Monday, September 10, 2007

Sleepy Eyes of Death 8 - The Sword That Saved Edo & Sleepy Eyes of Death 9 - Trail of Traps

Sleepy Eyes 8
s private film theory fragment 763: The chambara genre can be divided into to sub-genres, the serious chambara and the damn outrageous chambara.
This one is (unusual for the Adventures of Nemuri Kyoshiro) a serious chambara by Kenji Misumi. It is a nice mystery story with our hero playing the role of the detective, fighting a conspiracy that could destroy Edo. We learn that technology can be destructive and that high ideals often lead to terrible deeds.

Sleepy Eyes 9
Speaking of damn outrageous chambaras... Here we have a perfectly great and perfectly mad example of the sub-genre. Nemuri Kyoshiro (Ichikawa) travels to Kyoto, protecting a woman in possession of a golden statuette of the Madonna against a satanist cult, meeting a freak show of bizarre people (sharpshooting killer nuns!), leaving no weird sentence unuttered and no person alive. Kazuo Ikehiro directs as if there was nothing strange going on at all, automatically winning my undying admiration.

Darlings of the Day:
"However, you should know that I am not a moral person. You can trust me on this because I, myself, am telling you."

"I see women as sexual objects."
"Oh my."

"I like to sleep with women. But not enough to kill somebody."

"Being treated with poison tea is not my favorite thing."

"The last person in the world he saw was me. What an unlucky man he was!"

"Welcoming me with guns instead of crystal rosaries. How very bizarre!"

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