Trailer
Plot summary
At a shrine, nine young samurai meet in secret. They have resolved that the lord chamberlain Mutsuta is corrupt, because he destroyed the petition they had brought against fraud at court, and one of them has told the superintendent Kikui, who promised to step in. A rōnin listening nearby tells them not to trust the superintendent. Armed men fall on the meeting and he drives them off. It strikes him that Mutsuta and his family may now be in danger, so he stays to help. Reaching Mutsuta's house, they find the chamberlain gone and his wife and daughter held there under guard.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Sanjuro (1962)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
SPOILER
When Sanjuro kills Hanbei in the final duel, Hanbei's body lets out a spray of blood so graphic for the time that some claimed the effect was a mechanical failure; Akira Kurosawa insisted in a 1980 interview that it was intentional, done as an experiment.- Akira Kurosawa derided later filmmakers who copied the blood-spray effect, which he felt hurt the exploration of Sanjuro's character, and publications such as Far Out have traced its influence on later action films, splatter films and video games.
- Toshiro Mifune's sword fighting in Sanjuro was used as an extensive illustrated example of a samurai's virtuosity with the sword in This Is Kendo, a 1989 kendo manual published in English.
