Customer Reviews

Legend Of The Eight Samurai

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(6)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Eight mysterious crystals from the body of a long dead princess now identify the eight samurai who are destined to help a beautiful young princess overcome a curse on her royal family. They are set against an evil queen who is immortal.

The queen and her son live in a castle assisted by two ghouls, first, a blind witch , and second, a snake charmer, and a legion of anonymous samurai. The eight samurai (called ninja in the film due to the popularity of ninja in the 80's) have individual skills that the princess will require to defeat the queen and the demon who gives the queen her power.

Borrowing greatly from Kurosawa's Seven Samurai, Sonny Chiba's character relies on the earlier portrayal of Kambai. The story focuses however on the love story between the princess and one of her samurai, a very Kikuchyo-esqe farmer turned samurai who fights like a madman in the finale.

The photography is borderline excellent and especially vibrant. Swordfights are frequent and dazzling, most involve the samurai being vastly outnumbered. Choreography, although not up to modern standards, is adequate and exciting. Certain scenes are staged very well, including the brief fight in a garden with flowered trees where the wind blowing during the fight cause the petals to fall like snow.

Despite frequent location changes the story seems to flow rapidly and evenly except that the revenge story comes to a halt at a few points to build the Kikuchyo like eighth samurai character who becomes the love interest. This is the only part of the film that creates empathy for any of the characters, but since the acting can be described as hammy, and the dubbed translation drops most of the emotion from the acting, this part can get tedious.

Other notable flaws are poorly puppeted rubber creatures, some poorly voiced dubbing, and an intrusive 80's love song that plays during the "love story" part of the movie. Also, at one point it calls attention to an object that, because of the reduced size (TV format)isn't on screen. I normally don't mind standard screen size if it is edited properly, but this film deserves widescreen.

The movie as it has been released is a 3 star, If it were redubbed, the love song removed, and released in widescreen, it may deserve a 31/2 or 4 stars.

What is not to like about this movie?

I bought it on a whim because it was in a
bargain bin and it had Sonny Chiba's name on it.
Boy am I glad that I did!

The sets and costumes are wonderful and the plot is great.

Oh yeah, there are great martial arts battles, too.

There is a clan of undead sorcerers, who are nasty indeed,
on a vendetta and the princess they seek is their last remaining
target, but she is protected by a gathering group of eight guards,
identified by their possession of eight magical crystals,
whose destiny it is to save the princess.

Being an admirer of illuminated manuscript, I really enjoyed
the plot being explained in part by a scroll with beautiful
illustrations.

This is far and away superior to most fantasy films
and if you have any interest in martial arts, Japanese
or fantasy cinema, you will not want to miss this one.

Legend of the Eight Samurai is just as bad as you'd think it should be. The plot bounces around in a most confusing fashion, but who cares about what's going on, anyway? The word Samurai is interchanged with Ninja in this story. The cast includes such characters as The Princess, Necktie Ninja, pantsless Samurai, unloved lady ninja, Elvis Samurai, The Evil Queen, the old lady who tears her own face off, and a bevy of poisonous women. Throw in tentacles and glowing blue balls, and the MST3K-style jokes happen all on their own. For ease of comprehension, all you need to remember is that the way of the Samurai is death, and expect a final deathcount of Shakespearian proportions.

The film is not the typical samurai flick but instead it is a fantasy samurai, vampire-gore film. The legend of the eight samurai is a story about the satomi clan being cursed by evil. The evil is after the surviving satomi's clan princess to consume the princess skin so that they can enhance their beauty and offer the princess blood to their master. The princess only hope are the eight samurai who in karma each behold a magic ball crystal from the princess fukei hundred years ago. Each of the eight samurai came from adversity through either isolation, loneliness, and lose. Soon their life change when they found out that their hope and destiny lies on the princess.

The storyline is oustanding with great cast deliviring a solid performance. In addition, the special effect is great for its time. There is a quote on the back cover of the dvd that says "The Star Wars of Samurai Films" and indeed it is.

Adness provide us with high quality release of the film that made the original american version a waste of a classic film.

Grade: B+ Highly recommended!

I personally liked the movie...Ok, so it was kinda corny at times, but it had it's 'alright' moments:
1. The look on the princess's face when she agreed to eat the snake (you got to admit, the look WAS pricless)
2. When Shinbei goes riding through the village calling out, "BRING ME THE GIRLS!!"
3. When Shinbei was kicked out of the group and the princess gives him her flute...
4. When Shinbei finds out the evil witch is his mother!!!
5. When the evil witch goes in the bath (that looks alot like tomato soup!)fully clothed, and comes out young and...naked..then she takes a drink of the tomato bath...mmm..
6. When Shinbei becomes evil and tries to kill the princess and then gets struck by lightning and wakes up and makes love to the her.
7. Not to forget the fantastic fight scene at the end of the film where all but Shinbei and the princess die, not to mention all the wonderful ways they died...

