Films

A total of seven Lone Wolf and Cub films starring Tomisaburo Wakayama as Ogami Ittō have been produced based on the manga. They are also known as the Sword of Vengeance series, based on the English language title of the first film, and later as the Baby Cart series, because young Daigoro travels in a baby carriage pushed by his father. The first three films, directed by Kenji Misumi, were released in 1972 and produced by Shintaro Katsu, Tomisaburo Wakayama's brother, and the star of the 26 part Zatoichi film series. Shogun Assassin (1980) was released as an English language compilation for the American audience, edited mainly from the second film, with 11 minutes of footage from the first. Also, the third film, Lone Wolf and Cub: Baby Cart to Hades was re-released on DVD in the US under the name Shogun Assassin 2: Lightning Swords of Death [1]. The next three films were produced by Wakayama himself and directed by Buichi Saito, Kenji Misumi and Yoshiyuki Kuroda, released in 1972, 1973, and 1974 respectively.

The films are renowned for the incredible amount of onscreen stylized violence. In fact, after the second film, each movie would climax with Ogami slaughtering an entire army single-handedly.

The films closely resemble the comics. Entire panels of the manga are recreated in perfect detail throughout the film series.

In addition to the six original films plus the seventh in 1980, Shogun Assassin, various television movies have been aired in connection with the television series as pilots, compilations or originals. These include several starring Kinnosuke Yorozuya (Nakamura) (see section Television series) but more notably the 1979 film Lone Wolf With Child: An Assassin on the Road to Hell better known as Baby Cart In Purgatory where Hideki Takahashi plays Ogami Ittō and Tomisaburo Wakayama as Retsudo Yagyu! In 1992 the story was once more made into a film, Lone Wolf and Cub: Final Conflict also known as Handful of Sand or A Child's Hand Reaches Up (Kozure Ōkami: Sono chīsaki te ni, literally In That Little Hand), directed by Akira Inoue and starring Tamura Masakazu.

[edit] Kills

In the film White Heaven in Hell, Ogami Ittō killed 150 people on screen, the highest body count for a single character in a single film in cinema history.^[1]