a series of lush, cramped, graphic tableaux, dominating the sick, silly humans whose lives play out inside them, inescapable. shots are often bisected by doorways or subdivided into smaller frames, the dead not merely crossing into our world but coexisting with it, and the living characters are further and further isolated and deranged by their corruption.

Pieza esencial del cine de horror sobrenatural japonés, que adapta un clásico del teatro kabuki sobre venganzas de ultratumba. Su trama, puesta en escena e imaginería son magníficos ejemplos del canon de las historias japonesas de fantasmas. Aunque su conexión directa con la estilización abstracta del kabuki puede generar una distancia cultural insalvable, los estudiosos y aficionados del terror harían bien echando un vistazo a esta película, que contiene imágenes de una capacidad pertubadora poco común en un fecha tan temprana (para según qué cosas) como 1959.

The thing that I never understand in these movies is the scenario in which the killer enlists the help of another person in getting rid of someone who knows too much. Wouldn't it make you, dear reader, just the tiniest bit suspicious that if you help him or her in this evil deed, that you are putting yourself in the exact same position as the person you are helping to kill?

(oh yeah, and this movie looks amazing and has great atmosphere. it slow burns from a pitch black noir story to a crazy Japanese ghost jam in its final third).

One of the bleakest horror films I've ever seen, supported by chilling austerity and a heavy proto-Bava emphasis on color.

Yeah, I can see why Kiyoshi is such a fan.

Watched for the History of Horror 2018 Challenge

Week 44 - Halloween (any horror film)

Based on a kabuki play, the film comes across very theatrically; the ghost of Hamlet seems to haunt this story in many ways. It takes some time for the ghosts to come into play, but the descent into madness by the ronin begins to ramp up fairly rapidly. The lurid make-up effects and crawling ghosts are much scarier in this late '50s film than in the much later film Ringu, surprisingly, and the Edo setting give it a much more timeless quality.

0-100 real quick. This is a beautifully & colorful horror masterpiece. Full of great set pieces. Dreamlike sequences & an amazing score. I can’t believe more people don’t discuss it specially as an inspiration for horror movies such as The Exorcist or even The Ring.

It starts off in a quasi-Sword of Doom mode, but if the samurai at the center isn't just a dick but also increasingly in over his head. Then it gets supernatural and the theatricality of it all blooms into a nightmare of inescapable death and madness.

I have a very hard time imagining how Jigoku could possibly top the visual elegance we see here (I can't imagine a creepier usage of fluorescent green), but hey I've been surprised before.

This review may contain spoilers. I can handle the truth.

This was pretty graphic for a film made in 1959, in color. Very good stuff.

Artificial claustrophobic tableaux, Ozu corrupted, as the skeeviest samurai in the world betrays and scams his way into a ghost story that gets suitably freaky and creepy-crawly when it all goes to hell. Shame it takes a long middle act of repetitive mood setting to get there, but the climax bleeds delicious guilt. Happy Halloween!

Like Tales From the Crypt...but with samurais!