Six-String Samurai

A quirky action flick deserving of cult status.

Imagine history took a different course. Say the Cold War overheated and the Russians nuked the US. The only free kingdom left in an apocalyptic wasteland is the city of Lost Vegas, ruled over by the King of rock n’ roll, Elvis. Now imagine Buddy Holly never got on that fatal flight. Instead he is a wanderer, as skilled with a samurai sword as he is with a guitar. Elvis passes away and Vegas needs a new King, but only one rock n’ roller will be worthy enough.

Welcome to the world of Six-String Samurai, a film that pays homage to the spaghetti westerns of Sergio Leone, the post-apocalyptic desolation of George Miller’s Mad Max movies, the fairy-tale aspects of The Wizard of Oz and the anti-Commie sentiments of John Milius’s Red Dawn. Not that director Lance Mungia merely cribs from other movies. Six-String Samurai has more than enough invention of its own to be unique.

Jeffrey Falcon makes for a cool hero in his torn up rockabilly suit and taped-up black glasses. Buddy starts out as the archetypal loner, so often seen in these types of films. Like Mad Max, he really isn’t much of a people person. Unimpressed with having an orphaned kid following him around, Buddy eventually warms to his new friend, but only after threatening to cut up his teddy bear and trying to give him away to a dwarf. Death too is following Buddy, looking suspiciously like Slash from Guns N Roses, and determined to kill every rocker before any of them makes it to Vegas.

Mungia presents a skewed version of 50’s US pop-culture, in which iconic rock stars carry swords, ten-pin bowlers are assassins, the perfect American family are reduced to cannibalistic insanity, though amusingly Buddy is none the wiser, and an embittered Bobby Darin look-alike gets the films best line of dialogue. “Hey four-eyes! They say you can kill over two hundred men and play a mean six-string at the same time. Is that really true?”

Six-String Samurai would make a perfect double-bill with Don Coscarelli’s Bubba Ho-Tep. Both have bizarre plots involving 50’s rock stars fighting supernatural opponents. Both are unashamed B-movies that rise above their modest budgets, delivering offbeat, intelligent entertainment with endings that are actually quite moving. Seek out Buddy on DVD. You should be able to pick up a decent priced copy of Six-String Samurai on Amazon or E-bay.

Kevin Sturton