Product Description

He’s Hanzo "The Razor" Itami; the incorruptible and uncompromising samurai cop, and he packs a weapon more devastating than any sword (just ask any of the female suspects he "interrogates"). From the creator of the Lone Wolf and Cub series comes this legendary 1970s trilogy based on Kazuo Koike’s classic mangas, and starring Shintaro Katsu (Zatoichi) as Hanzo, the screen’s most outrageous samurai anti-hero. In the name of justice, there’s no torture he won’t endure, no pain he won’t inflict, and no superior he’ll bow to. Each film is presented complete and uncut.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #60449 in DVD
• Brand: Image Entertainment
• Released on: 2005-04-19
• Rating: Unrated
• Aspect ratio: 2.35:1
• Formats: Box set, Closed-captioned, Color, DVD, Special Edition, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
• Original language: Japanese
• Subtitled in: English
• Number of discs: 3
• Running time: 263 minutes

Amazon.com
Are you a fan of samurai films, but wish they were somehow...dirtier? Welcome to the deranged world of Hanzo the Razor, a weird blend of swordplay and sexploitation. The first Hanzo movie, Sword of Justice, came out a year after Shaft and Dirty Harry and fuses the influence of both: stout and surly Hanzo (Shintaro Katsu), a rebellious yet obsessively moral samurai, is also enormously well-endowed and provides almost unbearable pleasure to the women he "interrogates"--that is to say, rapes in the name of the law. Hanzo also tortures and blackmails without qualm as he slices through crime, uncovering corruption at higher levels in each progressive film. In Sword of Justice he overturns his own craven superiors; in The Snare, he breaks into a temple used by local magistrates for the sadistic torture of young girls; in Who's Got the Gold, the shogunate treasury is being looted by its own officials--had there been a fourth film, Hanzo would probably have confronted the shogun himself. But while the movies wallow in Hanzo's ruthless treatment of criminals and women, it also ogles the torture Hanzo inflicts upon himself! Sword of Justice will knock you sideways as you struggle to balance Hanzo's puritanical code with his masochism and brutality (as well as the funky '70s soundtrack). The Snare and Who's Got the Gold?, disappointingly repeat many of the same routines (in particular, the "net torture" of female suspects). But while the fight choreography in the first two films is often crude, Who's Got the Gold (directed by Yoshio Inoue) has more visual finesse and social commentary--not many movies combine temple orgies and geysers of blood with inflation, unemployment, and high interest rates. (There's a particularly eerie scene in which a samurai in debt is hounded by a pack of blind men.) Hanzo the Razor undoubtedly influenced the moral outrage/leering voyeurism mix of Death Wish and its ilk, but Shintaro Katsu's gleeful ferocity (in contrast with Charles Bronson's dour, repressed deadpan) makes this trilogy stranger and sleazier. Katsu was also the star of the hugely popular Zatoichi: The Blind Swordsman series. --Bret Fetzer

Customer Reviews

Dead-Pan Bawdy Fun
What can you say about a guy like Hanzo Itami? He's a cop in the shogun's police force, a lone wolf, incorruptible, grim and dedicated to putting the bad guys away. If that means stepping on his superiors' toes or breaking a few rules, so be it. He's also a master swordsman and skilled in the martial arts. He's not above using torture to get the truth. He's tortured himself (he has the scars to prove it) so that he will know how much to use on others. And for women, he's trained his shorter sword to be just as tough. He uses beatings with a wooden stick, scalding water and weights to, ah, bring it up and ready. Whether he's using the twisting basket technique or the power thrust, he'll have a female suspect begging to tell the truth...and then begging for more.

Think of a samurai Dirty Harry combined with soft porn. The sex is often ludicrous but funny because the movie doesn't play it for laughs. The director knows everything is a send-up and is careful not to wink at the audience. There's plenty of sword action -- the long sword kind -- to keep things moving. Blood squirts like squished tomatoes. A slash through a backbone is handled, well, kind of delicately.

The movie works because it is so outrageously non-PC, because it determinedly takes everything seriously, and because of a great performance by Shitaro Katsu as Hanzo. Katsu starred in the Zaitoichi movies and he brings a lot of dead pan authority to the role. He's a solid guy, a bit pudgy in the face, and no one would mistake him for a Japanese Clint Eastwood. But he also looks like a fellow you wouldn't want to mess with.

Now, what's the story about? I'm not sure. As best as I can tell Hanzo, an honest cop, realizes his superior is corrupt and that the connection might reach into Edo Castle, the home of the Tokugawa Shogunate. He tracks down the truth, encountering a notorious murderer, Killer Kanbei, whom everyone thought had been exiled. He forces the truth from two women, and discovers what the conspiracy had been all about. And at the end of the movie, with the case solved, he helps out a poor young girl and her little brother [...]. His good deed brings the first and only smile to Hanzo's face. You've have to see it.

This is a funny movie balancing on the border between outrageousness and bawdiness. The movie comes as part of a three pack. The other two movies are The Snare and Who's Got the Gold? The joke is the same for all three and I may not get around to watching them soon. The DVD transfer looks very good although there is one jump that I assume came from two or three seconds of lost film. There are no extras to speak of but the case holds brief liner notes that describe the manga comic book origin of the Hanzo character, how the movie came to be made and the importance of Shintaro Katsu.

YIKES!!!



From 1975, pulpy, trashy, politically incorrect, HONZO THE RAZOR (Home Vision Entertainment) is finally on DVD in a three disc set ("Sword of Justice," "The Snare" and "Who's Got the Gold?") complete and uncut from the best original elements.

Anti-hero Honzo's an uncompromising Samurai rogue cop who will stop at nothing in the name of justice. Actually, he's a sick, twisted masochistic freak.

Based on the infamous graphic novels (manga) of Kazuo Koike, Honzo bows to no superior and pulls no punches. In fact, he welcomes pain and offers torture to get what he wants. With females, the torture is sex. This series is a mutant sub-genre of Asian crime noir. It is naughty and bawdy but done with an absolutely straight face. If you're in the right state of mind, it is both shocking and hilarious. I loved the complicated security devices the rightfully paranoid Honzo has rigged for his abode.

interrogation has many sides
I have been trying to find out just how many of these films exist. I've seen 3 of them.. They combine all the familiar elements of the midieval japanese samurai (I don't have my Alain Silver guide handy) drama.. with some funny and very welcome twists.. The main character is a constable with a kind of rogue ethic, a Ronin cop, if you will, who holds corruption over his bosses heads so he can get his way...He also has a kind of rogue aesthetic.. especially in his interrogation techniques.. the 3 films I have seen start with him "conditioning" his sexual organ with various techniques which could only be described as masochistic.. but you see, this uh, tool, is his interrogation device, and he uses sex to interrogate the females in the particular case.. These are not porno movies, but rather a very wonderful Bawdy Samurai/Comedy Action Thriller Hybrid.. The tone is totally serious.. but it comes off hilarious.. especially his rube-goldbergian security devices that protect his house.. Please if anybody knows tell me where to get more of these films.. I'm definitely a fan..