Critical Reception
Vincent Canby of The New York Times, wrote "Shogun Assassin... is as furiously mixed up as What's Up Tiger Lily? the classic that Woody Allen made by attaching an English soundtrack to a grade-Z Japanese spy movie. Aside from the little-boy's narration, the movie's not much fun once you've gotten the picture, which is that of a tubby, outcast samurai wandering the length and breadth of Japan, pushing an antique baby carriage that contains his tiny, remarkably observant son."
Stuart Galbraith IV of DVD Talk said, "A radical reworking of not one but two Japanese movies combined into a single action-filled extravaganza, Shogun Assassin floored audiences with its dream-like, poetic action and pressure-cooker bloodletting."
J.C. Maçek III of WorldsGreatestCritic.com wrote, "Shogun Assassin as a product of artistic and stylistic films, is an artistic and stylistic film itself, with the dubbing (which includes even the voice of Sandra Bernhard) working as a genre-setting asset rather than a liability. This keeps the cartoonish, yet somehow still deadly, mood that penetrates each reel. In that this film was a huge influence on later works (like Kill Bill), it's safe to bet that you've got geysers of blood shooting from every wound and plenty of dismemberment and painful-looking slashes."
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