Gosha Hideo’s Jittemai (Death Shadows, 1986) is a very convoluted, garishly colored movie about gangsters working with the family of the shogun (the Hamada clan) late in the Tokugawa Shogunate and attempts to thwart the corrupt conspiracy by a policeman who licenses criminals condemned to be beheaded to kill bad guys. He severs their vocal chords, though this does not keep the main “shadow” from expounding (via voiceover) at length with a minimum of hand gestures.
Yasuke the Viper (Kawatani Takuzo) had settled down with a reformed prostitute and turned into a doting father when he is recalled to take down Denzo the Fang (Chii Takeo), a gang leader for whom he used to work. Denzo escapes the first ambush… and Yasuke is spared being killed in the second one by one of Denzo’s mistresses, Ocho (Ishihara Mariko), his estranged daughter. In that she has dedicated her life to finding and killing the father who abandoned her mother and her, this makes no sense, but many of the actions and relationships in the movie similarly defy sense.
Competing female swordsmen occur in many (mostly bad!) Hong Kongo (Shaw brothers) movies, but in no other Japanese movie I’ve seen. Ocho’s rival, Oren who had been Denzo’s main squeeze and runs an illegal tattoo parlor. Natsuki Mari, who lays Oren, has a resemblance to Faye Dunaway are her most cartoonish (Mommie Dearest?).
After Ocho has been recruited to finish the job her father started (he was killed trying to protect her and dies in her arms begging for forgiveness) her other main opponent in Genshiro. I’m not sure when (never mind why!) she falls in love with him, but she saves him and then he saves her.
There are many sword fights. Ocho generally relies more on a long multi-colored she swirls about than on her short sword. And there are also four or five dance sequences showing more ribbon swirling to a disco beat with dry ice providing fog. I’d say these are padding, except so is the injection of more and more characters as others are killed off during the nearly two hour running time.
After all the betrayals, only one character is left standing at the end, though the Shogunate dodders on with none of the conflicts becoming public.
If it went more completely for campiness, the movie might be more entertaining (like Shinoda’s pop “Killers on Parade”), though the campiest character, the corrupt policeman Boss Hell (pictured above) is really not all that amusing. It is easy to see why Nakadai Tatsuya, who had been appearing regularly in Gosha movies (hamming it up in “Onimasa”), gave this one a pass, and I’d say so should viewers, though Criterion has seen fit to import it rather than some of the Ichikawa, Kinoshita, and Shinoda films I’d dearly love to be able to see.
©2016, Stephen O. Murray
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