"Director: Shintarô Katsu"

• Zatoichi In Desperation | DVD | (02/02/2003) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  On his ceaseless journey Zatoichi crosses paths with an old woman on an ancient bridge. Unintentionally causing her death Zatoichi charges himself with the task of finding the old woman's daughter Nishikigi to give her the tragic news. The blind swordsman sets off to the town of Chosi. There he finds the daughter working in a geisha house and a bond of fifty ryo has her trapped until it has been repaid. The town is ruled over by an ambitious boss Mangoro who has bullied the

• Zatoichi: The Blind Swordsman | DVD | (09/01/2012) from £22.95   |  Saving you £-12.96 (N/A%)   |  RRP £9.99

  He doesn't need to see you to kill youZatoichi... A warrior so highly skilled, his lack of sight is no barrier to the removal of your arms and legs with one sweep of his cold steel blade. Across dozens of movies, the sightless fighter has fought injustice and oppression but this one is the bloodiest, most gore splattered yet!Zatoichi finds himself trying to protect the poor and weak against injustice in a vicious turf war between two warring Yakuza clans as he battles trained killers on both sides who want to bring him down. Luckily, with super sensitive hearing, lightening reactions and virtuoso blade skills, each will die in a fountain of crimson blood.See this hyper-violent classic from the creators of Lone Wolf & Cub and Hanzo the Razor which blends exploitation, slapstick, splatter and sensitivity in one deranged swordplay classic.

• Zatoichi Box Set | DVD | (31/05/2004) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Takeshi "Beat" Kitano, the Japanese actor-director best known in the US for his quirky, ulraviolent gangster movies (Fireworks, Brother, Sonatine) and in the UK (among satellite and cable viewers, at least) for the bizarre It's a Knockout-meets-Endurance gameshow Takeshi's Castle, applies his off-kilter sensibility to the samurai genre in The Blind Swordsman: Zatoichi. A blind masseur (Kitano with his hair dyed white) wanders into a small town divided up by rival gangs. Though hunched and shuffling, Zatoichi soon reveals his deadly skills as a swordsman. He befriends a pair of geisha girls with secrets of their own and helps them hunt down the bandits who killed their parents. But one of the gangs has just hired a ronin, a masterless samurai, whose fighting skill may equal the blind swordsman's. Zatoichi mixes a melodramatic storyline, deadpan comedy, and dazzling, CGI-enhanced swordfights into a supremely entertaining package. In Japan, Zatoichi is a recurring character in popular action movies, but Kitano places his own unique stamp on the series. --Bret Fetzer