The Invisible Swordsman

What if 1960s-era Walt Disney made a chanbara film? Well, instead of The Shaggy D.A. or The Absent-Minded Professor, you’d wind up with The Invisible Swordsman (1970), a kid-friendly, mostly bloodless samurai film about a cowardly teen who must avenge his father’s death. How, you ask? With a secret formula that renders him (and his kimono) invisible for 30 minutes at a time.

Sanshiro calls upon mystical spirits to grant him the power to extract justice from the Phantom Thieves responsible for his father’s murder. His newfound invisibility is usually enough to scare his opponents into submission—but when the gang leader discovers his secret identity, Sanshiro is forced to call upon his own strength to save the day.

Put together with a whimsical, all-ages appeal, The Invisible Swordsman takes the traditional hero story and modernizes it with wires and trick photography (much the same way Lucas did in Star Wars). But the emphasis is definitely on comedy, including a cast of secondary characters whose bug-eyed reactions to floating swords and crockery are the film’s go-to cutaway. Staged amidst Daiei Studios’ period-perfect sets and topped off with a Gamera-inspired theme song performed by a children’s chorus, The Invisible Swordsman is a compulsory curiosity piece.

Arrow Video’s Blu-ray includes a new audio commentary, interviews with Kim Newman and Jasper Sharp, an image gallery, reversible sleeve, and collector’s booklet.

 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Hollywood 90028

Image
While everyone praises a film that is timeless, those that are  of their time  an inevitably more interesting. And  Hollywood 90028  (1974) occupies a singular moment of L.A. cinematic history written by the early generation of UCLA film school grads; an urban desert of sleazy peep shows and dashed artistic aspirations populated by Midwest transplants looking to make it big.  Director Christina Hornisher’s obscure addition to this tragic catalog was sold as a sexed-up piece of violent exploitation (and retitled  The Hollywood Hillside Strangler  and  Twisted Throats ) but this low-budget effort is really anything but.   Mark (Christopher Augustine) is a frustrated filmmaker shooting dirty movies to pay the bills, unable to put together a highlight reel that will get him out of the celluloid gutter.  Michele (Jeannette Dilger) is on the other side of the camera, ashamed of her “performances” but lured by the easy money. ...
Read more

School in the Crosshairs

Image
A pop-music confection of psychic powers, first love, and invaders from Venus, 1981’s School in the Crosshairs is a mainline rush of anime aesthetics and pre-MTV aspirations. And if you think that’s a mouthful, wait’ll you get a look at the film itself! Director Nobuhiko Obayashi ( House ) stacks plot devices like Jenga pieces, relying on the charisma of super-producer Haruki Kadokawa’s handpicked pop princess to keep it from collapsing under its own weight. That secret ingredient is star Hiroko Yakushimaru, the cherub-faced schoolgirl who’d break out later that same year in Sailor Suit and Machine Gun . Here she plays Yuka, the most popular girl in school, who discovers her telekinetic abilities have drawn the attention of a power-hungry alien bent on enslaving her fellow students. With help from a mysterious new girl on campus, the villains drain all the fun from Daii Academy, transforming it into a fascist state devoted entirely to academics.   Based on an oft-adapted novel by ...
Read more

Terminus

Image
Road Warrior   rip-offs are legion. After the success of George Miller’s post-apocalyptic actioner, every two-bit producer with access to a stretch of desert and a box of leftover shoulder pads scrambled to cash in. In the U.S., Roger Corman unleashed   Battletruck , Charles Band gave birth to   Metalstorm   (in 3D, no less), while Italy cranked out so many copycat productions it’s a wonder the Colosseum didn’t wind up with a gun turret and a flamethrower. But France—ah, France—they just might have delivered the most bafflingly sideways homage of them all: 1987’s   Terminus . Set in a near future where a tricked-out truck must pass through hostile territory to reach a predetermined “terminus,” the story begins with its hired driver (Karen Allen) captured and killed by rival gangs. That leaves Stump (Johnny Hallyday), a mysterious ex-con, to complete the journey—accompanied by a mute 8-year-old named Princess. Their mission is guided by an AI system called Monste...
Read more