21st Century Digital Boy

I just found a DVD of Six-String Samurai while I was shopping for groceries.

HELL YES.

For those who have no idea what I’m talking about, 6SS happens to be pretty much my favorite movie of the past, oh, I don’t know, ever. Kickass music, glorious camera work, and a premise that is made of crack and awesome. Because I’m a lazy bum, I’ll just copy&paste a short review of it that I’d written someplace else when I’d first seen the movie.

So I had a vid night with some of the mates last night. We watched The Iron Giant, Seducing Doctor Lewis… and the one I’m going to recommend.
Six-String Samurai.

Think Lone Wolf and Cub meets Mad Max meets 1950’s Rock’n'Roll.
The basic premise is a wee bit wacky, but stick with me for a moment.
In 1957, the Cold War escalates and the Soviets end up nuking and invading the US. Hilarity ensues, Elvis (yes, the Elvis) gets crowned King of the remains and takes seat in “Lost Vegas”.
Fast-forward forty years. The King Is Dead. Vegas needs a new King. Road Rockers from all over the place start flocking towards Vegas to claim the throne as theirs. Among them Death himself, incarnated as a postapocalyptic version of Guns’n'Roses’ Slash. And, of course, the unnamed protagonist whom everyone just calls “Buddy” and who looks a very slight bit like Buddy Holly would after having survived the Nucular Holocaust Of Doom. I think.
Thus, Buddy sets out equipped only with his trusty six-string electric guitar - which conveniently happens to have a katana taped to it - his postapocalyptically torn-and-dirty tuxedo, his broken glasses and a battered parasol, for he has “a gig in Vegas”.
As we join him on his journey, he encounters a group of badlands wildmen chasing after a little kid and his mother. They kill the Mom, Buddy arrives and disposes of them with a little help from his awesome Rock’n'Roll Kung Fu (and his katana). The Kid sits there, pokes his Mom with a stick a few times, then bleats at Buddy who passes him by.
Buddy tells him to “Float away, little butterfly, just flutter away”, the kid stalks him. Buddy tells him a bit more directly to back the fuck off, but the kid just bleats and continues following anyway. The beginning of a wonderful friendship fo sho’.
The two travel through the desert heading for Vegas, kicking some wildman ass in a breakneck 15mph car chase, getting caught up with the Postapocalyptic Sitcom Family From Hell, running from guys in badly-taped space suits, and slaughtering the whole remains of the Red Army along the way.

I love it. This flick is stuffed to bursting with various pop culture and rock’n'roll references, from the lead character, his nemesis, a cameo by A Guy Who Looks Suspiciously Like Clint Eastwood, the whole Samurai Tale concept, a bunch of Spaghetti Western spoofs, the all-pervasive Mad Max style, up to the store in a town called Fallout (seriously) which is owned by a Gangsta Midget who quotes The Wizard of Oz (yes, seriously).
Oh, and the soundtrack is played by a Russian-spawned Rock’n'Roll band called The Red Elvises.

There’s a trailer and ad blurb here. Six-String Samurai being a rather Indie production from 1998, it is somewhat hard to get regularly now, but can still be acquired through the usual intarweb outlets for decent prices.

This entry was posted on Saturday, May 13th, 2006 at 12:41 and is filed under movies'n'music. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.