The Bushido Blade (1981)

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General		Extras
Category	Adventure	None
Rating
Year Of Production	1981
Running Time	89:56
RSDL / Flipper	No/No	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	4	Directed By	Shusei Kotani
Studio Distributor	Trident Films Universal Pictures Home Video	Starring	Richard Boone Toshirô Mifune Timothy Patrick Murphy Frank Converse William Ross Bin Amatsu Sonny Chiba Iwae Arai James Earl Jones Laura Gemser Mako Kin Omae Tetsuro Tamba
Case	?
RPI	$14.95	Music	Maury Laws

    The presence of Toshiro Mifune, the great actor and star of many of Akira Kurosawa's greatest films was the driver for me to review this film made in 1979 but not released in the US until 1981. However, do not be misled by these great names - Toshiro Mifune is slumming here, but an actor has to earn a living. This was actually made before Mifune's breakout role in terms of western audiences as Toronaga-sama in Shogun. He had previously appeared in a number of smaller roles in western productions but was a major star in Japan. The film also features another major star of Japanese films, Sonny Chiba, although he does not have the stature of Toshiro Mifune. Sonny Chiba is more famous for his martial arts skills rather than his acting, although he does a reasonable job here on both counts. So with two well known Japanese actors, how does the film stack up? Well, let me tell you a little about the story first...

    Bushido Blade is an American produced movie, shot on location in Japan with a mostly Japanese crew. It follows the story of the arrival of Commodore Matthew Perry (Richard Boone) of the US Navy in Japan in 1854 to sign a treaty between the US and Japan, which was to agree to open up Japan to the West and to protect Japan from Russian aggression. Unfortunately, not everyone in Japan wants the treaty to go ahead, especially Lord Yamato. In order to disrupt the signing, Lord Yamato arranges for a valuable sword, the titular blade, to be stolen which was to have been a gift for the American President from the Shogun. Due to the dishonour involved, the Shogun's Commander (Toshiro Mifune) refuses to go ahead with the treaty until the sword is recovered. Accordingly, the man in charge of the guards who let the sword be stolen, Prince Edo (Sonny Chiba), sets out to recover the sword on his own. Captain Lawrence Hawk (Frank Converse), the marine commander gets the agreement of the Commodore to also pursue the sword, despite the wishes of the Shogun that the Americans not venture into the countryside. The Captain takes two men with him; a young midshipman, Robin Burr (Timothy Murphy), who has learnt some Japanese and Bosun Cave Johnson (Michael Starr), the ship's wrestling champion. They quickly become separated and Captain Hawk hooks up with Prince Edo after saving his life. They decide to work together to recover the sword. Midshipman Burr meets a pretty young girl, Yumi, and falls for her after she rescues him. Meanwhile, the Bosun meets some shipwrecked Americans including a harpooner played by James Earl Jones. The rest of the movie focuses on their attempts to recover the sword, with of course the Americans being made out to be better fighters (but not necessarily better men). Another well known Japanese actor makes an appearance in the form of a friend of Yumi who happens to speak English. His name is Enjiro (Mako).

    This movie feels very much like a made for television film due to the poor production values, abysmal acting from all but the Japanese actors, plot holes and an especially bad fake beard. Interestingly, it was made for cinema release but ended up being first shown in the US on cable television in 1981. It was subsequently released at the cinema in a longer, more violent and more sexual version called The Bloody Bushido Blade. The version on this disc is the cable television version. On the plus side, this film does have an interesting premise, the presence of three Japanese actors who all give worthwhile performances and some good swordfighting scenes.

    On balance, I have seen a lot better films but found this one reasonably watchable, helped by the presence of Toshiro Mifune and Sonny Chiba.

Video

    The video quality is very poor.

    The feature is presented in a 1.29:1 aspect ratio non 16x9 enhanced. I would guess that the film was originally made for widescreen, however this would be the ratio at which this version was shown on cable television. I have no information as to its intended aspect ratio. Based on its look, I would guess it has been pan & scanned.

    The picture was not particularly clear and sharp although there was no evidence of low level noise. Having said that, the blacks were generally quite blue or had blue sections but this seemed to be a colour issue rather than a noise issue. The shadow detail was poor and most dark scenes were murky and some contained much heavier grain, probably due to being lightened up to make some detail discernible.

    The colour was dull, lifeless and full of artefacts. There was colour bleeding, chroma noise and one scene at 48:50 seemed to lose its colour and then there was a flash of red. This may have been a tape tracking issue. Also, exposure levels seemed to change during scenes causing the same colour to change hue. As mentioned above, the blacks were more blue than black on most occasions.

    Besides the colour artefacts already mentioned, there were also lots of film artefacts, both black and white throughout, and reel change markers came in pairs every 19 or so minutes (the first example is at 19:06 & 19:18). There was an especially noticeable white line at 7:36. On the MPEG compression front, there was some significant shimmering on camera pans but not too much else. I don't think the picture was sharp enough to cause aliasing. There were also tape tracking problems and some edge enhancement. Ordinary!

    There are no subtitles.

Video Ratings Summary

Sharpness
Shadow Detail
Colour
Grain/Pixelization
Film-To-Video Artefacts
Film Artefacts
Overall

Audio

    The audio quality is better than the video but that would not be hard.

    This DVD contains an English Dolby Digital 2.0 mono soundtrack encoded at 224 Kb/s.

    Dialogue was generally clear and easy to understand, however the ADR work was very obvious and so the audio sync suffered accordingly..

    The score of this film by Maury Laws was very generic and did not stand out.

    The surround speakers and subwoofer were not used.

Audio Ratings Summary

Dialogue
Audio Sync
Clicks/Pops/Dropouts
Surround Channel Use
Subwoofer
Overall

    None.

Menu

    The menu system includes only one page which allows you to play the movie or select scenes.

    There is censorship information available for this title. Click here to read it (a new window will open). WARNING: Often these entries contain MAJOR plot spoilers.

    The Region 4 version of this disc misses out on;

• Filmographies

    The Region 1 version of this disc misses out on;

• Nothing

    On this basis the Region 1 version of the disc is the winner, but the difference is negligible.

    The video quality is very poor.

    The audio quality is better than the video.

    The disc has no extras.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall