Legend of the Eight Samurai Blu-ray Review

Eureka Entertainment

Blu-ray Release: February 18, 2025

Video: 1.85:1/1080p/Color

Audio: Japanese DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 and LPCM 2.0 Stereo; English LPCM 2.0 Mono

Subtitles: English

Run Time: 136:10

Director: Kinji Fukasaku

The Satomi Clan have been all but wiped out by their mortal enemies: the ghoulish members of the undead Hikita Clan. The last Satomi survivor is Princess Shizu (Hiroko Yakushimaru), who goes into hiding to avoid meeting the same fate as her family. Left to wander on her own, she eventually becomes entangled with farmer-turned-soldier Shinbei (Hiroyuki Sanada) and then a pair of warrior monks who reveal themselves to be two of eight fabled Hakkenden – or 'Dog Warriors' – who can lift the curse that has been placed upon her family. Together, they must find the rest of the Hakkenden and take on the leader of the Hikita Clan: the evil Tamazusa (Mari Natsuki). (From Eureka’s official synopsis)

Best-known for his groundbreaking yakuza crime pictures, Kinji Fukasaku was an insanely prolific filmmaker, who dabbled across genres over his 40-year career. In 1978, Japan, like the rest of the world, was in the grips of Star Wars mania when Fukasaku took a break from gangster thrillers to make Toei’s answer to George Lucas’ blockbuster, Message from Space (Japanese: Uchū Kara no Messēji)*. It was his second space movie, after The Green Slime (Japanese: Ganmā Daisan Gō: Uchū Daisakusen, 1968) ten years earlier, and was a reworking of Kyokutei Bakin’s multi-volume serialized epic, Nansō Satomi Hakkenden, released in nine volumes between 1814 and 1842 – a tome that had already been adapted to film (at least) six times.

Message from Space was successful enough to spawn a television series, Message from Space: Galactic Wars (Japanese: Uchū Kara no Messēji: Ginga Taisen, 1979), and Fukasaku himself made a second adaptation of Nansō Satomi Hakkenden, specifically based on Toshio Kamata's 1982 retelling. That film was called Legend of the Eight Samurai (Japanese: Satomi Hakken-den, 1983). While Message from Space was an attempt to reshape Bakin’s tale in the Star Wars mold, Legend of the Eight Samurai is a more authentic adaptation, one that takes Lucas’ idea of a special effects-driven fantasy epic and applies it to a Japanese story.

Comparisons to Tsui Hark’s Zu Warriors from the Magic Mountain (1983), which applied Lucas’ technical achievements and structural ideas to an established (Hong Kong-made) Chinese epic, are appropriate, especially given that Nansō Satomi Hakkenden and Huanzhulouzhu’s Legend of the Swordsmen of the Mountains of Shu (pub. 1932), the basis of Zu, both have basis in Chinese mythology. Legend of the Eight Samurai isn’t as over-the-top and flashy as Tsui’s film, but it has a similar sense of pop surrealism, as if each feature was shot on the same otherworldly backlot. Fukasaku didn’t import any artists from Industrial Light & Magic, but he did have at least one advantage in that Lucas was already referencing samurai movies, like Akira Kurusawa’s The Hidden Fortress (Japanese: Kakushi toride no san akunin, 1958), throughout his original Star Wars film. Clearly, a Japanese Star Wars can embrace its cultural origins and still feel somewhat apiece with Star Wars. 

Legend of the Eight Samurai is certainly overlong and overstuffed – there’s zero room to breathe between plot points, character intros, and exposition dumps for 136 minutes – but it’s such a unique confluence of pop culture artifacts that it often gets away with its nonsense. Fukasaku foolheartedly combines incompatible Saturday morning cartoon adventure with violent action, gory horror (the giant centipede and snake attacks are high points), a convoluted, centuries-old narrative base, and intense noh theater melodrama that must have alienated the international audiences the film needed to compete with Star Wars (or at least Zu Warriors). 

