The final film in the Lone Wolf and Cub series, Lone Wold And Cub: White Heaven In Hell (1974), is an over-the-top spectacle. The opening sequence in the mountains of Zao in Yamagata is impressive, but fairly ridiculous as the baby cart is tricked out with skis. There's a ridiculous battle scene with a cast of hundreds that get chopped to pieces by Ogami (Tomisaburo Wakayama). Niether Kenji Misumi nor Buichi Sato were involved with this film, which might be symptom of the excesses filmed in the final film that climaxes with a showdown with the Yagyu clan on a mountain top. Furst, he must dispatch the evil Restsudo Yagyu's (Minoru Oki) dangerous daughter Kaori (Junko Hitomi). Then, in the most outrageous story-line, Ogami must defeat a trio of zombies. The films ends with the mother of all blood baths on a mountain. This was my least favorite film in the series.
A note on the extras in the box set which I did enjoy, include: new 2K digital restorations of all six films, with uncompressed monaural soundtracks, high-definition presentation of Shogun Assassin, the 1980 English-dubbed reedit of the first two Lone Wolf and Cub films, new interview with Kazuo Koike, writer of the Lone Wolf and Cub manga series and screenwriter on five of the films, Lame d un père, l âme d un sabre, a 2005 documentary about the making of the series, new interview in which Sensei Yoshimitsu Katsuse discusses and demonstrates the real Suio-ryu sword techniques that inspired those in the manga and films, new interview with biographer Kazuma Nozawa about filmmaker Kenji Misumi, director of four of the six Lone Wolf and Cub films, a silent documentary from 1937 about the making of samurai swords, with an optional new ambient score by Ryan Francis, trailers, new English subtitle translations, and a booklet featuring an essay and film synopses by Japanese pop culture writer Patrick Macias.
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