Legend of the Eight Samurai

Legend of the Eight Samurai (1983)

里見八犬伝

The evil Hikita clan rises from the dead to fulfill a curse on the Satomi clan by restoring the face of their warlord by using the skin of Princess Shizu. In the process of trying to capture her, the clan murders her entire family, but Princess Shizu escapes their clutches. She enlists the aid of eight samurai warriors, possessors of powerful magic crystal, led by Dosetsu (Sonny Chiba!) to help rescue the remaining members of her court and revenge her family. Along the way, they must fight undead warriors, evil spirits, poisonous beauties and a giant centipede.

Date of release
1983-12-10
TMDB
5.9 / 10 (36)
Runtime
2h 13m
Genres
Fantasy, Adventure, Action
Director
Kinji Fukasaku

Casting

Interesting facts

Legend of the Eight Samurai is a 1983 Japanese fantasy film directed by Kinji Fukasaku. The script is adapted from Toshio Kamata's 1982 novel Shin Satomi Hakkenden (新・里見八犬伝), itself a loose reworking of the epic serial Nansō Satomi Hakkenden by Kyokutei Bakin.

Production

Legend of the Eight Samurai was influenced by Star Wars.

The film preserves little of the plot or characterization, and none of the feel of the Bakin original. Instead it builds on the basic template – collecting a band of warriors together to accomplish a task, better known from films such as Kurosawa's Seven Samurai.

Fantastical elements in the film are brought to life with a combination of props, wire work, and post-production special effects. The sequences were the work of the Tokusatsu Laboratory effects team, led by director Nobuo Yajima, who previously had worked on another adaptation of the Hakkenden story, Message From Space.

The colorful film score features a mixture of synthesizers and "real" strings produced by Nobody, and a couple of power ballads performed by John O'Banion: Satomi Hakkenden, composed by Joey Carbone and written by Kathi Pinto, and Hakkenshi no Tēma (White Light) (八剣士のテーマ), composed by Joey Carbone and Richie Zito, written by David Palmer. An LP of the music was released by Eastworld.

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

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