ThiefHott Too much of everything

Jeanskynebu the audience applauded

ChicRawIdol A brilliant film that helped define a genre

Breakinger A Brilliant Conflict

newportbosco =Spoilers ahead. Details about sewing 'satanic seed in a youthful consciousness' to create 'demons in human shape'. = You simply won't believe this movie exists. The rating is based on entertainment value, not on it being something great like SABOTEUR. And SAMURAI keeps you entertained. The whole thing is so wrong headed and cockeyed, it comes close to a work of art.First revel in the cheapness. There's TONS of stock footage, and everybody spends lots of time in front of rear screen projections. Mom is still wearing the same hat at the end of the movie that she was at the beginning, even though it's supposed to be 2 decades later.As propaganda, it's terrible, totally ineffective. You never once feel the pull to hatred that you do watching, say, JEW SUSS. Instead you almost think it's a straight faced parody of anti- Japanese propaganda films, designed to make you say;'Oh, they can't be THAT bad..."The leading man seems to have been hired because he looks like the caricatures of Japanese they had in Bugs Bunny cartoons of the time. He's way too old to be the proper age for the character in the film who has just finished college. But he sure can flash those big buck teeth and grit them when he stabs his folks to death at the end. The actor playing his brother talks just like one of the married gay couple on MODERN FAMILY. Why?There's a character that does nothing but scream into phones and yell at people. He runs the spies for Japan is Shanghai. Why should HE be subtle? The priest who lures the young version of our hero into Anti American activities comes across like one of those stranger/danger dudes from a Sid Davis safety film. He even hallucinates about his 'symbol of the god of war' as he walks away from the kid. And nobody EVER asks just WHY their son is spending so much time with this guy...("have fun, but don't join any Samurai cults, honey...")The biggest hoot is when our leading man gets word the invasion of California is at hand and blows a head pipe. He swings swords around and goes just berserk. Pumps out gibberish, bugs out his eyes and grins like a loon. It's wonderful stuff.The narration has to be heard multiple times to get all the purple prose out of it. At the same time, it's delivered in a breezy,informal style that will remind you of a real estate seminar.There ARE problems...a despoiling scene involving the turn coat and a white girl was axed. So was the brother against brother fight. But what is left is so WEIRD and INEPT that you cannot help but laugh...it'll remind you of the work of Ed Wood at his clunkiest. And that is high praise indeed.

dbborroughs Racist propaganda about how a small boy rescued from the 1923 Japanese earthquake who is adopted by a western couple who found him in the rubble. The kid, named Ken, learns about Bushido and the ways of the samurai and is forever twisted by it and the love of death and the emperor. Illogical to the nth degree the film has Ken going traveling the world studying art and sciences, and the teachings of Bushido from masters placed around the globe. The 23-ish year old kid comes home from his worldly studies looking like a well worn 50 year old buck toothed stereotype Japanese from a propaganda cartoon complete with impossibly thick accent. Now back in the US, Ken, who now looks older than his adopted father, begins to set up a network of spies along the West Coast as well as preparing maps hidden inside of his modern art style paintings. Very much of the time this was made its now almost no longer watchable since sensibilities have changed so much in the last 60 plus years that this sort of treatment of an ethnic group is unthinkable (never mind that the film is only marginally okay). In the right frame of mind this would be a yuck fest of the highest order for those who love bad movies, however after a short time the general poorness of the film and the ugly point of view takes away a great deal of the fun. Recommended only to those who are interested in World War 2 propaganda or those who really need to see every bad movie ever made.

Carolyn Paetow This rockbottom-budgeted feature supposes that the samurai-spawning religion of Bushido is as natural to the Japanese as killing gazelles is to lions--with about the same results! The protagonist, a war orphan adopted by white Californians, hears the blood-call in the suasions of a zombie-like Shinto priest. The pretty, Americanized little boy is inexplicably sent to Europe (to study medicine and art) and returns craggy-countenanced, with a thickened accent and Japanese manners. Stereotypically squint-eyed and toothy, he reunites with his mentor, and the duo leer vampirishly over the prospect of planet-wide domination. With all the panache of a grade-school production, much of the movie is composed of docudramatic narration, apparently as a money-saving measure and to assure the buy-war-bonds message emerges from the slapsticky silliness of squawking Nipponese bureaucrats and sword-slashing pseudo-samurai. As a historical piece, the film is a thorn among thorns (that will prick the funnybone of many!)and is, of course, of interest as a particularly odious example of wartime propaganda.