Framed to Perfection V

KOZURE OKAMI SANZU NO KOWA NO UBAGURUMA (1972)

Director: Kenji Misumi

Cinematographer: Chikashi Makiura

When a cackling-psycho-ninja-assassin-bitch-queen-from-hell stops your impeccable sword blow with her bare hands, you know it’s time to HAUL ASS to a place of relative safety and stay there.

Sadly, the road Lone Wolf and Cub are on is long and lined with bloody encounter after bloody encounter, until our hero is brought down lower than he has been brought before.

His tiny child eventually has to place pieces of food onto his father’s dying lips in the vague hope that the man will summon the energy to consume it and bring himself back to the land of the living, however awful the place is.

I do love my crazy chicks, so Sayaka is my favourite villain in the Lone Wolf and Cub saga. The Japanese landscape is still filmed in a ghastly and unflattering manner, but it was the 70s, after all. Nothing looked good for those ten drab years. Still, we get some eerily sparse wooded areas and untamed river banks, often captured during that weird atmosphere of twilight. The production lamps, used to motivate the fading natural light in the above shot, creates one of my most appreciated of all visual techniques.

Goodness knows what its technical name is, so answers on a postcard to…

Do stay in touch, darlings.

Toodles!