Directed by Kenji Misumi and Robert Houston • 1980 • Japan, United States
Starring Tomisaburo Wakayama, Kayo Matsuo, Minoru Oki

The legendary midnight-movie sensation that firmly embedded samurai mythology within American pop-culture consciousness, this English-dubbed reedit of the first two films in the classic Japanese chanbara series LONE WOLF AND CUB is a giddily entertaining, mesmerizingly gory classic of East-meets-West grindhouse mayhem. Following the murder of his wife at the hands of an evil shogun, an avenging ronin (Tomisaburo Wakayama) roams the countryside with his young son—and the boy’s sword-shooting baby carriage—in tow, dispatching ninja assassins with steely resolve in operatically stylized flurries of hallucinatory violence. With its pulsing synth soundtrack (cowritten by Mark Lindsay of Paul Revere & the Raiders) and delirious action set pieces—kinetically edited whirlwinds of flashing blades, spurting blood, and severed limbs—SHOGUN ASSASSIN proved an instant cult favorite that has bubbled its way up from the underground thanks to its influence on artists ranging from the Wu-Tang Clan to Quentin Tarantino.