Kibakichi (Ryuuji Harada), a yokai (beastman-demon) samurai, stumbles upon a village of yokai who masquerade as humans and feed off yakuza and other criminals who enter their gambling den. The residents have made a deal with some local humans: if they help the humans take over their clan, they will be given land where they can live in peace. Kibakichi, who is well aware of the treachery of humans, warns that it will all end in tragedy, but no one listens. It’s clear that before the credits role, Kibakichi is going to have to display his wolf qualities and that people are going to die—a lot of people.
Until Kibakichi, I was unaware that there were any lone samurai werewolf movies based on the plight of the American Indians and following the style of spaghetti westerns. Well, now I know one, and I have a suspicion that it isn’t a sub-genre that’s going to take off. No one who isn’t excited about this movie by my over-long one sentence description is going to feel differently after watching it.
Borrowing heavily from Clive Barker’s Nightbreed and The Power Rangers, Kibakichi follows the title character as he chops up some bounty hunters, and then gets a drink and goes gambling. For about a half hour, that’s about it. It doesn’t even matter what language the film is in (my first viewing was in Japanese, but English is an option if you buy the DVD) since there isn’t enough dialog to make a difference. What you do have is some very slow drinking. It’s a bit hypnotic. If you love spaghetti westerns but were always annoyed that the long silent patches weren’t long and silent enough, you’ll be in heaven. Eventually there are some killings by spider-women, and the movie chooses a plot. From then on, its the good monster villagers verses the evil humans, with the monsters believing that they can deal with the humans, and Kibakichi and the viewer knowing otherwise.
The local samurai are an odd lot who have the good graces to speak and move at a reasonable pace. They take their fashion advice from Neo of The Matrix, wearing long, black leather, goth coats that should be all the rage at your next virtual reality party. When not fighting with swords, they use civil-war era gatling guns and WWII era grenades. I would question the likelihood of these armaments existing side-by-side, but after seeing giant turtle men and ghostly skull heads that appear to travel on strings, that seems to be nitpicking.
As you might gather, this is all pretty silly stuff, but it’s done well, and, for any twelve-year-old, it has charm. It also has a brief tit-shot to go with the kid’s stuff, so those twelve-year-old boys should be all set. If you’re out of your early teens, how much you will enjoy this depends on your interest in watching two stoic guys not moving. Kibakichi and the leader of the village yokai both watched Clint Eastwood as the Man with No Name and decided he was too flamboyant. They do their best to out-cool Eastwood by rarely moving, speaking in a monotone, uttering only short, clipped sentences, and glaring. Combined with the comically excessive geysers of blood that erupt whenever someone is injured, and the makeup, which varies between reasonable Hollywood to horrendous Godzilla-type guy in a suit, it’s a rip-roaring goofy action pic. Everyone onscreen takes it in deadly earnest, but you won’t.