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| Release Date: | June 28, 2005 (US DVD) |
| Runtime: | 97 min |
| Rated: | R |
| Genres: | Action, Horror |
| Directed by: | Tomoo Haraguchi |
| Written by: | Mugi Kamio |
| Starring: | Ryuji Harada, Miki Tanaka, Mubu Nakayama |
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 A good friend of mine happened upon a bizarre DVD in the new releases at Blockbuster last night. He said it looked like a Japanese samurai chop-em-up but with monsters and what not. He tried several times to pronounce the title but I had a better chance of getting laid by Jennifer Love Hewitt before he hit it on the head. So, I told him to bring it over and we’ll have a look tonight.
The movie is called Kibakichi (pronounced Kib-a-ki-chi, hee hee). It is a Japanese monster movie based during a not-to-ancient time where evil demons, called Yokai, fled the land from the spread and domination of mankind. Kibakichi is a lone swordsman with very poor sanitation, who travels the land chopping up bands of criminals who attempt to rob him on his journeys. He happens across a local casino town where he decides for whatever reason to gamble over a warm bottle of sake. After a nice winning streak, he is invited by the town’s lord, Boss Ozino, to live amongst them in the casino. Kibakichi soon finds out that these people of the casino are actually spider-like Yokai who have been luring criminal gamblers to the casino and eating them to survive. It also turns out that they know his secret as well; he too was driven out of his village of fellow werewolf Yokai by humans. Now, he has once again stepped into a conflict between the Yokai and the humans who wish to eliminate them.
When this movie begins, it is very obvious that it is a low-budget Japanese film. However, the movie has a very cool anime-like style of directing that makes it worth the time. I pressed on some more. Then the sword fighting begins within the first 4 minutes of the film, it seems very similar to Ninja Scroll’s beginning but the fight choreography is very primitive and ultimately bad. It has a lot of the normal Japanese gags like arms being hacked off, spraying blood, and decapitation. It goes into more of the back story of the Yokai and how they take human form which was pretty cool even with subtitles. After that though the movie goes flat with a long boring political conflict between Boss Ozino’s clan and the humans who are trying to back stab them and ultimately take them over. It is very dull and they hardly throw in anything for a good hour or so that can be considered something active.
Finally, at the end of the film, we see the casino and the Yokai get wiped out by the primitive machine gun toting humans and the movie redeems itself entirely. We at last see Kibakichi unleash his swordsmanship and even become the werewolf we have been waiting for. The ending, however very sloppy, is yet cool. It jumps from being a classic anime type battle to becoming a monster movie similar to that of a Troma film.
I noticed three big flaws nevertheless: Kibakichi doesn’t have enough action pound per pound for it’s type of movie; it is very sloppily edited and directed throughout the movie, it’s hard to tell where you are or what the hell is going on; and the movie has tons of obvious mistakes like wrong lines being spoken, the creatures not staying constant, and mistiming of action sequences. All in all, the movie has its moments and if you are into movies like Versus or Toxic Avenger you will probably enjoy it. |
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