raped the villagers at will. Some travelers looking to spend time at the hot springs near the village are also being held captive. The gang of criminals capture Ogami and his child, and even try to torture the two. Things come to a head when the gang announces they are leaving the town and will have to kill all the travelers. In an amazing reveal, Itto makes known his identity to his captors and a clash of swords and knives ends the film.
The “Chambara” or Samurai genre of Japanese cinema had a rich pedigree before the release of the first Lone Wolf and Cub in 1972. As much a staple of early Japanese cinema as Westerns were in the United States, the genre reached an early zenith in 1954 with the release of Akira Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai. Kurosawa put out many other swordplay epics such as The Hidden Fortress and Throne of Blood, but in 1961 Kurosawa elated audiences with one of his most popular works, Yojimbo. The story of a ronin samurai that enters a town and rids it of its two rival gangs was full of humor and action. More importantly was the distinct Western influence on the film. Gone was the traditional Japanese outlook on social class and bushido that were some of the themes in traditional films like Kenji Mizoguchi’s The 47 Ronin and Kurosawa’s own Seven Samurai. Here was a film about villains killing each other and a now classic antihero using every dirty trick to get the job done.
The film’s themes were so out-reaching that when Sergio Leone was going to make his first foray into westerns, the plot of Yojimbo became the basis for A Fistful of Dollars. Dollars was so successful that it launched both Leone’s career as well as its leading man, Clint Eastwood. It was also responsible for launching the entire sub genre of the Spaghetti Western. The Spaghetti Western became a world wide phenomenon with its emphasis on operatic visual storytelling, high use of violence and short use of dialogue.
Japanese cinema reacted in turn, adapting a much more western approach to its samurai films. Zatoichi, an amazing series of films featuring a blind swordsman, looked as if they were cut from the same mold as the Spaghetti Western. Instead of the lengthy, drawn out fight scenes usually associated with Eastern Cinema, the scenes of Zatoichi in battle would have a suspenseful build up and then a lightning fast display of swordsmanship. The series was so popular that it made its leading man Shintaro Katsu an international star. Katsu’s star power gave him the ability to create a series for his brother as well. His brother was Tomisaburo Wakayama and the series was Lone Wolf and Cub.
Where as the Zatoichi series featured many of the qualities of the Spaghetti Western, Lone Wolf and Cub was the next evolution in this more action oriented samurai genre. Gone completely were humor or really any subtlety, Lone Wolf and Cub was a full on representation of the comics with all its gory excess and sexual content. The pictures are almost devoid of dialogue as Itto’s sword slashes though his foes with a ferocity rarely seen on screen.
Tomisaburo Wakayama is excellent as Ogami Itto. While not the dashing figure Itto is in the comics, the actor is able to display a great amount of intensity that the role calls for. The actor is no slouch in the action scenes either. Already a veteran of Chambara with appearances in several films including two entries in the series starring his brother, playing the main villain in The Return of Zatoichi and Zatoichi and the Chest of Gold, Wakayama looks completely believable as the master assassin. The actor would play an important role in Ridley Scott’s yakuza action-thriller Black Rain, but playing Ogami Itto would be the supreme role of his career.
Akihiro Tomikawa’s Daigoro is the picture of innocence. The young boy is a tough role to play to some degree, as he must play his scenes as deadpan as possible and must even seem believable in the action scenes he partakes in. The young actor is up to the challenge in most instances. Tomikawa’s performances in these series were the only ones of his career, but the film’s cult audience has made Daigoro quite memorable.
Although several actors would play Yagyu Retsudo in the series, Tokio Oki’s performance as Itto’s nemesis was the best. While not participating in any battle sequences per se, Oki possessed the strength and passion that Retsudo had in the comic series. Oki’s performance also laced the Yagyu leader with a touch of madness in his eyes that made him seem more menacing than some of the other actors that played the part.
While not a true financial success in its native land of Japan, Lone Wolf and Cub has reached a huge cult audience as a film series. The biggest fan of the series would is Quentin Tarantino. The action scenes of Lone Wolf and Cub, featuring huge blood geysers and aerobatic martial arts, can be seen emulated in Tarantino’s revenge opus Kill Bill. Lone Wolf and Cub is every bit the cinematic massacre that the Pulp Fiction Director’s film is. The difference in the styles of action can be seen in how Tarantino was able to meld both straight samurai swordplay and the choreography of Hong Kong Cinema seen in films like Fist of Legend and The Five Deadly Venoms. Lone Wolf and Cub instead is a more fluid but straight forward type of action, but the choreography is no less impressive.
Another example of Lone Wolf and Cub’s major cinematic legacy comes in the works of Max Allen Collins. Collin’s graphic novel Road to Perdition is an adaptation of the Lone Wolf and Cub series. In the foreword to his novel, Collins writes about how the films influenced him as a writer and how much fun he had in the showing the films to his child. In 2002 Road to Perdition became a full length feature film, with Tom Hanks and Paul Newman starring. Road to Perdition is an incredible adaptation of the Lone Wolf and Cub mythology and really shows how the themes of the series could translate internationally.
In 1994, international action star Jet Li starred in the Corey Yuen and Wong Jing picture New Legend of Shaolin. The fun martial arts film features a renegade Li and his son played by Tze Miu, who are being pursued by the law as the duo fight together to subdue their enemies. The film is very entertaining but not in the same league as the original films. The movie lifts several elements from the series. First is the appearance of a baby cart, which is an iconic element of Lone Wolf and Cub. In some countries the Itto series was actually known as the Baby Cart in Peril series. Another element is a scene in which Jet Li’s Hung Hei-kwun makes his infant son decide whether to follow him or if he should be with his mother in the afterlife, by giving him the options of crawling to a sword or a toy. This scene is copied nearly second for second the way it goes in Sword of Vengeance.
For a true representation of a comic book series, few film series are as faithful as Lone Wolf and Cub. Sword of Vengeance begins with an extremely accurate retelling of “The Assassin’s Road”, the fifth story in the comic series that shows Itto’s origin as an assassin. The end of the film is taken from “Wings to the Bird, Fangs to the Beast”, the third issue of the series. Few adaptation have preserved a series themes so well as Lone Wolf and Cub. Throughout the films, an amazing amount of the most important stories from the comics are represented. Lone Wolf and Cub is a monumental film in the Chambara genre and has a great cinematic legacy. Whether remembered as heroes of great films or just grind house cinema fun, Itto and Daigoro walk on as cinematic legends.
