Although he's well-defined by his slew of Yakuza films, it's easy to forget that Kinji Fukasaku had an experimental phase like many others and Legend of the Eight Samurai came at the height of that phase. A bold fantasy epic, taking cues from Kurosawa's samurai movies, it mixes classical imagery with the stuff of nightmares, martial arts, beautiful music, giant bug monsters, Fukasaku's hyper-kinetic camera work and potency for bloody violence into a movie about friendship, good vs evil and a woman's quest for identity in not being defined by her lineage.