Historical movies usually come across as boring costume parades, end up saying more about the people who made the movie than the actual history being displayed, or are so stuffy and earnest they make the sex, violence and turbulence of history boring. Then there are movies like Makai Tenshou (Samurai Reincarnation) which totally re-writes history and tosses in demons, fight scenes, and wailing guitars just for fun. The previous types of films may be more historically accurate but the latter are much more entertaining.

Makai Tenshou opens immediately after the 1638 massacre of thousands of Christians by the Tokugawa Shogunate, which is a pretty heavy way to open up a kooky action movie. To celebrate their victory the commanders are enjoying a bit of Noh theater. Did Japanese armies at the time have performing arts troupes who traveled with them or was this some sort of proto-USO show? Those questions become academic once a severed head starts flying around, everybody gets zapped dead, and Amakusa Shiro (Kenji Sawada), the leader of the Christians, is reborn. The freshly revived Amakusa then gives a soliloquy in which he crabs out God for letting He/She/It's followers die and declares that he's throwing his lot in with Satan instead. It turns out Satan is a much more hands-on sort of deity who immediately gives Amakusa all sorts of magical powers. Angry at the government, organized religion, and conservative styles of fashion, Amakusa begins his quest to destroy Japan.

This opening scene is interesting for a couple of reasons. First, it establishes just how far out of reality this historical flick is going to get. Opening with a Noh play and the theatrical soliloquy Amakusa delivers shows that Makai Tenshou is less interested in presenting facts as it is with delivering melodramatic action. In order to be come back to life Amakusa possesses the body of the Noh actor so he ends up spending the first few minutes of the film wearing a full theater costume which also helps to reinforce the artificiality of the proceedings. Makai Tenshou even goes so far as to have placards in the early part of the film to help break up the action. Never mind maintaining a single narrative flow, Makai Tenshou feels like it has scene changes built into that were designed to let actors exit the stage and for props to be rearranged. Never mind not being history, Makai Tenshou comes across more like a live theatrical production than a movie. Then again, with it's total lack of subtlety, sword swinging violence, and it's ability to treat women as objects, Makai Tenshou could also be seen as a big, stupid live action cartoon. Either way, we're a long way from the sort of flicks Merchant-Ivory used to punch out.

Another thing of note is that Makai Tenshou is yet another Japanese movie that features Western style magic. There are aspects of the magic presented in the movie that feel very Asian in origin -such as the concept that people who die with an unfulfilled ambition will immediately turn into a demon- but when Amakusa really wants to get something done he starts pulling out the pentagrams. The end result is such a mixed bag that the movie ends up presenting a weird anything goes view of religion in which you base your belief system on whatever is going to give you the coolest powers.

I recently read a statement by a Japanese author in which he said that the main reason for so much Western supernatural imagery showing up in Japanese genre stories is because it's a bit out of the ordinary for the main audience and thus it's kind of foreign and cool. That's also pretty much the reason that I watch crazy samurai movies like Makai Tenshou. People from all over the world united by their love of silly pop culture; world peace will be achieved yet but not in the way anyone imagined.

But who can possibly stop a demonic glam rocker and his undead posse from destroying all of Japan? The only man up to the challenge is the incredible Jubei Yagyu who is played by the incredible Sonny Chiba. The character of Jubei has quite a bit of history attached to him, most of which is false. There was an actual Jubei Yagyu who was the son of a well to do member of the Tokugawa Shogunate so at least that much is accurate. While the real Jubei was known as a good sword man in his time he was never involved in any actual battles -or anything of any real note- until he up and died in his early forties. A second generation bureaucrat who seemingly did so little of note that he disappeared from the official record for well over a decade doesn't make for the best action hero. As a result subsequent writers have embellished the sparse facts of his life to make for more drama and generally jazz the guy up a bit. By the time Chiba gets around to playing him Jubei is a one-eyed hero of the common people who swaggers around in an all black outfit with the metal guard from a sword used as an eye patch. Seeing how much Jubei has changed over the years it's not that big a stretch to just go nuts and have the guy fight ghosts.

There's so much ground to cover in Makai Tenshou that things get a little hectic with the plot. I hope you're up on both your real and imaginary Japanese history because events and characters pile up pretty quickly as the movie goes on. My personal favorite bit is when Otsu [Ai Kanzaki] confesses her love for Jubei even though there was no indication that they might have had feelings for each other at any point in the movie. The admission comes from so far out of left field that even Jubei appears to be suprised. Look for the shot where Jubei spins around and gives her a "Where did THAT come from?" look; it's priceless.

For a movie with such an outlandish premise Makai Tenshou ends up feeling surprisingly glum. Director Kinji Fukasaku seems much more interested in following the exploits of Amakusa instead of Jubei. Since Amakusa is out for revenge by destroying everything and everybody in Japan it makes for downbeat viewing. But what really creates that mood is the story itself. People who seem to have kept themselves pretty well in check while alive get turned into undead monsters due to getting over-run with selfish desires right before they die. An entire lifetime of work and success is undone in an instant. Succumbing to base desires to the point a person becomes a demon is bad enough, but there is no other after-life alternative represented in the film. The Christian God is silent throughout [as He/She/It usually is in movies not made by Cecil B. DeMille] and there wasn't much heard from either the Shinto or Buddhist theological camps. The only thing standing in the way of evil is Jubei. Needless to say the poor guy has his work cut out for him. Jubei is only human and thus mortal. The best he can hope to for is to temporarily foil Amakusa's plan.

A sense of how the limited power of humanity clashes with the unrelenting cosmic forces of death and decay come up again and again. Any attempts to break the cycle of death by living again causes the person in question to become a monster. The formally powerful Shogunate is shown to be easily crippled when Amakusa puts his mind to it. Most attempts at love in the story are shown to have disastrous endings, such as when Otsu reveals how her namesake died old and alone, hating Musashi [Ken Ogata] the man she had pined for all those years or when Kirimura [Hiroyuki Sanada] tries abandon Amakusa in order to run away with a village girl and gets killed for his trouble. Even the super sword created for Jubei by Muramasa [Tetsuro Tamba] breaks in the second fight it gets used in. In the end it doesn't feel like Jubei saved the world so much as he gave it a slight reprieve from inevitable chaos.

In a way I feel I'm making Makai Tenshou sound like more of a downer than it is. For the most part the movie has no problem using sex and violence to keep the attention of the audience [this is a Fukasaku/Chiba movie after all] and the last twenty minutes or so of the movie totally rock. Makai Tenshou raises grim questions about man's place in the universe and features everything you've come to love from exploitation cinema; it's a movie that literally has it all.

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