This is not the easiest movie to see these days, so I'm not surprised there's been zero discussion of this movie here. Your best bet to see it is to find someone that's willing to share a fansubbed version. (It's out there.) I'm aware of only two official options:
- Buy the Toho DVD (CDJapan). As usual, no subtitles or English audio. (But as noted, there is a subtitle track available for the film.)
- Track down the Australian Madman/Eastern Eye release from the mid '00s. It's unavailable on Amazon and the picture is a set of headphones.
AIP released it as "The Lost World of Sinbad" in 1965, with Mifune's character dubbed as "Sinbad". That version is out there via ancient bootlegs that look like shit. Even more obscure is the international version ("Samurai Pirate"), which was available on VHS 35 years ago in some of the Nordic countries.
OK, enough about all that. Toshiro Mifune plays Luzon Sukezaemon, a merchant who is falsely accused and convicted of piracy in 16th century Japan. He escapes and decides to turn to piracy for real, but his ship is wrecked in a storm and his crew picked off by the Black Pirate (Makoto Sato). Luzon winds up in a strange island kingdom... this is where the film takes off and is hard to succinctly summarize. A typical adventure plot is supplemented by some fantasy elements, including a wizard (Ichiro Arishima) and a witch (Hideyo Amamoto, playing an old hag), who both shapeshift into various persons and animals. Tsuburaya's special effects are limited by the script and maybe because it was one of at least five FX movies he did that year.
Most of the same cast and crew did a very similar movie three years later called The Adventures of Takla Makan, which was discussed here.
