Lone Wolf and Cub: Baby Cart at the River Styx

Akihiro Tomikawa in Lone Wolf and Cub: Baby Cart at the River Styx (dir. Kenji Misumi, 1972).

Or "Perambulator of the River of Sanzu." Sword of Vengeance and this film were edited down into one movie and redistributed in 1980 as Shogun Assassin. More stirring samurai adventure as Ogami Itto and son Daigoro battle a troop of female warriors and the "Gods of Death": three brothers who use various metal hand attachments to dispatch their enemies with maximum gore. As with the first film, the appeal is largely in the dramatic contrast between the ultraviolence of the fight scenes and the tender (but desentimentalized) relationship between father and son. I'm still trying to get a fix on Misumi's approach to gender and sexuality: in particular, he has some weirdly ambivalent and perhaps arrested feelings about breasts.