01
Sword of the Beast
Why this pick
A hunted former samurai moves through betrayals and shifting loyalties with the same hard, unsentimental momentum and morally compromised world surrounding Ryunosuke.
A FILM WORTH A CLOSER LOOKTHE FEATURE PRESENTATION
MOVIE1966 2h 2m JPN
IF THIS ONE STAYED WITH YOU
Movies like
The Sword of Doom
ActionDrama
CINEHUNCH / THE NEXT FRAME
Keep the feeling.
SIMILAR PICKS / A PERSONAL CONNECTION
If you loved The Sword of Doom, try these.
01
02
Samurai Spy
Why this pick
Its paranoid, stylised Edo-era intrigue shares The Sword of Doom’s sense of a society rotting beneath ritual, with violence treated as abrupt and destabilising.
03
Kill!
Why this pick
Okamoto again combines exceptionally staged swordplay with a caustic view of samurai ideals; it is more darkly comic, but equally alert to violence as social ruin.
04
The Great Silence
Why this pick
This wintry western matches the bleak fatalism, near-mythic violence, and unnerving emotional distance of Okamoto’s samurai nightmare.
05
13 Assassins
Why this pick
Its grim feudal world and escalating combat retain the physical brutality of The Sword of Doom, while broadening its concern with what relentless violence does to those who wield it.
Finding the atmosphere, tension and little details that made this one stay with you.
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01 / THE STORY
A little about the film.
The story follows the life of Ryunosuke Tsukue (Tatsuya Nakadai), an amoral samurai and a master swordsman with an unorthodox Gedan-no-kamae. Ryunosuke is first seen when he kills an elderly Buddhist pilgrim who he finds praying for death. He appears to have no feeling. Later, he kills an opponent in self-defense in a fencing competition that was intended to be non-lethal, but became a duel after he coerced his opponent's wife to have sex with him in exchange for throwing the match and allowing her husband to win. His opponent finds out about the affair prior to the match, and is shown giving his wife a notice of divorce. His rage at Ryunosuke during the match causes him to take an illegal lunging attack after the judge proclaims a draw, and Ryunosuke, the better swordsman, parries and kills him with one stroke of his bokken. Ryunosuke flees town after killing the man, and cuts down many of the dead opponent's clansmen who attack him as he is leaving. His opponent's ex-wife asks to go along with him.
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02 / FACES IN THE FRAME
The people who bring it to life.
Toshirô Mifune
Toranosuke Shimada