Welcome to The Wasteland Watchlist! Shane Conto (and occasionally guests) will randomly select a film from his ever growing watchlsit and take a dive into a dicussion here on the podcast. Shane is joined by his wife, Jess Conto, for this episode as he discusses a Carol Reed directed British noir mystery, The Fallen Idol (1948).
Shane Conto is a decorated movie critic, writer, and Youtuber! Check out his website, his YouTube page The Wasteland Reviewer, and follow him on Instagram, TikTok, and Letterboxd! Check out his other podcasts the Wasteland Retrospective, Streaming Wasteland, the Cinematic Wasteland, the Wasteland Vintage Roadshow, and, Ruthless Obsession on the SPDM Crew of Podcasts!
If you'd like to help Shane get rid of movies on his watchlist or you're interested in being part of the SPDM Crew, send us an email at spdmcrew@gmail.com. Follow SPDM Crew on Instagram, X, Facebook, YouTube, and Blue Sky. Check out our website www.spdmcrew.com!
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[music] Hello everyone, it's Shane Kanto, your Wasteland Reviewer, and welcome to the Wasteland Watchlist here on the SPM Crew Podcasting Network. And this is my weekly show where myself and mostly with a guest play some movie roulette and look at my 8,500 movie watchlists randomly pick something, it could be absolutely anything, and you know, hopefully you have a movie to check out by the end of this episode. And joining me for this episode is my wife Jess, Jess, thank you so much for coming on. Happy to be here, Shane. As we did just randomly select a movie to watch last night and that was the Sword of Doom. And this film, through his unconscionable actions against others, a sociopath samurai built a trail of vendettas that follow him closely. And this film is from 1966, it was released February 25th. This is a 2-hour film directed by Ihachi Komodo, written by Shinobu Hashimoto, starring Tatsuya Nakadai, who plays our sociopathic samurai. And it features Japanese screen legend Toshiro Mufune. Oh yeah, we love him, Mufune. So this is based on a series of novels by Kaizen Nakazato, released in 1913. It's previously released in multiple different ways, starting in 1935 in a two-part film by Hiroshi Inagaki, and then released three other times before this one. So back in 1953, in a three-part film by Kunio Watanabe, a three-part film from 1957 to 1959 from Tomu Uchida, and three-part series from 1960 to 1961 by Kenji Misumi and Kazuo Mori. And this was supposedly forced upon director Ihachi Akamoto by this Toho studio. He did not want to do this, but after his previous film did not do so well, they're like, you're going to do this. And this was according to some film critic of the time, and who didn't seem to have very kind things to say about this movie. But I think that person is wrong, because I thought this is a pretty awesome film, but Jess, what were your general thoughts on the sword of doom? Yeah, I didn't get from it, but he didn't want to do it and hated the source material or whatever was given it as a punishment. I thought it was really interesting. The main actor definitely mastered the dead behind the eyes. That's about the only face and mild concern. Nakadai had a very intense soulless kind of stare throughout most of the film in terms of like if you came across this guy, you would not want to go anywhere near him because it was pretty unnerving to look at through all these different situations. His expression never really changes a whole lot, and it's kind of unnerving in that way whether he's, you know, killing an old man at the beginning of the film, raping a woman, and then killing her husband in a what was supposed to be just a like an exhibition, an exhibition non-violent duel, and then a whole bunch of other stuff that this guy does, and none of it. You just have Nakadai just bringing this intensity and unnerving kind of presentation. Yeah, I'll give a shit. There's a less personality in this performance. This is just straight up just like this. This guy looks like I would not want to mess with him if I came anywhere near him, but that's our protagonist in this film. So, if you will, Rino Suque, Suque, and you're just kind of with him throughout this whole entire experience and struggling to like deal with the fact that we're just going along this ride with him, like, you don't really like him. No, it's very much a tale of, well, we're going to see this man do all these horrible things, and then come back to bite him, because there is a manifestation after a while of all these horrible things that he's done that start to haunt him, and it's kind of that approach and story that you're going to get out of this because this isn't like a hero's journey, this is like this dude did some bad things and consequences of my own actions. Exactly, and it's incredibly shot, Okamoto does such a great job directing this film, and you just see through so many of the quote unquote like action sequences. Hiroshi Murai is the cinematographer of the film, and you just see like one particular scene where you have that supposed non violent exposition and just the building attention building attention. There's no music going on, and it's just like, it's kind of a shot like the climax of the good, the bad and the ugly, as it's a montage of shots of like their feet