Now, tricked up with extremely impressive English language dubbing, and a new buzzy electronic score by none other than Mark Lindsay (former lead singer for those top 40 bubblegum goofballs Paul Revere and The Raiders), to deliver a bloody good time to unsuspecting patrons.

That this crimson red showstopper, where people shower the landscape with red hemoglobin as if they had garden hoses for veins, managed only a R rating, shows cooler heads prevailing at the ever more reasonable MPAA. But remember, until recently, the MPAA had been slapping bloody Japanese flicks with X ratings for violence (the fate of New Line Cinema’s superior Sonny Chiba starrer The Streetfighter). But then seven years later, here comes the now Corman-less New World Pictures, Shogun Assassin. I wondered how long, considering how popular Hong Kong Kung Fu crap was, it would take for an American distributor to bring Lone Wolf and his Baby cart from hell to a grindhouse or drive-in near you.Ĭolumbia Pictures was the first out of the gate, when they took Sword of Vengeance – Part 3, Baby Cart to Hades, and released it as Lightning Swords of Death.

The hero of this blood-soaked popular Japanese series, stoic, semi-mad father Ogami Ittō aka ‘Lone Wolf’ (Tomisaburô Wakayama), practically had my movie-going companion diving under the seats, as Ogami Ittō’s samurai sword turned hundreds into limbless, throbbing, artery-spurting corpses (I gave the clever carnage a B+). In the last week of September 1973 I saw at The Toho La Brea something called The Sword of Vengeance – Part 4, Baby Cart in Peril on a Japanese language double-bill (all prompted by a promising LA Times review by Kevin Thomas).

Dir: Kenji Misumi (and Robert Houston, American version)

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