“Lone Wolf and Cub” was originally a manga, but it's also one of the weirdest series of samurai movies out there. “Baby Cart at the River Styx” and the other strange movies in this series tell the tale of a disgraced shogunate executioner who wanders a Japanese Neverland pushing a tricked-out baby carriage with his little son in it.

When Lone Wolf has to go into battle, the little boy presses a button in the baby carriage and scythe blades come out of the wheels. Then he rolls around chopping people's feet off as his father fights them with his katana. Usually the opponents are ninja, but sometimes they're the swordsmen of the Yagyu clan, who were a real clan of famous swordsmen in Tokugawa Japan. It's true that they did function as spies or secret police for the shogun's regime, and various rumors connect them to the ninja assassins, but nothing in the historical record suggests they were anywhere near as evil as they are in this series.

In order to make a living, Lone Wolf hires himself out as a paid assassin, while doing everything he can to hunt down the Yagyu and fend off their hordes of ninja allies. Neither the Yagyu nor the ninja allies ever see the scythe-bladed baby cart coming, even though it has already killed dozens if not hundreds of their comrades. “Lone Wolf and Cub” was one of the first samurai movies to abandon the austere tone of traditional Japanese aesthetics and embrace the over-the-top world of manga.