Miike's film is packed with references to the work of both Corbucci and Sergio Leone, who directed a trio of Clint Eastwood films that helped make spaghetti westerns an international phenomenon in the mid-1960s.
Classic lines (such as "Give it up, Yoichi. The strong and the brave gets the woman") are delivered un-selfconsciously, if haltingly, in broken English.
Cult director Quentin Tarantino, the only non-Japanese person in the film, plays a stranger in a poncho with the fastest draw in the East.
Spaghetti westerns were a uniquely European variation on the classic American western that emerged in the mid-1960s. Considered extremely violent at the time, they usually had Italian directors at the helm, with a European cast and often American stars.
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