‘They say crows gather where there is death.’
A young doctor takes his wife to live in the country in an effort to improve her health. The house her brother finds for them is large and has its own grounds, but has been unoccupied for several years. Local rumour has it that the place is haunted…
Curious and flawed Japanese horror from prolific director Nabuo Nakagawa. He was specialising in supernatural terrors at this point in his career, having already delivered the well-received ‘The Ghost of Kasane’ (1957) and following this up with ‘The Ghost of Yotsuua’ (1959) and the disappointing ‘Onna Kyuketsuki/The Woman Vampire’ (1959).
The film starts promisingly enough with surreal POV tracking shots of an empty hospital at night. We hear hollow footsteps echoing around the corridors as someone navigates by the light of an electric torch. Then we see two silent nurses pass by wheeling what looks like a dead body on a gurney. It’s a creepy opening and very effective. Then we focus on Dr Kuzumi (Toshio Hosokawa) working late in his darkened lab and reminiscing about his stay in the country with his tubercular wife. What follows is a quarter of an hour flashback, with the young couple arriving at the house in question and wife Yuriko Ejima being creeped out from the get-go. Hosokawa dismisses her visions of a strange, old woman as mere hallucinations, but it’s not long before she’s subjected to murderous attacks by this vengeful spirit…
So far, so good, if not particularly original. What is unusual is that the film up to this point has been presented in ‘blue and white’! It’s an unusual colour palette and not a choice that helps to conjure the necessary atmosphere. Around the twenty minute mark, Hosokawa starts to believe his wife and begins looking into the history of the house. The local priest is only happy to fill in our hero on the details, and the film goes into colour as he relates the tale of a murderous shogun (Takashi Wada) and a young samurai (Ryûzaburô Nakamura). Only this isn’t a flashback. Apart from a short coda to wrap things up, it’s the rest of the movie!
Miaow!
There are undeniably some stylish moments in what follows. Nakagawa’s camera often seems to be gliding around the set and there’s a restraint in some of the performances that evokes the formal, almost ritualised, behaviour of a noble society in a previous age. But then there’s Wada, who turns out to be the kind of villain who huffs, puffs and cackles his way through everything, even molesting Nakamura’s blind mother when she comes calling to find out why he’s vanished. There’s also the manifestation of the ghost cat, which is an idea with some potential, but ruined by the execution (watch out for those ears!)
Hosokawa had a part in big US Pearl Harbor re-enactment ‘Tora! Tora! Tora!’ (1970), and appeared as one of the many talking suits in ‘Nippon Chinbotsu/Submersion of Japan/Japan Sinks!’ (1973). Both Wada and Nakamuira worked with Nakagawa on his other supernatural films, but this seems to have been Ejimi’s only time in front of the camera.
There is a suspicion, of course, that this was in fact an unfinished film, and that Nakagawa shot the framing story at a later date to bring it up to feature length. There aren’t any obvious signs of a low-budget, but all the action of the film’s main story does take place on what looks very much like a single set.
Not a film without merit but the pantomime nature of the villain and the story structure don’t do it any favours. Certainly worth watching if you’re interested in vintage Japanese horror but keep your expectations in check.
Mark David Welsh 