So, all-in-all, the best actor in the whole movie was Hiroyuki (henry) Sanada (who played the main character) and Sonny Chiba really did suck, but seems to get ALL the CREDIT!! >_< probibly a good thing so not damage Hiroyuki's wonderful future as an actor...over all I think this was a fun, corny, mindless kind of movie that you really don't have to think about..just enjoy! ^_^

I first saw this film in the original Japanese as "Satomi Hakenden." I was not disappointed in the visuals but I couldn't help cringing at the awful American "translation." They got the basic idea right but the language they chose took a powerful coming of age story and made it sound ridiculous. If you can't get the original, get this just for the visuals and play it with the sound turned down.

The title The Eight Samuri is a subtle mislead. These are "Special" Samuri who fight with the very dead to protect a princess. In true Oriential form it is full of mystical happenings, but it is also a great action film. There are twists and turns in the plot. But at the very end you learn that no matter how "bad" you have been you can make a choice and do good and become a hero! For a Chineese Movie Junkie, as I am, this should be a definate must see/ have. I love it!

First, this film has nothing to do with the Kurosawa classic that has one less Samurai. In the movie the band is referred to as ninjas, and I am not sure why they rendered the title differently. If they are trying to cash in on the famous movie, this makes sense in a Dilbert marketing sort of way. If they are trying to move away from the ninja image associated with 1980's movies and the turtles, forget about it--we've moved past it all.

What impressed me about this movie was its ability to manage an intricate story with many characters, and still keep me riveted to the screen. Personally, I would have cut the eight down to three. As it is, some the ninjas seem to be numeric placeholders. If they had made the movie a half an hour longer, the could have fleshed out the people. However, since their individual back-stories are not essential to the plot, it is well they are not elaborated upon.

Although the special effects seem hokey by 21st Century standards (and even by 1983 standards), I was able to look past them and saw what the effects were pointing to: a tale of family honor, revenge, magic (magia and goetia), and a brooding fate.

It is this omnipresent (and omnivorous) fate that wrangles me the most. To Americans, fatalism has negative connotations. It implies that someone else is in control, and may not have our best interests at heart. And so much of Japanese religion is devoted to submissing to fate that it is distasteful. How do you really know if it is fate? And since we all have some cosmic doom hanging over us, is that why the Japanese spend so much psychological energy to beautify things?

So I found the two incidents of redemption and fate-breaking a breath of clean air. Artistically, watching Shinbei move from a ne're-do-well Han Solo, to becoming a zombie-ghoul to becoming a hero for the rightwise born princess. My favorite charter is the no-name red Samurai who breaks from the Evil Witch's ranks, and goes over to Princess Shizuhime's raiders.

I liked the glowstones. They are a common image, found in The Dark Crystal, the Silmarillion, the Lensmen, Kabbalah, and the Book of Mormon. Jung has a lot to say about stones and identities in "Man and His Symbols." Hint: the eight ninjas stone-bearers become stones at the end of the movie.

One last note: Most Americans chuckle at the princess who had to marry a dog (reversing Elvis's lamentation), but Frazer points out that such thaumaturgic marriages were common in the ancient world ("The Golden Bough," Ch. XII).

I would rate this movie PG-13, due to several scenes of graphic violence (a cheek being cut, and a beheading), and partial nudity (we see the backside of a woman emerging from a pool), which seems to have been edited to American sensibilities. As it stands, it is a soft PG-13.

Does anyone know why a scene of Toshiro Mifune as Musashi in "Samurai Trilogy" is on the cover of this DVD!??

(tech stuff first) For a mid-eighties kung fu flick, this movie's not bad. The special effects and costume designs appear to have had a decent budget, which really helped to create a fantasy atmosphere. The special effect resmbled Zu Warriors from the Magic Mountain. The DVD quality is decent too, for an economy DVD company. The language version choices only include english dubbed. No subtitles.

(plot)This film is based on a Japanese story about the dog warriors. It's about a princess who is killed by her lover, when she is forced to marry her dog. She marries her dog because her father promises that the dog can have his daughter's hand in marriage if he brings back the head of his enemy.(wierd!)

Later 8 warriors are reborn with magic balls in their hands and join a new princess in her fight against a witch and her army of ghost warriors. This is where the movie essentially picks up the original stroy. The princess, and her eight samurai meet while on their quest to kill the witch queen and her dominions.(a little strange since the witch queen is alot cuter than the princess)

The plot is of epic proportions, but the character development was too shallow, and seemed rushed. The fight scenes could have been better too. THe 8 samurai seemed too skilled against their opponents most of the time.

The character development, and action sequences are what made me give this flim only three stars.

However, there is a anime seris called Hakkeden Legend of the Dog Warriors, which recently came out on DVD. I would strongly suggest you buy that series and watch it first. Legend of the Eight Samurai will make a lot more sense to you after viewing the anime version. I enjoyed Legend of the Eight Samurai after seeing the anime stroy. The characters backgrounds made more sense to me.

If you're going to buy this DVD, consider getting THe anime seires as well. It is also sold at Amazon.com. (After seeing both I would almost give Legend of the Eight Samurai 4 stars.)