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Kedamono no ken (1965) More at IMDbPro »
8 out of 9 people found the following comment useful :-
Solid intro to Gosha's work, 12 July 2001
Author: shinobirastafari from San Francisco, CA
One of Gosha's earlier movies, it contains all the elements that made him a "chambara" director to be admired and emulated: Well-composed and thoughtful cinematography, a cynical view of authority (with certain implications for modern Japanese society), human drama, and OF COURSE, some excellent swordplay!
Certainly a solid and watchable samurai drama, both for "popcorn" and "cinema" appeal. I'd see Goyokin and/or Hitokiri first, but see this one next!
5 out of 5 people found the following comment useful :-
Not Much Action, But The Thick Plot And Characters Are Interesting, 28 November 2006
Author: Hal-900 from WA, USA
Minor, but deliciously fast-paced samurai saga. It begins rather abruptly and it ends in similar fashion; it feels like a book with missing chapters. For such a short film, the narrative is fairly complex. It took some time before I understood what was going on, but once I got a hold of the story, I enjoyed the film very much. It has a series of subplots and at least a dozen of characters that play an important part in the movie. Plenty of political intrigue, unexpected twists and turns, and relatively good fight sequences will keep fans of this types of films interested. Every character seems to be hiding something, and no one seems to have clean hands. Despite the fact that there is not one great single set piece here, this a well-crafted film that is very entertaining. Well-directed by Gosha and Toshitada Tsuchiya's cinematography is excellent. Recommended to fans of samurai films.
5 out of 6 people found the following comment useful :-
A decent "anti-samurai" film, 10 February 2007
Author: planktonrules from Bradenton, Florida
The film begins with a group of VERY determined samurai chasing another one in an attempt to kill him. You really don't know why, but it seems they've been chasing him for a long time. I really like the story-telling method where only slowly is the reason for this and other sub-plots revealed AFTER the major action has introduced the characters. While this could have made the film confusing, it didn't drag this mystery on for too long and ultimately created quite a tale. I particularly liked the overall theme of the meaninglessness of the corrupt samurai system--this could make the film a "downer" for some, but I really liked how it was a rebuttal to the myth of the beauty and elegance of the code of the warrior (much like the myth in Western society of knighthood and chivalry).
There were quite a few films made in Japan about the corruptness of the Japanese feudal system (such as THE 47 RONIN and SAMURAI SPY), so the overall focus of this anti-samurai film isn't that unusual. However, for fans of this genre, the film has good acting, writing and direction--so it certainly is recommended. It's just that there are other even better Japanese films that are worth seeing first.
3 out of 3 people found the following comment useful :-
what separates humanity from beasts?, 19 February 2006
Author: jprince11 from United States
On the surface this may seem like a typical samurai action flick but like Kurosawa and Kobyashi films there are many social implications beneath the surface.
The movie seems to revolve around the irony that while Gennosuke, the main character who is basically cast out of society in to the wild and forced to constantly fight for his survival like an animal, is actually the only character that tries to show any qualities above that of a beast.
Every other character from a group of bandits he encounters to the group of clansmen trying to exact revenge after Gennosuke killed their leader, to a man and his wife from a separate clan trying to steal gold to improve their clan status are either acting for revenge, power, or greed. The greed exists because most of the movie takes place around a mountain where gold has just been discovered and Gennosuke is befriended by a poor man hoping to find some for himself.
Throughout the movie there is constant backstabbing, deception, and generally brutal acts committed by a multitude of these characters. For instance the man from a separate clan living with his wife on a shack by the river are attacked by bandits in the woods trying to steal the gold they have already mined; they hold the wife hostage in demand for his booty but the man would rather give up his wife then part with his gold. Her saving grace is when Gennosuke shows up on the the scene and acts with the courage and compassion to save her life. The husband does come around a little later in the movie but in the end his rival clan plans to kill everyone on the mountain and save the gold for themselves threatening the couple, Gennosuke, and his persuers.
Gosha does a great job with his imagery, demonstrating a wild, dark world threatening to swallow humans whole. Throughout the film, which is almost all outdoors are scenes of men disappearing into woods or buried beneath shrubbery. In fact, it's quite reminiscent of another Japanese Classic, Rashamon. Some of the shots are virtually identical, ie the sun being concealed over the forest canopy or disappearing behind a mountain.
One of the best touches is towards the end when soldiers from the rival clan are planning to take the mountain, and kill anyone who knows about the gold. One of them sounds a battle horn to signal the approach, a battle horn made to sound conspicuously like some kind of strange animal call.
