Y’all ever been sitting around late at night, maybe had a few too many Lone Stars, and started wondering what would’ve happened if Buddy Holly hadn’t gotten on that plane but instead learned martial arts and survived the apocalypse? No? Well, somebody did, and they went and made a whole damn movie about it.
“Six String Samurai” (1998) is the kind of film that could only have been conceived in one of two ways: either somebody had the most amazing fever dream of all time, or a bunch of film school graduates got together and played the world’s most epic game of “yes, and.” So, grab your six-string and strap on your katana, because boy howdy, do I have a movie for you.
Picture this: It’s 1957, and those pesky Russkies decided to turn America into a giant microwave dinner kebab. The only place worth a damn that’s left is “Lost Vegas”, where Elvis himself has been ruling as King. But wouldn’t you know it, the King’s gone and died on the toilet (sadly some things never change, even in alternate universes), and now every guitar-slinging wannabe from here to the radiation zone is heading to Vegas to claim the throne.
Let me break it down for you drive-in style:
Kung Fu Scenes: 37
Guitar Battles: 4
Post-Apocalyptic Rockabilly Songs: Too many to count
Annoying Kid Characters: 1 (but he’s REALLY farking annoying)
Death By Sword: 24
Death By Guitar: 3
Nuclear Wasteland Fashion Shows: PLENTY
Gratuitous Buddy Holly References: All of them
Now, in any normal post-apocalyptic movie, this would be where we get a bunch of leather-clad warriors driving spiky cars and fighting over the last of the gasoline. But no. Instead, we get every musician in the wasteland strapping on their guitars and heading to Vegas like it’s “American Idol” meets “Thunderdome.” And leading our parade of weird is Buddy (played by Jeffrey Falcon), a katana-wielding, guitar-strumming hero who looks like Buddy Holly raided Bruce Lee’s closet.
Falcon, it turns out, spent years doing martial arts films in Hong Kong before this role, which explains why the fight scenes look like somebody dropped a 1950’s sock hop into the middle of a Shaw Brothers movie. The man moves like a kung fu master but dresses like he’s about to perform “That’ll Be The Day” at your local malt shoppe. It’s a combination that shouldn’t work any better than putting pineapple on pizza, but somehow it does.
The plot, for what it’s worth, is simpler than the instructions on a Pop-Tart box. Buddy’s got to get to Vegas to claim the throne, and standing in his way is literally everyone else in the wasteland, including Death hisself. And when I say Death, I mean a leather-clad heavy metal guitarist who looks like Slash from Guns N’ Roses who got lost on his way to a Halloween party and just decided to lean right into it. Death, by the way, hates rock and roll, which in this universe is basically like Dracula hating blood.
Along the way, Buddy picks up an orphan kid who must have studied at the School of Annoying Child Sidekicks. A right regular fucking cousin Oliver. You know how in most movies, the cute kid is there to soften the hero’s heart and teach him valuable lessons about life? This little bastard’s main talent is screaming like he’s auditioning for a death metal band while somebody’s yanking out his teeth with rusty pliers. Yet somehow, through what I can only assume is some sort of post-apocalyptic Stockholm syndrome, the relationship between Buddy and the kid becomes the heart of the movie.
The whole thing was shot in Death Valley, which is either the most appropriate or the most on-the-nose location scouting in modern film history. The landscape looks like what would happen if you gave Mother Nature a handful of hallucinogens and told her to just go nuts. Every frame of this movie is filled with more sand than a dropped tuna casserole at a beach picnic, but it works perfectly for this weird-ass wasteland they’ve created.
Speaking of weird-ass villains, let’s talk about the rogues gallery this here film boasts. We’ve got Death and his merry band of archer groupies, sure, but that’s just the tip of the mushroom cloud. There’s an evil bowling team that looks like they got lost on their way to a Big Lebowski convention and decided to start murdering people instead. There’s a suburban family that makes the Sawyers from “Texas Chainsaw Massacre” look like the Brady Bunch. There’s even a group called the Windmill People, which sounds like a failed folk band but is actually a gang of post-apocalyptic windmill enthusiasts. Because apparently that’s a thing in this nuclear wasteland hellscape.