moving, and then like a medium shot to their faces and back and forth and back and forth, cutting quicker. And then it's over. And then quick lunge, and then it's over. What was the illegal Suki maneuver Suki move. And then there's a sequence right after that where this man's like defenders try to take out the samurai, and it's just this long side tracking shot, and it's this long take, and it's so well staged and they're all like setting up ready to go and he just like slices and dices with one slice for each person just completely taking them out more mildly annoyed than anything else just like look what you made me do. And like there's certainly some tension is this film grow and grows and it's like this woman who he raped and then killed her husband he winds up. Yes, and he winds up taking her in and then being abusive to her and having this very tenuous relationship and dynamic with, and you see like them getting in confrontations, and there may be a terrible haircut. Yes, there was a very interesting very traditional sideburns not attached to the rest of the hair kind of haircut. And the Mafune is not in the film a whole lot, but he's like this veteran presence who this samurai admires his skills and his abilities but he's right this conflict. He's pretty mature he just kind of was like yeah you can't fight him right now you're not gonna win. Here's what you should do. And it gets pretty haunting and intense I do like Masooru sitos music. There's certain moments where it's just like it's kind of like sprinkled in certain sounds of instruments and stuff like that it's not like a big bombastic sports eerie and brings atmosphere. So with a wooden flute. Yes, and this gorgeous black and white cinematography, we use some shadows. It's all goes up to like this last like freeze frame shot of the film and it's like one of the comment that that critic had made was like this feels like a freeze frame pause screen for a film that's supposed to come after it that we never And I'm just like this guy, this guy's an asshole. But like it's this shocking kind of film that puts you in the driver's seat along with a sociopath and you're kind of just like along for the ride and waiting to see if him get his just desserts, his comeuppance in this situation, lawful evil. But just do you have anything else that stood out to you about the film that you found interesting or I love it. I love a good. Yeah, and this was not a Kurosawa film, it was not a Kobayashi film, and it was a kind of put a spotlight on another samurai film director that I want to check out, which I don't really recognize a whole lot of of his other films here but like has samurai assassin, the human bullet. Do sound cool, the sort of doom sounds really cool too. Yes, sort of doom was like the coolest one, Red Lion, the age of assassins for graveyard. So, and it seems like he mostly did samurai films and this was extremely well directed interested to see some of his other films. To the guy that was like the age samurai will collapse under their own weight like a log thinking I'm like, is this the end of the major era. I think it's the end of the major area. The answer is yes. But I just thought that was interesting. It's definitely had a very interesting setting period, and certainly a protagonist that we had a walk through this story with very let's hang out with a sociopath, like there will be blood. But he's not as funny as sugar or Daniel playing view. No, this is, this is like, this guy has no personality along with it. It's just like, you must look at dead stairs. It's like only one guy for comic religion. Boy do you see him coming? I'm just like flipping through some of the shots in this and like this is hard as hell shot of him just walking off into the fog with the whole entire line of dead bodies that he just leaves in his wake. That scene to where the that lady comes up to him and she's like there's an ambush. There's like 30 or 40 dudes and he's like whatever bro and just saunters into the forest to kill 30 or 40 dudes. That's the poster. Yeah, I get why I love them. And then just like Mafune here going off to fight in the snow. Looking pretty cool. We do love this movie. He's he's a bit of a high plains drift or type kind of comes in. But those are our thoughts on the sword of doom. But thank you for listening. Jess, thank you so much for coming on and watching the samurai with me. You're welcome. And thank all of you for listening. Make sure to like, comment and share on this episode. What's your favorite samurai film? Have you dove into some of this like era of great Japanese action flicks. If you have, you've probably watched the cure course out with him, who is absolutely fantastic. Make sure to follow your subscriber ever listen to your podcast. We have a so much great content here on the SPM crew podcasting network, whether it's movies, television, sports, physical media, comic books, and even you know just chatting about life. All kinds of different content, please make sure to check it out. And if you like your logo, check out high fly creative they do a lot of great work and if you have any digital brand needs, make sure to check them out. And most importantly, thank you, as always, for tuning in and supporting the Wasteland Watchlist here on the SPM crew podcasting network. [MUSIC PLAYING] You
