(1965)
Dir - Masaki Kobayashi
Overall: GREAT
Doubtlessly one of the most outstanding Japanese ghost movies ever made, Masaki Kobayashi's Kwaidan is epic in both its reach and literal length. An anthology film based on Lafcadio Hearn's collection of folk tales Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things, each of the four tales vary in duration with "Hoichi the Earless" being the longest and the following "In a Cup of Tea" the shortest. None of the segments dip in quality though and Kobayashi paces them all in a purposeful, lethargic way. The music by famed composer Tōru Takemitsu contributes thoroughly to the film's hypnotic quality, only emerging at particular intervals to provide a fully-formed, ethereal element. Shot by Yoshio Miyajima with sets designed by Shigemasa Toda, if there are more beautiful looking supernatural horror films out there, the number of them cannot be many. Nothing on the screen seems entirely real, from specter-inhabited graveyards, to snow storms, to red oceans full of samurai, to eyeball clouds in the sky. It is gorgeously lush, otherworldly, and uncompromising in its presentation, all of which makes it a masterpiece exceeding most others of its kind.
(1968)
Dir - Hajime Sato
Overall: GOOD
Assassins, war trauma, UFOs, vampires, hypnotism, bomb threats; a lot of arbitrary nonsense finds its way into a story about air crash survivors arguing about what they should do about their predicament for roughly ninety-minutes. If anything else, the last feature-length film helmed by Hajime Sata, Goke, Body Snatcher from Hell, (Kyuketsuki Gokemidoro, Body Snatcher from Hell, Goke the Vampire), is a positively unique one. Characters come to ridiculous conclusions and behave in ridiculous ways, the dialog is mostly pure poppycock, ("I hate war! During war, everyone is miserable."), and the special effects are charmingly dated The results may be pure camp, but the fact that it all tries to make a statement about mankind bringing about their own demise through selfish and unnecessary bloodshed proves that it has some sort of noble, thematic intentions common to the sci-fi genre as a whole. The amount of bickering between characters does take up too generous an amount of screen time to the point of some minor annoyance, but for the most part, the movie is quirky and ultimately dark enough to work.
(1968)
Dir - Kaneto Shindo
Overall: GOOD
Writer/director Kaneto Shindo returns rather elegantly to the vengeful ghost film with Kuroneko, (Yabu no Naka no Kuroneko). Based on the supernatural folklore of an evil god granting cat-like powers to wronged souls now bound to revenge and set during the Heian period where respected samurai wielded considerable prestige, the story pits its foes against each other by impossibly tragic means. There is no sense of mystery and in fact the film is readily predictable. The specters seeking retribution make minimal attempts if any to disguise their faces from the protagonist, but he routinely seems to struggle emotionally with this fact, especially during his final bout with them which would otherwise seem preposterous since he is presumably "duped" so easily. Beautifully photographed by Kiyomi Kuroda, the set pieces are stark and unearthly. Reality weaves in and out as ghosts slowly dance, fly through the air, and occasionally show their true, feline form for a moment's notice. Some of the sequences and much of the dialog, (including more than one montage of doomed samurai meeting their end), is repetitive, but the deliberate flow and ethereal presentation makes these elements more mesmerizing than not.
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