Post-war Japanese movies had some of the finest actors and actresses in the world, but many of their male stars seem to be lacking something when we look at them from this distance. The one exception is Toshiro Mifune, an actor for whom the word charisma might well have been coined. The problem with being a charisma star is that you are often expected to carry a movie on your charisma alone. Samurai Pirate is just such a movie. It is also pretty bad, but not as bad as the similar movies the Italians were turning out at the time.
Mifune is a Japanese merchant accused of piracy who flees and is shipwrecked on an island off the coast of Siam,. Though the costumes are Siamese, the plot is Arabian Nights. To save himself he must also save the usual beautiful princess from the usual evil wazir and a witch with Medusa-like powers.
Wazir and witch watch the magic mirror
The special effects are from the Godzilla crew at Toho, so are better than those in most of the similar Italian movies of the era. There is an unusual amount of wire work, which was usually the province of Hong Kong movies at this date. Mifune is occasionally aided by a comic hermit/magician, whose one joke is he can’t move if he sees a nice pair of breasts — still all covered up, this being 1963, but with the costume tops showing well-defined cleavage.
The movie is so much like the Arabian Nights movies that were a regular sub-genre of American films that it was released in the US by American-International in a dubbed version where Mifune’s character is re-christened Sinbad. That general release in the US alone would make it notable — the other Japanese movies not featuring Godzilla that were seen in America before this time* were all in “art house” theaters in large cities or university towns. Of course, American-International’s primary market was drive-ins, but still, it is some kind of significant mark in film history. It is also notable because it is a rare case of Japanese movies venturing outside the borders of Japan. As I commented elsewhere, it was unusual for the Japanese to cast themselves as anyone other than Japanese (or occasionally Korean) and very rare to venture to foreign settings not related to wars. Mifune is clearly a Japanese character here, but all the others are also played by Japanese as well.
There is plenty of derring-do, including flying to the princess’s rescue on a giant kite,
but little swordplay until the end. Most of the movie rests on the shoulders of Mifune, and he carries it off splendidly, with the gruff exterior hiding the proverbial heart of gold. It’s a silly piece of nonsense, but that could be said about most movies from most nations, even when they featured major stars. The comic magician’s vulgarity is somehow innocent enough that it would be one of those movies called “fun for the whole family,” at least at the time. It also is a good illustration of what Mifune was doing when not working with Kurosawa during the early sixties.
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