Samurai Wolf 2: Hell Cut

Isao Natsuyagi is the Samurai Wolf

Hideo Gosha's Samurai Wolf 2: Hell Cut is the second and best of the two Samurai Wolf features. This 1967 film is the more evocative and intricately structured of the two, though both share many similarities. They run barely over 70 minutes, are in black and white, and are decidedly B budget films in terms of production. Isao Natsuyagi's playing of "Kiba the furious wolf" was only his second film role, an indication that Gosha was watching his pennies when he made the initial Samurai Wolf. Gosha had started in radio, which explains his proficiency using sound effects, and had been directing television shows. Samurai films were an opportunity to make a surefire hit and the 1966 Samurai Wolf delivered, necessitating the sequel.

Most sequels are rote and dull facsimiles of the original. However, some sequels offer filmmakers the opportunity to expand their vision with a bigger budget and inspired variation. That is why I prefer Spider Man 2 over Spider-Man, The Evil Dead 2 over The Evil Dead, The Godfather 2 to The Godfather, For a Few Dollars More to A Fistful of Dollars, and Sanjuro over Yojumbo. The latter two sequels stem from the work of Gosha's acknowledged influences, Sergio Leone and Akira Kurosawa. In the Samurai Wolf , Isao Natsuyagi borrows a good deal of Toshiro Mifune's feral intensity from his appearances in Kurosawa's films. ...Hell Cut even has the same mountainous locations featured in Kurosawa's The Hidden Fortress to equally striking effect. Toshiaki Tsushima's scores for both Wolf film tips its sombrero to Morricone's scores for Leone, featuring lengthy plaintiff harmonica solos as horseman ride. 

...Hell Cut opens up Kiba's personality allowing him a tentative friendship and romance. In the first film, Kiba is such a lone wolf that he even spurns the romantic overtures of an elegant blind lady. In Hell Cut, the literal bond formed with his loved one saves his life. Kiba is contrasted with the more mercenary and merciless ronin, Magobe. Fortitude is contrasted with moral weakness, honesty with deceit. Magobe has helped operate an illegal gold mine which is poisoning the waters of local streams, a prescient environmental note. As in Leone, greed warps and corrupts men. Gosha uses more bravura techniques in the sequel than in the original, always to signal a mood or heighten a theme, A track into an obdurate dojo master quickens our anticipation of a duel. Freeze frames express the silence and finality of death.

The multiple flashbacks of Kiba's childhood with his doomed ronin dad fleshes out his saga. The short duration of ...Hell Cat contains a wealth of compressed details and emotional development. There is not a fold of fabric or hair pin out of place. Both Rumiko Fuji and Kiba's handy shears are welcome returns from the first film. The sinister presence of crows points the way to Gosha's later color samurai masterpiece, Goyokin (1969). Another film about greed, specifically, "The Gold of the Shogunate". The poetic touches of Samurai Wolf 2: Hell Cut are sometimes self-conscious, but they liberate Gosha enough for some exultant genre filmmaking.