Jun 16, 2026 · 4 hr 13 min · 11 segments
With this episode's double feature, we decided to pair two revisionist genre masterworks from opposite sides of the globe: Kihachi Okamoto’s The Sword of Doom (1966) and Sam Peckinpah’s The Wild Bunch…
Levi HuffmanHost
Kyle HuffmanHost
I think the samurai movie, there's way more of that as a concept, but also in Japanese culture, honor is seen as more of a virtue than it is here.
Which is funny to say, because it definitely is here too, but still in a bigger way.
But that both of these movies are ultimately about either the willful or the... kind of unconscious destruction of honor.
But while we were watching it this time, I remarked to you, I said, I'm glad that the reason I love this movie is not because of what it has to say, because I think actually I could spend some time, or we're going to spend some time later, parsing through that and being like, this movie's kind of fraudulent as far as what it's actually literally saying about anything.
the past, did Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia and kind of went into this a little bit.
talked about, well, both of us probably talked about Straw Dogs at that time, too.
That's another one where I'm like, I love that movie, not because of anything it has to say so much as what it is as a piece of genre filmmaking I'm very impressed by.
The Sword of Doom has a lot more immediately to say and critique about its character.
I think the samurai movie, there's way more of that as a concept, but also in Japanese culture, honor is seen as more of a virtue than it is here.
Which is funny to say, because it definitely is here too, but still in a bigger way.
But that both of these movies are ultimately about either the willful or the... kind of unconscious destruction of honor.
But while we were watching it this time, I remarked to you, I said, I'm glad that the reason I love this movie is not because of what it has to say, because I think actually I could spend some time, or we're going to spend some time later, parsing through that and being like, this movie's kind of fraudulent as far as what it's actually literally saying about anything.
the past, did Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia and kind of went into this a little bit.
talked about, well, both of us probably talked about Straw Dogs at that time, too.
That's another one where I'm like, I love that movie, not because of anything it has to say so much as what it is as a piece of genre filmmaking I'm very impressed by.
The Sword of Doom has a lot more immediately to say and critique about its character.
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