When the Lumiere brothers first circled the globe with their camera crews, they had the idea that film could be used as a kind of crystal ball in which to view the world. The lifestyles, homes, rituals, and people of far off countries could be made available to those less familiar for the price of a theater seat.

Budo: The Art of Killing is a movie that fulfills some of those promises, taking the viewer "behind the scenes", in a way, to document Japan's martial arts culture and demonstrating the ways in which these arts of combat and philosophy came to determine the cultural mindset of the land of the rising sun. A sort of kung-fu Mondo Cane, this film is essential viewing for anyone who has ever enjoyed a Shaw Brothers flick, Akira Kurosawa samurai epic, or any other film in which the eastern arts of fighting, figure into the plot.

The documentary format of the film sets up tension from its very first scene, in which a man makes his preparations for Seppuku (ritual suicide) in such a detailed, convincing manner that you actually become afraid that the camera might actually record the man's death.

From there, the film takes you into the various disciplines of Budo, the martial arts. An early section, titled "tools of the trade" in the chapter list, outlines some of the weapons used by farmers to defend themselves against marauding samurai and their swords. All of these were simple pieces that could be made from farm implements, oak branches, and animal skins. They also show a variety of forged weapons like sais, punch-daggers, sectional staves, nunchakus and other forbidding-looking instruments of death.

Other sections are devoted to martial arts such as Karate, Aiki-do, Ju-do and Sumo wrestling. The film gives the viewer valuable historical background as to how these forms of fighting enabled people to defend themselves against armed opponents without the use of a weapon (karate literally means "empty hand").

And if you wonder where the tradition of all those deadly females in martial arts movies came from, Budo has a whole section devoted to the discipline of the Naganata, a long spear used by the women in samurai families to figuratively "sweep away" their enemies. This shows that there were more options available to women in feudal Japan than the roles of dutiful wife or geisha. In fact, the film is full of scenes of women and children learning to kick all kinds of ass.

In order to show the more esoteric, philosophical side to Budo, the film also incorporates bits of Noh theatre (the type of Japanese dramas in which the performers wear masks -- one shot in the film will bring a smile to fans of the Japanese horror classic Onibaba), discussions of Zen Buddhism, and documentation of the "fire festival" that figured into the plot of Kurosawa's The Hidden Fortress. These sections stress the importance of the state of "nu" (the buddhist term meaning "nothing") to stress the importance of emptying fear and pain from the mind in order to become an effective warrior.

But the discipline of Kendo, or samurai sword combat, is what receives the most attention in Budo. Watching the film, you begin to understand the importance of the sword to the soul of the samurai, and the value of discipline in its use. There are a lot of scenes of men cutting through bundles of rice stalks in the film, and these begin to take on a kind of subtle horror when it is explained that these dried and bundled stalks are made to have the exact strength of the human neck. You also learn that it takes only one one-hundredth of a second for a katana (samurai sword) blade to slice through an opponent's neck. (Gorehounds hoping for a direct demonstration of this on a human being are in for a long wait in the film, but ...)

Synapse Films has restored this little gem as best they could from the original vault elements, which have the inevitable effects of wear and tear over time. There are a few scratches and blemishes on the picture, but to the credit of the DVD's producers, they are surprisingly rare for a movie that is more than a quarter-century old and probably not at the top of film preservationists' lists. The color reproduction is beautiful, highlighting the amazing photography and really making the viewer feel that they're out somewhere in rural Japan.

The transfer is so good that you can forgive Synapse for going a little light on the extras. The only feature on the disc (apart from chapter selections) is a scan of the original presskit for the film which does give you some background on the film's producer, Arthur Davis, writer/director Hisao Masuda, and composer Stomu Yamashta. It's interesting that Masuda couldn't find Japanese backers for the film and had to go to Davis (an American who moved to Japan after falling in love with the culture) to get his financing.

Also included inside the box are 2 pages of liner notes by Chris Pogiali that also serve to illuminate the background of the film's makers a little more, as well as detailing the surprisingly cold shoulder the film received on its initial release. Indeed, I'm somewhat of a Asian film freak and I'd never heard of the movie before getting the dvd. But now that I've seen it, I'm glad I did, and as a result I'll look at a lot of action sequences in a different way as a result.

(I was also gripped by an overpowering urge to immediately watch Seven Samurai again!)