These three rip-roaring movies feature exciting stories and lightning-fast swordplay. Hiroshi Inagaki's acclaimed Samurai Trilogy is based on the novel that has been called Japan's Gone with the Wind. This sweeping saga of the legendary 17th-century samurai Musashi Miyamoto, powerfully portrayed by Toshiro Mifune, plays out against the turmoil of a devestating civil war. The Trilogy (whose first part won the 1955 Academy Award for Best Foreign Film) follows Musashi's odyssey from unruly youth to enlightened warrior.

In the second and most violent part, Duel at Ichijoji Temple, Musashi beats a samurai armed with a chain-and-sickle and is later set upon by eighty samurai disciples-orchestrated by the sinister Kojiro-while the two women who love him watch helplessly.