Sword of Doom
Sword of Doom is a 1966 film from Japan, directed by Kihachi Okamoto, running 120 minutes. reelscum files it under chanbara.
- Year
- 1966 · 1960s films
- Country
- Japan
- Runtime
- 120 min
- Director
- Kihachi Okamoto
- Updated
- 29 Oct 2026
- Obscurity
- cult (35/100)
- Also known as
- The Sword of Doom
Defined in the glossary: Chanbara
A swordsman with no morals and no motive cuts his way through the film. It stops rather than ends.
Kihachi Okamoto's portrait of Ryunosuke, a master swordsman who is simply, motivelessly evil, killing without cause and feeling nothing. Tatsuya Nakadai plays him as a void, and the film follows his path of destruction toward a legendary final sequence in which he hallucinates his victims and cuts down an entire building's worth of men.
It was meant as the first of a trilogy that never came, so it ends mid-frenzy with no resolution, which somehow suits its nihilism perfectly. A cold, brilliant, disturbing film.
Trailer
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