For better or worse, there’s always going to be something special about talented filmmakers forging commercial art from outsider perspectives, especially with a decent budgetary backing and this level of ambition and artistry. On the surface, Legend of the Eight Samurai has little in common with Fukasaku’s more well-remembered work, yet it is somehow unmistakably his creative vision. At the very least, Legend of the Eight Samurai is one of the few places you can see highbrow artistic parallels to Gustav Klimt’s Art Nouveau masterpiece “The Kiss” commingling with English language, synth-pop title track and slow jam love theme (there is, by the way, a very long, very G-rated sex scene, despite an early sequence already featuring a fully nude actress).

* Message from Space was technically beaten to the market by Toho’s Star Wars cash-in War in Space (Japanese: Wakusei daisenso, 1977).

Video

Stateside, Legend of the Eight Samurai ended up being passed around by budget DVD labels, including Brentwood, BCI, and Mill Creek. Most of these releases were cropped to 1.33:1, but Mill Creek’s 2010 set was anamorphic, albeit misframed at 2.00:1. English ‘unfriendly’ Blu-rays premiered in Germany and Japan, and Japanese company Kadokawa also released a 4K UHD edition (again, with no English subtitles). Eureka’s advertising refers to their new 1.85:1, 1080p Blu-ray as featuring a “new 4K restoration,” so it’s probable that they are using Kadokawa’s transfer.

Cinematographer Seizō Sengen’s heavily stylized photography looks pretty fantastic, even without the benefit of full 2160p and HDR enhancement. Most scenes are dark, moody, and complexly colored with eclectic costuming and vivid gels. This mix of blacks and vibrant hues is made more complex by lots of diffused light effects, all of which the transfer handles well without too many artifacts. Grain levels are fine, but persistent and textures are busy, despite an overall softness to detail. The biggest issues are with the day-for-night sequences, which are all a little too dark, probably due to filmmaking choices, not mastering issues.

Audio

Legend of the Eight Samurai comes fitted with its original Japanese stereo soundtrack and English mono dub, both in uncompressed LPCM, as well as a 5.1 DVD remix of the Japanese track, presented in DTS-HD Master Audio. Most of the film is dialogue and music-driven, so there isn’t a whole lot for the 5.1 mix to add, but the original Japanese stereo definitely has clarity and dynamic range advantages over the crushed English mono. The English track is still worth sampling to note all the changes made to the dialogue in an effort to appeal to American audiences, such as trading the word “samurai” for “ninja.” 

The uneven, but charming, largely synth score – which plainly rips-off Star Wars’ themes several times – is credited to a virtual army of credited composers and songwriters, including Yukio Aizawa, Joey Carbone, Toshio Kihara, Hiroyuki Namba, Masahide Sakuma, Richie Zito, and David Palmer. I don’t know much about the production, but assume this means that the filmmakers were drawing from other sources, though, as mentioned, there are two original songs, “Satomi Hakken-den” and “White Light,” both written by Carbone, Zito, and Palmer, and performed by actor/singer John O'Banion.

Extras

• Commentary Joe Hickinbottom – The Japanese cinema expert and co-editor of New Blood: Critical Approaches to Contemporary Horror (University of Wales Press, 2021) explores Fukasaku’s wider career and relationship with Toei and producer Hiroshi Sugawara, the careers of other cast & crew members, different adaptations of the story the film is based on, and the film’s production.

• Always Looking for the New (25:57, HD) – Kinji Fukasaku's son, filmmaker Kenta Fukasaku, reflects on Legend of the Eight Samurai, his father’s career and creative trajectory in the early ‘80s, visiting the set as a boy, and memories of cinematographer Seizô Sengen.

• The Trials of the Eight Samurai (15:47, HD) – Film historian and critic Stuart Galbraith IV discusses changes to Japanese film distribution, the making of the movie, and producer Sugawara’s mash-up, multimedia approach to production. 

• Theatrical trailer 

The images on this page are taken from the Blu-ray and sized for the page. Larger versions can be viewed by clicking the images. Note that there will be some JPG compression.