Kill!

Kill! is both a samurai cut-em-up (chambara, in Japanese) and a parody of the same. There are samurai, masterless samurai, yakuza gamblers, good chamberlains, bad chamberlains, assassins and a town destroyed by gang warfare.

It starts like Yojimbo or A Fistful of Dollars . A stranger comes to town. He hasn't eaten in days, and is willing to fight for a living. This is Etsushi Takahashi, a farmer who sold his land to buy a sword. He is soon joined by another hungry man with a sword, played by Tetsuya Nakadai. They witness a political assassination and wind up on different sides of the conflict (an "internal clan matter").

The plot gets very complicated and fuzzy. At one point, the bad chamberlain sends a band of yakuza to kill the squad of ronin he had sent to kill the group of samurai he had sent to kill the other bad chamberlain. Hence, the title of the movie.

I frankly couldn't follow the plot. I don't think the characters, possibly even the director could either. The joy is in the two masterless samurai. Takahashi, the strong, stubborn farmboy turned fighter who is willing to do anything to be made a samurai, but isn't quite dishonorable enough. He visits a brothel but want a woman who smells like earth and has held a plow. Nakadai gave up his clan affiliation out of shame for the deeds he did for them. He wants nothing to do with samurai, except a pretty woman needs some help, so... Nakadai has a beautiful sad, philosophical face.

Then spike this with some great slapstick and add a soundtrack straight out of a spaghetti western. Can't miss.