It was the early 1980s, and I was visiting my friend Todd Fortner at his house. We were both interested in martial arts (he would eventually reach black belt) and comic books. Cable television and videocassettes were just then entering wide distribution where we lived. It was a Saturday. And Shogun Assassin came on. And it blew our minds.

Shogun Assassin is everything an over-the-top samurai film should be: lots of blood; unbelievable swordplay; villains whose powers border on the fantastic; and those three most important words – action, action, action.

What American viewers know as Shogun Assassin is really the highlights of two Japanese samurai films spliced together for a rerelease. The Lone Wolf and Cub (aka Baby Cart) series from the early 1970s is a trilogy of films about a samurai, the shogun’s executioner, who is forced to become an outlaw with various assassins sent to kill him. And he is accompanied by his son, a brave toddler who rides around in a baby cart tricked out with hidden weapons. This film, more than any other single item, was responsible for the ninja craze of the 1980s (for whatever the hell that’s worth).

Shogun Assassin is fundamentally different from the Lone Wolf and Cub films from which it was taken. For one thing, since it was spliced together from two other movies, the finer (read ‘more boring’) bits of characterization and unnecessary plot were thrown away, allowing for more duels and derring-do. Secondly, a new score was added – and, this being 1980, early electronic music was used. There is an ethereal, almost eerie quality to much of the soundtrack, providing the right backdrop of dread for the samurai’s dangerous life. Some of the music sounds dated, but this isn’t necessarily to its detriment; it simply adds to the unreality of the overall sound. Also, a new narrative device is created: the character of the child narrates the film. The voice of the kid hired to do the narration (Gibran Evans) has a detached, ghostly quality of its own, further adding to the atmosphere.

Shogun Assassin is probably the movie that created the cliché phrase ‘orgy of violence.’ Every few steps the pair takes, it seems, are met with attempts by ninjas or super-assassins to kill them. And what enemies they are! Whether it’s a group of female ninjas passing as acrobatic performers, or the three brothers known as the Masters of Death who each wield a unique weapon and fighting style, the samurai and his son are constantly forced to defend against unconventional adversaries.

And, oh, the blood. Blood running in thin bright rivulets down a dying man’s face; blood spraying in a fine mist, carried on the breeze, from an enemy’s neck wound. There’s blood aplenty, with spurting arteries in every fight scene, decades before Kill Bill ever entered production.

Shogun Assassin isn’t the sort of movie that one can show at an international film class, trying to prove one’s cultural acumen, on the same roster as Rashomon or Woman in the Dunes. It’s not long on plot or metaphor or directorial technique, though it is well directed. It is what it is; but that’s perfectly alright: it’s exactly what it should be. Get together a bunch of guys, pop some popcorn, and sit back and watch the violence. And all the blood.