Reader Recommends: Six String Samurai (1998)

Many moons ago, a good friend who goes by the twitter handle @sniperct responded to one of my first requests for movie recommendations. His suggestion was that I watch a movie called Six String Samurai. I of course had never heard of this movie, but who was I to turn down a music themed sword swinging samurai movie? Heck, I loved the Samurai Champloo anime which can be basically summarized in the same way. Well it took me about 6 months, but I finally sat down to watch it. I'm sorry it took so long... but I'm also sorry for what I'm about to say. More after the jump.


I'll start off with the basics before I get into my personal opinions, as is the norm. The story here is set in the future in a post apocalyptic world in which the Russians have taken over a bombed out USA. The only form of leadership was left to the King... of Rock. Yes, Elvis is the ruler of what's left of the US. After 40 years Elvis has died, and a new King is needed. Guitarists from across the country trek across the deserts heading to "Lost Vegas" to take over as the new King. Our hero, on his way to Vegas, saves a child from a band of savages after they kill his mother. The kid, with no one else left in the world, follows him down the road to adventures unknown.

So first of all, this movie was made in 1998, one year after Titanic, and yet it looks like it was made in the late 70s. I almost couldn't believe how crap the quality of this movie was. It's like a student film gone badly. Actually, no, I take that back, that makes it sound like ThanksKilling, and it's at least better than that, barely.

The entire story is simply given in some paragraphs at the start of the movie, and the script is terrible. I couldn't help but roll my eyes when a bowling shirt clad thug comes up to the hero and says "Nice tuxedo.... nice tuxedo to DIE in!" Really? Is that the best you could come up with? If it was meant to just make that character looks stupid, good work, but the terrible writing continued for the entire movie.

Who knew this guy would actually be a good martial artist?

There are a few small positives I can give, but they also then come hand-in-hand with negatives. First, the hero, played by Jeffery Falcon, and later referred to as "Buddy" by the kid, completely surprised me by being a pretty damn good martial artist. Out of nowhere in the first fight he's punching and jump kicking with quite a lot of talent.

Sadly he rarely fights hand-to-hand again and instead relies on the horribly choreographed sword fights which consist mostly of footage of single actors slashing near the camera at something off screen, and edited together into a shoddy mess. The rest of the time we are treated to sword fights that look like the actors are actually professional soccer players at the rate they fake their injuries from sword swings no where close to them. The final battle takes the cake though, with actual swords clashing in a fight that looks like preschoolers pretending they know what they're doing, and then sped up to look like there's a hint of action taking place.

Such high tech costumes!

The next positive is in the locations and the overall atmosphere of the film. Most of the actor's costumes are near rags and we see a lot of ruined, really old looking buildings and they're way out in the middle of nowhere for most of the film too. You really do get the feeling that this is a post-apocalyptic world.

Some things that ruin this though include really bad obvious wigs, costumes made of duct-tape and water-cooler bottles, and savages launching gumballs via broom-handle catapults. And I'm not even joking about the gumballs, the kid and the hero both eat them later. Oh, I can't forget the thrilling car chase, which must have hit speeds nearing 10km/h (that would be just over 6 miles/h for my American readers)! I swear the cars were just barely rolling, because at one point, one of the savages jumps from his car, and EASILY runs up to the other car. Why are they even driving at all?!

Ok, so I have to bring up the kid. Everyone talks about how bad kid actors can be, but you haven't seen, or heard, anything until you watch Six String Samurai. For the majority of the movie, the kid never talks, instead choosing to WAIL like a baby whenever he wants the hero's attention. This happens A LOT! It's also one of the most annoying cries I've ever heard! It's loud, and utterly obnoxious. We even get treated to a 5 minute scene of the kid trying to act like he's crying from a scrapped knee. If I were this guy, I would have either kicked the kid's head off, or just cut it off with my sword. If you were EVER going to cut a scene out of a movie, this would be the one!

The stupidest looking samurai in the world. Was this the start of those hipster glasses?

I could probably go on and on about this movie, but it would all be complaints. The music was bad, the action was bad, the acting and script were bad. Even the editing and camera work were bad. The hero "Buddy" wasn't cool at all and I just wanted the kid to be dead. Oh yeah, and Death HIMSELF shows up and challenges Buddy to a guitar duel. Really? REALLY??? Oh, but if you don't think that's so bad, I never mentioned that the whole movie sounds like it's been dubbed over, because everything sounds weird and terrible, and of course that final guitar battle doesn't seem to match up with what they're playing on the guitars!

I figured this movie would have a 3 or a 4 on IMDB, but clearly its cult status has lead fans to boost it far above what it should ever have, being rated with a 6.5. This is one of the downright worst movies I've ever seen! I can't imagine why anyone would like this movie, but clearly there are fans out there, otherwise I never would have even heard of it. Would I recommend this movie to anyone? Not in a million years.

One cool thing I did find while looking for images for this movie was a screen-shot from the Fallout: New Vegas video-game which shows the hero put into the game. If this is a mod or is actually something you can do it the game, I have no idea, but there you go. You can find that shot below.