The Sword of Doom (1973), directed by Kihachi Okamoto. Criterion Channel at home, Saturday, April 15.

The Criterion Collection page for The Sword of Doom states that this film is about “[a] gifted swordsman plying his craft during the turbulent final days of shogunate rule in Japan, Ryunosuke kills without remorse or mercy. It is a way of life that ultimately leads to madness. Kihachi Okamoto’s swordplay classic is the thrilling tale of a man who chooses to devote his life to evil.”

To me, that makes is sound as if he was a normal person warped by the circumstances in the world of that time. Nope. The Sword of Doom is fucking awesome because it’s the story of a serial killer who’s also a samurai who’s just blisteringly violent. And we get that at the very start, when he wastes an old man praying (!) for no apparent reason. The character of Ryunosuke Tsukue, played with dead-eyed brilliance by Tatsuya Nakadaim ranks up there with the most notable cinema psychopaths, from Freddie Krueger to Jason Voorhees to Hannibal Lecter. Notice I wrote “notable” as opposed to “best” because those characters are all plain awful, but revered for some reason (have you seen Lambs lately? Man, Hopkins is a straight-up baked ham.)

The violence in Sword could only have been made around this time or later–it certainly is influenced by the world trend of realistic viciousness that you see in the great Spaghetti Westerns.

The Sword of Doom is a thrilling and, at times, amazing movie but it does have flaws, and they hurt. When the movie isn’t exciting it’s actually dead boring. There plot is way too complicated for what’s going on (how many gangs do we need in this picture?), and Toshiro Mifune, clearly signed on for star power, sleepwalks for the few minutes he’s in the movie, which sucks, because he’s usually so good.

But, God damn!, that ending. I won’t give it away except to say the action at the close of the film is insane and then, the whole drive of the plot goes right into a ditch, closing with the best final shot possible. It’s as if the filmmaker himself murdered his own story. What a blast.