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Lone Wolf and Cub White Heaven in Hell Director: Yoshiyuki Kuroda Number of Items: 1 Format: Animated, Color Audience Rating: Unrated Running Time: 84 minutes Studio: AnimEigo Product Group: DVD Release Date: 2004-07-13 Buy from Amazon

Customer Reviews: Total numer of reviews: 12 Average rating: 3.5 "A bloodbath of carnage." There's a twenty-two page text introduction on the LONE WOLF AND CUB: WHITE HELL dvd. It explains a lot - what one in Japan calls their mother and father and respected elder. What one used to call their mother and father and respected elder. It also contains a capsule history of Japan, from the eighth century or so onward. In all, a fairly imposing prelude. Fortunately, all my study went for nought. It turned out, after all, that I didn't need to know the proper and improper use of the term `sensei,' or the history of the city of Edo. Best yet, inadvertently starting this six-part series at part six didn't present many problems, either. WHITE HELL is a wonderfully uncomplicated and undemanding action movie. I enjoyed it very much without fussing over minute details. Ogami Itto, the Lone Wolf of the title, travels about pushing a baby carriage containing his son, Cub. The time is winter, the carriage is on skis rather than wheels, and it's armed and plated in a manner that would do a James Bond movie proud. Itto's sworn enemy Retsudo enlists a series of champions to kill Lone Wolf, and presumably Cub, as well. These highly efficient killers include Retsudo's daughter, a knife-wielding cutie, and three young men who are buried underground for 42 days and emerge as burrowing, fast moving, earth worm-ish assassins. As Retsudo exclaims when he cracks the men out of their clay pots - `Innocent people will die. There will be a bloodbath of carnage and a tempest of death!' What more could an action movie fan ask for? The largest ski attack ever filmed, I suppose. This fun, escapist movie has that, too. Strongly recommended. "Works for me..." Great stuff. I have been looking for these films for years, now I can get them easily. Lucky for you too. There is nothing like Lone Wolf and Cub, it has all the elements that I like in a martial srts flick. This is a no-holds-barred type of film, full of bloody slashing and hacking but always done with a sense of style. Get the entire series. "Worthy installment, but not finale" I love the LW&C film series, so my review of WHIH is certainly not that of an unbiased critic but of a fan of the series. At this point in the series, if you're not a LW&C fan, why would you be looking at this film? That said, I believe WHIH is a worthy installment. It has everything that makes the other films in the series great and then some. It has the lightning swordplay, one-man-killing-machine-vs-samurai-army battles, samurai duels at sunset, buckets of blood, a little t&a, and Shakespearean drama that we've come to expect. It also has the added goodies of a spooky, nightmare, horror film feeling, samurai zombies, and over-the-top snowy mountainscape slaughter on skis. It even adds more depth to the main characters and story by examining the effect that this private war is having on the larger society, especially the innocent bystanders caught in the middle, and focuses pretty much exclusively on the Ito/Yagyu conflict. So with all that going for it, why not five stars? Because this is the final installment of the series, and the one area where this film is weak is the one area where a final installment should, above all, excell: resolution. Maybe the film makers didn't know that this would be the final installment. Maybe its inconclusiveness is a source of hope that, in the wake of the popular KILL BILL and the slasher-samurai film revival, some new film maker will take up the sword and give us one, truly final installment in the LW&C series, maybe even bringing back some of the original actors, much older of course. In any event, WHIH does not resolve the major conflict of the LW&C story, and so ultimately, in spite of all its successes, falls short. That should in no way deter any fan of the series from buying it (the samurai zombies alone are worth the price), but do be prepared to be at least partially let down. NB - The music does get a little lame at times, but is also downright cool at times. Also, exactly how many children does Retsudo have?! It seems every ten minutes he bemoans that fact that all his children are dead, but then suddenly recalls that he has just one more living in the mountains or wandering the wilds or that he has disowned, and then we learn that that one more just happens to have a hot sister somewhere, and let's not forget Gunbei, the coolest Yagyu in the series and only person to ever beat the wolf in a duel. Yeah he only has one arm, but he's still alive and fitted to kill. Where's Gunbei?! "White blah-blah in hell, the one Lone Wolf/Cub not to see" In this sixth (but not final) installment of the movie series, what we get is little story and too much senseless action (with a sprinkling of hot tub sex). This is a very disappointing film. Although it is the last such LWnC movie from this creative team, it does not end the storyline (with 28 volumes in the manga series, we probably would have needed another 3-7 films). So the patient, constant viewer gets instead a hack-and-slash film of mid-caliber. The ending -- an over-extending action sequence set on a snowy slope -- is very unsatisfying; so are