Zatoichi And The Chess Expert is the 12th of the series of 26. It came out December 24 1965 and it was directed by Kenji Misumi. He directed 6 of the series, more films than any of the other directors, except Kimiyoshi Yasuda, who also directed 6. As usual it stars Shintaro Katsu as the blind masseur Zatoichi.
Zatoichi is up to his old tricks while travelling on a small sailing ship. During a dice game he takes the cup and people bet against him. He's usually pretty good at the game but occasionally he tries a trick where he lets a set of dice fall outside the cup. People think they can take advantage of him because he's blind and doesn't know the dice are exposed. When he goes to lift the cup he "finds" them and pockets them. The betters lose, the dice under the cup are of opposite of what they bet on, and they get all noisy. He bitches them out for trying to cheat a blind man and takes their money. Sometimes it turns into a fight and his opponents die. This time he blinds the eye of one of them and cuts the other up a bit. On the boat he meets a samurai who plays chess.
In the town of Hakone the two men attack Zatoichi and a little girl gets hurt. Zatoichi takes care of the girl and her aunt for a while. The woman falls in love with him but he tells her he's dirt and he doesn't want her to get all muddy. There are some other men looking for the woman, and sadly for them, they find her. He meets a nice young and his servant while they are at the bath house. Soon after the servant is killed. We know who did it but Zatoichi is puzzled for a while.
Plenty of pure chance leads him to the killer and there's plenty of sword fighting and slaughtering on the way. There's a bit of melodrama with the lady and her niece, sad when they have to part. It has to be, Zatoichi isn't ready to settle down. It's a great looking movie, plenty of nice scenery and scenes. I liked the story and all the characters. It's always been one of my favorites but I like the whole series a good bit. There's a link in the title above that takes you to YouTube where they have the movie for free. It's worth looking at.
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