Kill!

In this pitch-black action comedy by Kihachi Okamoto, a pair of down-on-their-luck swordsmen arrive in a dusty, windblown town, where they become involved in a local clan dispute. One, previously a farmer, longs to become a noble samurai. The other, a former samurai haunted by his past, prefers living anonymously with gangsters. But when both men discover the wrongdoings of the nefarious clan leader, they side with a band of rebels who are under siege at a remote mountain cabin. Based on the same source novel as Akira Kurosawa’s Sanjuro, Kill! playfully tweaks samurai film convention, borrowing elements from established chanbara classics and seasoning them with a little Italian western.

Japan
1968
114 minutes
Black & White
2.35:1
Japanese
Spine #313

Special Features

New, restored high-definition digital transfer
Original theatrical trailer and teaser
New essay by film and culture critic Howard Hampton
New and improved English subtitle translation

New cover by Eric Skillman

Available In

Collector's Set

Rebel Samurai: Sixties Swordplay Classics

DVD Box Set

4 Discs

$79.96

Special Features

New, restored high-definition digital transfer
Original theatrical trailer and teaser
New essay by film and culture critic Howard Hampton
New and improved English subtitle translation

New cover by Eric Skillman

Cast & Credits

Cast

Tatsuya Nakadai: Genta
Etsushi Takahashi: Hanjiro Tabata
Atsuo Nakamura: Tetsutaro Oikawa
Tadao Nakamaru: Magobei Shoda
Yoshio Tsuchiya: Shinroku Matsuo
Shigeru Koyama: Tamiya Ayuzawa
Eijiro Tono: Hyogo Moriuchi
Shin Kishida: Jurota Arao
Hideyo Amamoto: Gendayu Shimada
Yuriko Hoshi: Chino

Credits

Director: Kihachi Okamoto
Executive producer: Tomoyuki Tanaka
Screenplay: Akira Murao
Screenplay: Kihachi Okamoto
Original story: Shugoro Yamamoto
Cinematography: Rokuro Nishigaki
Editing: Yoshitami Kuroiwa
Production design: Iwao Akune
Music: Masaru Sato

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Tatsuya Nakadai

Actor

A dynamic, handsome star who got his start in Japanese cinema during its 1950s golden age, the Tokyo-born Tatsuya Nakadai defies easy categorization. He is convincing whether playing a mercenary lone wolf or a heartsick love interest, a hero or a villain, in a sleek suit or samurai robes, and just as comfortable blending in to an ensemble as commanding a spotlight. The stage-trained actor was discovered, while working as a shop clerk, in 1953 by director Masaki Kobayashi, who promptly cast him in a tiny role in the controversial drama The Thick-Walled Room; a year later, he was given a walk-on part in Akira Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai. After a major breakthrough as a young yakuza in Kobayashi’s Black River, Nakadai was on his way to becoming one of Japan’s busiest actors; he would work several more times with both Kobayashi and Kurosawa, as well as Hideo Gosha, Kon Ichikawa, Mikio Naruse, Kihachi Okamoto, and Hiroshi Teshigahara—the cream of the nation’s crop of film artists. Nakadai, still acting into his eighties, is perhaps most often recalled for his ravaging performances in Kobayashi’s epic war drama The Human Condition (1959–61) and Kurosawa’s Ran (1985), in which he embodies unforgettably a cinematic King Lear for the ages.