the characters: unlike other LWnC films, we do not get to meet any new incidental characters. As a result, the film is less about "Edo" soceity (which one cannot argue is the secondary if not primary goal of the manga team) and instead just a big showdown waiting to happen...waiting, waiting to happen. The film is way too long and its pacing is horrible. I think the fault with the film lies in these two things: 1) the writers/filmmakers chose poor source material. The "five wheel" assassin team denies Itto and son the chance to mingle with regular Edo joes. As a result, you do not get as I argued the best part of the series: the rich detail of Edo life. 2) the filmmakers must have been overwhelmed with James Bond films like "On Her Majesty's Secret Service" and whatnot with their decision to make this movie "samurai on skis". After the first few minutes of fighting on the snow, I was thinking "Enough already, I get it: samurai can be badass even on slippery surfaces!" Watch the first five and forever skip this sixth installment. "The sixth and final film in the "Lone Wolf and Cub" series" "Lone Wolf and Cub: White Heaven in Hell" ("Kozure Ôkami: Jigoku e ikuzo! Daigoro") is the sixth and final film adapted from the "Lone Wolf and Cub" manga written by Kazuo Koike and illustrated by Goseki Kojima. Koike wrote the screenplays for the first four films, but Tstuomu Nakamura did the script for the last two, which might explain why the climax of the finale seems to be more appropriate for a James Bond film rather than a samurai assassin film. There were several interesting issues of "Lone Wolf and Cub" that dealt with winter settings, but Nakamura does not really avail himself of them for this script. As always, it is interesting to see how familiar stories are brought together in the film, which was directed by Yoshiyuki Kuroda. This time there are four distinct acts to the action. First, Retsudo Yagyu (Minoru Ohki) is sending his daughter and last child, Lady Kaori (Junko Hitomi), who has perfected the falling dagger technique, after Lone Wolf and Cub (#79 "Sayaka"). Meanwhile, Ogami Itto (Tomisaburo Wakayama) has brought Daigoro (Akihiro Tomikawa) for a final visit to the grave of his mother (#58 "A Poem for the Grave") before they make their way for Edo. On the road they will encounter Lady Kaori. Second, assassins who have buried alive are reborn as divine spirits (#77 "Incense for the Living") and sent after Lone Wolf and Cub. Their strategy is to kill everybody whom father and son have contact with on the road to Meifumado (#76 "Five Wheels of the Yagyu"), which means a lot of innocents are getting killed until Ogami Itto goes off into the wildnerness to force the Yagyu's hand. Third, Retsudo attempts to persuade his illegitimate son, Hyoei (Isao Kimura) to kill Ogami Itto. When he refuses, Retsudo tries to get Hyoei's sister, Lady Azusa (Mayumi Yamaguchi) to persuade him to act. Hyoei agrees, seeing it as an opportunity to take over the Yagyu clan. However, Ogami Itto must first deal with the cancellation of an assassination because of the threat of the Yagyu (#80 "Clouds of Silk"). Then he faces Hyoei and forces him to issue a challenge for a duel (#67 "The Hojiro Yaguy") and Retsudo is forced to deal with Hoyei's final effort to usurp his position. The final act is where this film goes off the rails. Although the setting is similar to when father and son first made their way through the snow covered mountains (#64, "The Moon in the East, the Sun in the West") the story gets well beyond watch the baby cart being used as a sled. We are talking samurai on skis, ninjas on skis, and samurai on sleds. At least Ogami Itto does not get on skis, but he does some serious sledding. It is just that all of the shots of samurai swinging swords while jumping over the camera on skies get to be a bit much, and when a horde of them (including Retsudo), ski (or sled) right by their prey we were definitely into shark jumping territory. The bad news is that this is not a fitting end to the cinematic saga of Lone Wolf and Cub, but the good news is that are a dozen more volumes of the original manga as published by Dark Horse Comics that will get you to the true end of the story (although clearly they did not know this sixth film would be the final one in the series). I know all of these movies were edited and dubbed into "Shogun Assassin" in 1980, but I must insist that you take the high road and avoid that butchery in favor of the original sextet of films. In order these are: (1) "Kozure Ôkami: Kowokashi udekashi tsukamatsuru" ("Lone Wolf and Cub: Sword of Vengeance," 1972); (2) "Kozure Ôkami: Sanzu no kawa no ubaguruma" ("Lone Wolf and Cub: Baby Cart at the River Styx," 1972); (3) "Kozure Ôkami: Shinikazeni mukau ubaguruma" ("Lone Wolf and Cub: Baby Cart to Hades," 1972); (4) "Kozure Ôkami: Oya no kokoro ko no kokoro" ("Lone Wolf and Cub: In Peril," 1972); (5) "Kozure Ôkami: Meifumando" ("Lone Wolf and Cub: Baby Cart in Land of Demons," 1973); and (6) "Kozure Ôkami: Jigoku e ikuzo! Daigoro" ("Lone Wolf and Cub: White Heaven in Hell," 1974). The above list does not include literal translations of each Japanese title but rather the name given their most recent U.S. releases (I believe the original U.S. releases in the 1970s just numbered these as "Swords of Vengeance" I-VI). The literal translation of this sixth film in the series would be "Lone Wolf and Cub: Go to Hell, Daigoro," so you can see why that leaves a bit to be desired.