Sword of Doom

Sword of Doom is an old black and white samurai movie from Japan. A swordsman shows up on a mountainside and kills and old man praying at a shrine to Buddha. The swordsman is supposed to fight another guy in the town the following day and a woman shows up to try to talk him out of it. He asks her if it’s worth her giving up the goods to stop the fight. If the girl’s husband (as it turns out) loses, then he loses the right to teach at the school he’s in charge of – and it sounds like this is very likely.

They fight the next day in front of the town at some sort of competition. He kills the husband who has just divorced his wife when he found out she was sneaking away to sleep with the bad guy. She wants to run away with the bad guy and he casts her aside before he’s ambushed by the townspeople loyal to the now-deceased husband. The ex-wife ends up with the bad guy and they have a kid together. Oddly enough, they both appear to hate each other.

Bad guy’s father is on his deathbed and tells the husband’s brother to kill his son (that killed the husband). The brother tracks down the bad guy in Kyoto, but the bad guy is going a bit crazy and starts killing all kinds of people he’s with. He does sustain some injuries however. Then randomly, there’s a pillow-throwing scene to distract the weakened samurai – I had no idea their weakness was pillows.

Then the movie just ends. I’m assuming he dies, but seriously, he’s midway through killing everyone in the building and the credits roll. Weird ending. I’m not sure how much of this movie actually made sense in a linear plot sort of way. It’s not disjunct or anything, it’s just pointless and doesn’t end. I’d not recommend this film to people who like movies with a plot.