The action scenes are a beautiful mess of martial arts, swordplay, and rock and roll. Buddy fights like somebody put Bruce Lee, Toshiro Mifune, and Chuck Berry in a blender and hit puree. One minute he’s doing spinning kicks, the next he’s pulling a sword out of his guitar (which might be the most badass metal thing ever, even in a movie where Death is literally a metal guitarist). The choreography looks like somebody watched a bunch of Hong Kong action films and said, “Yeah, but what if we added more rockabilly into the mix?”
And then there’s the music. Sweet irradiated heaven, the music. The soundtrack is handled by a band called the Red Elvises, who sound like what would happen if you taught a group of Russians about American rock and roll using nothing but peyote, vodka and sock puppets. Their music is what you’d get if you crossed surf rock with Russian folk music and then threw it into a nuclear reactor just to see what would happen. It shouldn’t work, but like everything else in this movie, it somehow does.
The dialogue is sparse, but when it comes, it hits like a guitar axe to the dome. Characters speak in a mixture of post-apocalyptic grunts and rock and roll philosophy. Death proclaims his hatred for rock and roll with all the subtlety of a monster truck rally. The Russian soldiers sound like they learned English by watching old Rocky and Bullwinkle cartoons. And Buddy? Buddy barely talks at all, because he’s too busy being the coolest thing to happen to the apocalypse since radiation-proof cockroaches.
Director Lance Mungia, who was fresh out of film school when he made this, throws everything at the wall with the reckless abandon of somebody who doesn’t know you’re not supposed to mix samurai movies with rock and roll musicals. But you know what? Sometimes that’s exactly what we need – a movie that doesn’t give a rat’s ass about playing it safe and being normal. The whole thing plays out like what would happen if you spent the weekend gorging on expired gas station sushi while binge-watching Kurosawa movies. It’s messy, it’s weird, and it’s absolutely fuckin’ glorious.
The film even manages to squeeze in some subtle (and not-so-subtle) references to “The Wizard of Oz.” Lost Vegas glows in the distance like the Emerald City, Death is obsessed with Buddy’s guitar pick like the Wicked Witch was with Dorothy’s slippers, and there’s even a scene with a little person telling Buddy to follow what basically amounts to a yellow brick road. Because apparently, when the world ends, everyone becomes a movie critic.
The whole thing was made for about two million dollars, which in Hollywood terms is what they spend on coffee and Bolivian marching powder for production meetings about cape movies. But every penny of that budget is right there on screen, whether it’s in the surprisingly decent fight choreography, the creative costume design, or the general “we’re making this movie with bubble gum and prayer” aesthetic that pervades every frame.
Is it perfect? Hell no. The pacing is about as consistent as a friday night drunk trying to walk a straight line, and sometimes the budget constraints stand out more than a plumber’s sweaty asscrack at a fancy dinner party. Some of the effects look like they were done with whatever change they found in the couch cushions, and there are moments where you can practically see the duct tape, chewing gum and snot holding the sets together.
But you know what? None of that crap matters. Because “Six String Samurai” isn’t trying to be perfect. It’s trying to be exactly what it is: a weird, wild, wonderful piece of post-apocalyptic rock and roll martial arts cinema. It’s the kind of movie that could only exist because somebody had a vision so damn bizarre they had to make it real, and somehow convinced sane people to help them do it.
It’s also the kind of movie that was made for midnight screenings and drive-in theaters, preferably watched while sitting in the bed of a pickup truck with a cooler full of beer and a head full of questions. It’s a film that demands to be experienced rather than just watched, preferably with a group of friends who are willing to embrace the absolute absurdity of it all.
So grab your guitar, strap on your sword, and get ready for a movie that’s equal parts “Mad Max,” “Enter the Dragon,” and “La Bamba,” with a healthy dose of what-the-fuck thrown in for good measure. Just remember: in this wasteland, rock and roll isn’t just music – it’s a way of life. And death. But mostly life.
Three and a half Stars. And if anybody asks you why you’re watching a movie about a Buddy Holly look-alike fighting Death with a sword-guitar in a post-apocalyptic wasteland, tell them to sit their ass down, crack open a beer, and prepare for pure, uncut, grade-A drive-in gold.