Sleepy Eyes Of Death 3: Full Circle Killing 1964 Screenplay by Seiji Hoshikawa with direction by Kimiyoshi Yasuda. Raizô Ichikawa is Nemuri Kyoshiro in the 3rd film of the series.
A refuge camp squats under a bridge when the peace of the evening is broken by screams of murder. A hooded figure chops off the head of a poor homeless guy just to test his new sword. The practice of testing new swords on the locals is frowned upon by the shogunate, even if the killer turns out to be the nasty illegitimate offspring of the shogun.
Nemuri just happens by after the killing, he gets blamed by the locals but shows them he's just got a bamboo sword so it couldn't have been him. They let him leave and the next day he picks up his sword from a sword maker. It's all sharpened and polished. Good thing, it's got a lot of work ahead of it. Nemuri's body count for this movie is 52 and that isn't counting the people who were killed by others or themselves.
The illegitimate son's mom is a nasty peace of work, she's highly ambitious and she's raised her son to be a murdering psychopath, typically he's a weakling. Mom's been assuring her son he's going to be the new shogun and she's aided his path to glory by having several of the other heirs to the throne done in by her minions. She's partially funded by a local lord who's daughter is the illegitimate son's fiance. When the lord's younger daughter is kidnapped mom's cold hearted ambition starts to break up the relationship between the two.
Mom's plan is like a house of cards when confronted by the whirlwind that is Nemuri. Truth be be told, the mom's machinations had already attracted notice of the shogun and the pair would have been dealt with if things hadn't turned out as they did. There's another subplot involving the woman Nemuri's been seeing, her husband returns, freed from prison by a henchman of mom's. His price for release is killing Nemuri. Of course that doesn't work out too well for him. Nemuri sure can pick the most troublesome women, not that anyone of a better stature would be likely to apply for that position.
There's a scene where Nemuri rapes the fiance of the illegitimate son as a punishment. This really reminds us that Japan in the feudal past was such a horrible place that sometimes the hero's were monsters. Life was cheap and there's little justice for the common man. I often say that the best you could hope for back then is a quick death. I still found the film entertaining, especially when the really bad baddies are sliced up and left lying in the dirt. Nine more films to go.
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