Zatoichi Goes to the Fire Festival (1970)

Not rated, but this is, by far, the most inappropriate of the Zatoichi movies.  Zatoichi movies tend to stay away from sexuality and nudity.  This one decided to get it all out in one movie with a ton of sex and nudity.  There's some pretty bad gay stereotypes in this movie as well, teasing a potential sexual assault.  Then the gore!  Misumi decided that if they were going to greenlight sex stuff, mind as well go whole hog on the gore.  Yeah, this movie is not appropriate for kids.

DIRECTOR:  Kenji Misumi

Okay, I am so lost on what to think about Zatoichi Goes to the Fire Festival.  In lots of way, it is so much fun.  It's exactly what I want in a samurai movie.  But the beats in this movie are so darned weird.  There's going to be some active unpacking as I write this.  I'm hanging out with a pukey four-year-old.  I really want this behind me because I'm constantly overwhelmed and I want time to play Indiana Jones and the Great Circle.  None of this has to do with Zatoichi Goes to the Fire Festival, which has also nothing to do with Fyre Festival.

What's really cool about Zatoichi Goes to the Fire Festival is that it's spiraled into borderline The Man with the Golden Gun.  All these movies, at this late stage in the Zatoichi franchise are one giant Man with the Golden Gun. Seriously, most of this movie is "Kill Zatoichi!"  We're a sneeze away from a bad guy yelling "Kill Bond, now!"  And the villains!  I mean *chef's kiss*!  It's like it took a while to realize that you could have some real goobers in these movies.  Honestly, the bad guys in the Zatoichi movies have been too safe.  It may have taken me this long to realize what made me slightly annoyed about the earlier Zatoichi films.  The entire idea of Zatoichi is absurd.  One of the things that's always gotten under my craw is the idea that I have no idea how Zatoichi's blindness works.  But as this franchise has progressed, the series has turned Zatoichi's blindness into magic blindness.  It does exactly what Zatoichi needs to get ahead and beat the bad guy.  When he needs to look silly, the blindness is crippling.  When there's any danger or need to make some other people look like dopes, it can do anything he wants it to do.    

So attaching the movie to a villain who also has magical blindness?  It took 21 movies to do that?  It seems like the most obvious choice for this series.  I mean, I'm really not sure what Dark Lord Yamikubo's abilities are.  We see that he does that sword trick of cutting something in mid-air, despite being blind. But he's also an old dude.  It's kind of bananas that the movie teases that blindness is a superpower.  At one point, Yamikubo has to direct his army and everyone is listening to his every choice because he can see the things that sighted people can't.  When the movie full on embraces the rules of Zatoichi blindness, that's what the series should have been from moment one.  What it does for the series as a whole is open the door to other characters having very specific talents.  When Zatoichi is the only one who can slice up umpteen bad guys, it means that every problem is solved with Zatoichi just slicing up them bad guys.  That doesn't make for compelling viewing.  But if there is some other quasi-super power that Zatoichi is fighting against, it creates dynamic sequences.  Yeah, it's all fluff.  But Zatoichi rarely works when it leans heavily into plot.  So well shot fluff actually kind of goes a long way with movies like this.

Do you know what thing I got hung up with on Zatoichi Goes to the Fire Festival?  A lot --and I mean a lot --of this movie is hung up on the bad guy toying with Zatoichi.  He does so many ceremonies where he invites Zatoichi only to immediately try and murder Zatoichi.  Like, there's almost no reason for it outside of the fact that Zatoichi is a threat to him.  But the bending over backwards to have Yamikubo quit being the Dark Lord only to have a big ceremony with dice that have no marks on them?  Like, I don't hate the pool full of gasoline that he lights on fire.  After all, the movie is called "Fire Festival".  But so much of it is unnecessary theatricality.  It's not subtle the fact that Zatoichi and Yamikubo are meant to be mirrors for each other.  I don't know if you picked up the very subtle nod to both characters being blind.  Or when they play the black and white pieces of Go (which I associate with another name that I can't think of).  Do you get that they are two sides of the same coin?  Like, it lays it on thick and I'm on board.

But beyond all this, the movie is super frustrating.  Part of it is that it relies on a trope that the series has used too much. (What?  Zatoichi falls back on formula?  Get out of town!)  The movie really leans into people falling hardcore in love with Zatoichi.  For a while, I was invested in these kinds of relationships.  In fact, I would get mad when Zatoichi wouldn't get emotionally tied to a female lead.  But we've now met so many versions of Kiyo that Kiyo doesn't matter at all.  Like, I like her as a character.  But I've now completely acknowledged that there's no way that Kiyo is going to change the narrative in any meaningful way.  And then we have the really inappropriate stereotype of Umeji.  Part of me really wants to believe that this was a really poor attempt at being progressive.  But I can't.  I mean, Umeji is so over-the-top as a gay stereotype that it's upsetting.  It's...really rough.  On top of that, it has that gay trope that says that he can't hold him back from the straight protagonist.  The thing is, Umeji is enough of a character to make a movie out of.  I love the idea that a youth being thrown out of his house and wanting to be a yakuza is a great idea.  I also love the idea that he bonds with Zatoichi, who secretly discourages him from that decision.  But he comes across as a really inappropriate joke.  It really could have been a movie in itself.  Instead, it's a wasted opportunity.

It is weird how sexual this movie gets.  There's a whole story with a guy who is trying to kill Zatoichi because he may or may not have seduced his wife.  Now, I mentioned in the Parent Guide section on the top that this is the first Zatoichi movie that completely went into the deep end with sexuality.  I'm not quite sure why.  I mean, I like a lot of the imagery that the paranoid husband holds onto.  I think he's a Ronin.  But this is kind of where I'm going with my frustration with this movie.  I love this Ronin.  He's this right level of insane, where he goes over the top and keeps Zatoichi alive because Zatoichi's death gives him something to look forward to.  He has all of these hallucinations of his wife copulating with Zatoichi.  It's some wild stuff.  But...when did that happen?  Am I missing something?  Am I forgetting about a character from a previous movie because that would be absolutely wild, considering that the franchise never did a callback like that before.  It's all this stuff.  But I'm still confused why the sexual element of the movie?  Is it because it is 1970 and there's this attitude of freedom?  I know that there was a push towards pornography as studios were restructuring themselves.  But it really felt like they were testing the waters and fulling embracing a new structure.  As much of a prude as I'm becoming as a parent, I didn't hate how much fun that they were having.  That sequence with the bathhouse where all the dudes were fighting nude was clever as heck.  But it just felt odd.

Part of what make Zatoichi movies kind of forgettable is that there is so much filler over what is a very thin story.  And I like that the movies tend to lean into simple plots.  But it's trying to do a little bit of everything and it needs to just focus on Zatoichi keeping his head above water as someone hammers him with things that scare him.  As a movie, it was mostly enjoyable.  That's what I figured out.  But it has a long way from being a good movie.