Samurai (AKA “Orders from Tokyo”)
Directed by Raymond Cannon
Written by Raymond Cannon
1945/USA
Cavalcade Pictures
First viewing/Amazon Instant Video
Tagline: THE VILE JAP CODE THAT HORRIFIED THE CIVILIZED WORLD!
I’ve stopped reviewing most of the B pictures I watch on the blog but I found one so wrong-headed and laughably awful that I just had to share.
America in its great humanitarianism reached out to the people of Tokyo with massive aid during the 1923 earthquake. Saintly medical missionaries Mr. and Mrs. Morley find little orphaned Ken lying amid the rubble, adopt him and take him home to America. They lavish affection upon the boy and when he grows send him to medical school in Germany (or was that England?) followed by a stint at art school in Paris.
some real samurai
Unfortunately for the welfare of humanity, little Ken had already been spotted by an evil priest of the religion of Bushido while sketching near the sea. The priest indoctrinates the boys in the mysteries of the cult of the war god Samurai and teaches him to be a good (i.e. treacherous) Japanese. He is assigned to learn the ways of foreign secret service agents while he is in Europe. Ken returns an licensed doctor and acclaimed modern artist.
He reports that Germany and Japan are now poised to rule the world and that he has worked out a method for hiding highly detailed technical specifications for military installations in his paintings. The priest sends him to Tokyo for further instruction. The Japanese are highly suspicious of his intentions so he heads off to Shanghai. There he impresses his handler by photoshopping rising sun logos onto pictures of Chinese relief workers to counter the bad press the Japanese are getting in China. He is sent onto Peking. After Ken passes a loyalty test consisting of watching a Japanese mistreating American female prisoners, the leadership is convinced. Based on his Photo Shop and artistic skills, Ken receives a commission to be Governor of California after the coming invasion of the U.S. West Coast.
I will leave the denoument to your imaginations.
some movie Samurai – from The Last Samurai (2003)
Of course, this film is absolutely appalling in its total misrepresentation of Japanese culture and its propagation of prejudices that landed thousands of loyal Japanese-Americans in internment camps. But it is also just so astoundingly bad as to be both hilarious and mesmerizing. No chance of turning it off before the end because one just has to see what ludicrous incident will happen next.
Some examples of its delights. All the Japanese are played by Chinese. The man who plays the grown Ken is at least as old as his adoptive parents. The acting is uniformly atrocious but it a totally overblown way. All the exteriors seem to have been shot using rear-screen projection of the most fake kind. Little Ken is discovered lying on what appears to be a photo of rubble in Tokyo. The scene with the captive white women could have come from a Duain Esper exploitation flick. The paintings are unbelievably childish in concept.
In short, this film was made for connoisseurs of bad movies. You know who you are.