4 out of 5 people found the following comment useful :-
The path of the beast..., 24 April 2008
Author: chaos-rampant from Greece
This early Hideo Gosha jidai-geki that was released by Criterion opens quite abruptly with a ronin named Gennosuke being hunted down for having killed his clan's counsellor. We're at 1857, on the brink of the Meiji reformation that saw Japan opening to the west after years of seclusion and the fall of the Tokugawa Shogunate. The central plot revolves around the struggle between the old and new in a country on the verge of change. Although short in duration (clocking in at 85 minutes), the story never lets up with numerous twists and a fast pace. A series of events will find Gennosuke and a prospector he meets along the way searching for gold in a mountain, until they get caught up in another clan's schemes. Nothing is what it seems though, and therein lies the beauty of Sword of the Beast. As the story progresses both forwards and backwards (with glimpses in Gennosuke's past in the form of flashbacks), the characters' motives are fully fleshed out and this provides the extra dramatic oomph that pushes Sword of the Beast above "merely OK" territory. Behind all the swordfighting (and there's enough of it to be enjoyed here, certainly not Lone Wolf and Cub though), Gosha has a story to communicate.
With beautiful natural exteriors photographed in stark black and white, confident directing from Gosha, very good swordfighting scenes from actors who know their trade and decent performances all around, Sword of the Beast should appeal to all jidai-geki fans. It's neither as monolithic and tragic as Masaki Kobayashi's work from the same time nor as lyrical as Kurosawa's, but it stands somewhere in the middle, stripped to the essentials with a focus on story and theme.
2 out of 2 people found the following comment useful :-
A Cautionary Tale, 2 July 2008
Author: sc8031 from United States
As others have mentioned, this is a solid film about corruption among feudal samurai. The acting and cinematography are both good and the evolution in the characters throughout the film is solid. The action scenes, while not all too common, are very frenetic and gripping.
It is easy to see why this was a Criterion release. There are certainly a number of good samurai movies, but this one isn't like all the others. The title may easily be confused in English with "Sword of Doom" and the protagonist does look quite a bit like Tatsuya Nakadai, but these movies and their themes are completely different.
The movie also stayed with me after watching it. It left me thinking about cults, fraternities and clans. Individuals who dedicate themselves most selflessly to a cause or group, aren't they the easiest group members to sacrifice?
2 out of 2 people found the following comment useful :-
Stong direction, photography and action enliven a standard theme, 27 October 2007
Author: Chung Mo from NYC
There are many films set in the feudal period of Japan that can be read as commentary on contemporary Japanese life. Here a couple of well-meaning and excellent sword-fighters are used by their superiors to further selfish agendas. The "beast" of the title is not a crazy samurai but rather the noble hero who is forced by treachery to forgo his social connections and travel from place to place like a roaming beast.
As western values permeate Japan, the conflict between the individual, as personified by the wandering noble ronin who gives up attempting to reconnect with normalcy (or in American cinema, the western hero who rises above social norm and becomes an ideal to attain), and the good samurai who upholds social stability to the detriment of his own needs (no real American equivalent) found itself expressed in period Japanese films. Many Japanese films of the 1960's and 70's feature characters who reject old fashioned values in the name of justice, yet suffer and never really are able to enjoy their good deeds. This film is set in the time after Commander Perry's ships essentially invaded Japanese territory and threw Japanese society for a spin.
Well-made, good acting and a solid directorial effort makes this a good samurai film even if the repeated flash-backs might be confusing. Unfortunately there are some excellent films that cover this topic already so this particular film seems unremarkable by comparison.
Good film and recommended.
2 out of 2 people found the following comment useful :-
Early Gosha is still good Gosha, 12 March 2007
Author: Petty_Bourgeois from Texas
*** This comment may contain spoilers ***
One of the things that the samurai genre (Jidai-Geki in Japan, also known as Chambara when there's an emphasis on sword fighting) is not known for in the west is that often the films are not at all epic in the way that Hollywood films are. Most American viewers are only familiar with films such as SEVEN SAMURAI, if they've even seen anything other than the pathetic Ed Zwick movie THE LAST SAMURAI. One of the things that many Japanese directors excelled at is crafting stores about petty people, but showing how their actions hold consequences that go deeper than their day to day existence. A good example is the 1935 TANGE SAZEN film directed by Sadao Yamanaka, where the fate of a clan rests in the hands of a one armed, one eyed swordsman who comes into possession of a pot worth one million pieces of gold. SWORD OF THE BEAST is one of the earliest of Hideo Gosha's filmography, but it too clearly shows his talents at making tightly wound stories that have greater implications than scope.
The story concerns a man named Gennosuke, who has been abolished by his clan for having helped in the killing of their leader, although Gennosuke's hope was to implement reforms as opposed to take part in a coup. The result has him on the run from the clan's assassins, who happen to be his old friend, the daughter of the man he killed, and the clan's swordsmanship instructor. While on the run, he comes into contact with a lowly ranked samurai and his wife, who have been panning for gold in a secluded mountain, which is tantamount to stealing from the Shogun, since it the mountain and its contents do not belong to him or his clan. At the same time as all this, bandits are afoot and causing trouble for everybody, hoping to take the secretly horded gold for themselves. This causes a rivalry between the gold panning interloper and Gennosuke, who not only proves himself to be a better martial artist, but also manages to attract the attention of the other man's spouse.
