The experimental filmmaker and critic Toshio Matsumoto first partnered with ATG for his queer-camp roundhouse, Funeral Parade of Roses (1969); his second feature, Shura, is ostensibly a “mere” samurai film, yet underneath its seemingly traditional surface lurks just as many subversions. A samurai (one of the legendary “forty-seven ronin”) becomes distracted from duty by his love for a courtesan, who in turn betrays him. His vengeance, played out in stately black-and-white nightmares, is long, and bloody; in fact, it could be not real at all. Sword battles begin, then are revealed to be fantasies, and violent assassinations merely dreams; events and actions loop back towards one another, with the final, deadliest joke being the connection between characters. A Borgesian satire in the guise of samurai horror, this nocturnal masterpiece is one of the darkest-visually, and politically-films of the era.