From: utzoo!decvax!cca!ima!inmet!nrh
Newsgroups: net.movies
Title: Re: Harakiri - (nf)
Article-I.D.: inmet.33
Posted: Sun Feb 27 03:25:29 1983
Received: Sun Feb 27 06:30:03 1983

#R:sdcsvax:-3500:inmet:6500003:000:2016
inmet!nrh    Feb 25 12:22:00 1983

A long-time Samurai enthusiast, I'm in a position to comment about the
gore level of these films.

There's no simple rule for determining in advance how bloody a particular
film will be.  "Yojimbo", Kurosawa's CLASSIC standard-setting Samurai
film, is quite bloody in three places (that I recall) but this is done
for effect, and the three scenes (a dog carrying a severed hand, a
man who is the victim of a violent beating, and the blood oozing out
from under a fatally-wounded samurai) would be hard to eliminate without
weakening the film's impact or timing.

On the other hand, this is pretty routine stuff for the high-quality
and very enjoyably campy Zatoichi series.

Both of these productions are mild indeed compared to the ludicrously-
violent "Lightning Swords of Death" series.  Spraying blood and severed
limbs are pretty routine.  In this series, the two main characters
slaughter at least one medium-sized army (perhaps 100 people) per film.
Amusing side note:  The "Swords of Death" series is sometimes released as
"Babycarriage in the land of Demons", "Babycarriage in the Snow", etc.
The reference is to the lethally-equipped babycarriage used by the hero 
to carry his young son.

I believe it was in this series that I saw the depiction of a man being
sliced in half (lengthwise).  Fortunately,  this was a long shot
with no detail visible from the shooting distance.

On the other hand, I've never seen a Samurai film as grotesque as 
"Alien" or "The Thing".  The severed limbs in Samurai films tend to 
be pretty cleanly severed.  There is little, if any, affectionate
dwelling on the insides of people's abdomens.   There are 
violent and painful deaths, but the tend to last only a moment.

Believe it or not, I'm a fairly squeamish person.  
I do enjoy these films, but less for the gore than for the 
combination of action/adventure, subtle plot, wonderful camerawork,
and the hints of Japanese culture (about as much, I suspect,
as the hints of western culture that creep into a Western).