What's going on here is not just a simple search for gold by angry and disenfranchised samurai. The very definition of what a samurai is has been confused for all parties. Gennosuke had only his clan and its fiefdom's interests at heart when he participated in killing the clan's head, it was the manipulation of the second in line that caused violence to occur in the first place. Gennosuke not only did what he did out of a sense of duty and service, but he also happens to be one of the few among those who sticks to those ideals. The rest of the characters, the gold panner, the bandits, and his pursuers, selfishly kill and steal with the purpose of further bettering their position in life. To that end, the samurai's system of loyalties, fealty's, and castes doesn't work, as the lone man who sticks not only to his obligations, but to his humanity, is cast out as a beast, while those who abuse and manipulate the system for their own interests have found a perfect position from which to do so. For Gennosuke to win would prove the system wrong, and spoil it for those who hoping to abuse it for their personal gain.
The black and white cinematography is very nice to look at, although GOYOKIN would show how powerful Gosha could be with color. However nicely filmed though, Gosha still concerns his movie with the conflict between beastly aspect of man, and the human, as well as that of the human from the samurai. The locations are the rugged terrain of the mountain, and Mikijiro Hiro as the ronin Gennosuke is usually covered with dirt and looks grubby. His performance too shows him engaging in what would seem like animal behavior, leaping onto a willing prostitute when chased down by his pursuers and often speaking in a fairly cruel manner to those he's not impressed with; Hiro is convincing and seems to be enjoying doing both. The action also serves the film's plot. The sword fighting is, for the most part, realistically choreographed and performed by actors who had a good grasp of how to play to the camera when filming an action sequence. This is not LONE WOLF AND CUB stuff, and the lack of blood might turn off those who prefer the genre output during the seventies, when Japanese exploitation infiltrated the samurai film. But SWORD OF THE BEAST is not a film about blood or battles or martial arts. Hideo Gosha's second film is another examination of the constricting nature of the samurai caste system, its dangerous inconsistencies and the difficulty in transcending them, and it accomplishes this by focusing on a small, but exciting story of outcasts searching for gold on a secluded mountain. It's everything that Ed Zwick and Tom Criuse don't understand, and an entertaining movie in and of itself.
3 out of 4 people found the following comment useful :-
Warmth of a Woman's Skin, 21 July 2006
Author: Meganeguard from Kansas
*** This comment may contain spoilers ***
Near the end of the Edo Period and on the eve of the Meiji Restoration Japan was a country entrenched in Civil War. Conservative factions supporting the Shogunate and Revisionist factions supporting the Emperor fought each other for the future of the country. Like most revolutionists, Yuuki Gennosuke was quite young and full of ideals when he slew a conservative counselor. However, instead of receiving a higher position after his daring deed, Gennosuke is forced to become a bandit and is pursued by the daughter and son-in-law of the slain counselor.
With only his swords and his wits to protect him, Gennosuke continuously flees his pursuers to keep alive. Having abandoned the samurai code, Gennosuke incorporates every method to save his own skin. However, because his pursuers have been granted permission to seek a vendetta against him, vendettas were only official if given government approval, they can also use whatever means necessary to seek their revenge. Heading deeper into the wilderness, Gennosuke learns from a petty vagabond that a nearby mountain is covered in gold. Having to support himself for his life on the run, Gennosuke agrees to help the man acquire some gold. However, it is illegal to search for gold on the mountain and also Gennosuke and his partner are not the only two on the mountain searching for gold… Part of the Criterion Collection's Rebel Samurai Collection, The Sword of the Beast takes the samurai ethics displayed in such classics like Inagaki Hiroshi's Miyamoto Musashi and turns it on its head. Loyalty to friends and loved ones is sacrificed for wealth and in one case with Jurota and his wife Taka the pact of marriage is of lower worth than gold. Full of action and several well done swordfights, Sword of the Beast is not to be missed by fans of samurai cinema, however, for the common viewer Kobayashi Masaaki's Hara-kiri or the samurai films of Kurosawa Akira would be a better place to start.
1 out of 1 people found the following comment useful :-
No, we *are* connected because I'll see you in hell., 6 December 2008
Author: lastliberal from Florida
It is interesting that the supposed "beast" in this film is the one who acts with the most honor among all the samurai involved.
It is a short film that has many stories going on.
Gennosuke (Mikijiro Hira) has been betrayed by the vice-Chancellor after he kills the Chancellor of the clan and is on the run, a "beast" forced to live in the forest. He befriends a gold digger, who really has an excellent part with laughs and thoughtful lines.
He also comes across another samurai who has been living in the forest with his wife collecting gold for his clan and hoping for advancement. He, too, will be betrayed, and by the same person as betrayed Gennosuke.
As everything gets sorted out, there is some good swordplay, and, like the western hero we are all familiar with, Gennosuke walks off into the sunset.
Definitely makes me want to check out more of Hideo Gosha.
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