Onibaba (1964)

Director: Kaneto Shindo
Writer(s): Shindo
Starring: Nobuko Otawa, Jitsuko Yoshimura, Kei Satô, and Jûkichi Uno

Kaneto Shindo’s Onibaba features many similarities to his later work, and first one of his that I ever saw, Kuroneko: Both center around a mother and daughter-in-law awaiting the return of a son and husband who is off fighting a war, both detail the struggles of women during wartime, and both feature landmark visuals, among other things.

But whereas Kuroneko focuses on a love story, using haunting visuals only to help the story along, Onibaba seems focused more on nurturing an atmosphere of primal terror. Thanks to its simultaneously gorgeous and eerie photography, it does an admirable job, though I would say that it falls just a tad bit short of attaining “classic” status for me.

Nobuko Otawa and Jitsuko Yoshimura play the mother and daughter-in-law, respectively, who "earn a living" by killing passing samurai and exchanging their possessions for food. To dispose of the bodies, they toss them down a deep hole. The women are awaiting word on the fate of Kichi, the son/husband, when a neighbor, friend, and fellow war comrade, Hachi, returns to the village alone. He comes bearing bad news—Kichi was ambushed during battle, and killed. The mother (neither of them are ever identified by name) demands to know how Hachi managed to survive, and then automatically presumes that he did not do enough to help her son. I expected this to be a talking point, or some kind of plot device, but just as quickly as the accusations begin, they stop.

Adding to the awkwardness, Hachi doesn’t even give the family time to mourn before immediately hitting on Kichi’s now-widowed wife; while the mother is appropriately angered, the wife seems to forget her dead husband pretty quickly, and before long, the two are engaged in a passionate affair. The daughter-in-law waits for her mother to fall asleep at night, then runs through the tall susuki grass to Hachi’s nearby hut to engage in some frivolous fun. It doesn’t take long for the mother to find out.

One night, as her mother is preparing to follow her daughter-in-law to her secret meeting place, she is stopped by a samurai wearing one of the most impressive, chilling masks in cinema history. I must confess that it would have been even more impressive, had a simple search on a popular internet search engine of simply the film’s title, not revealed dozens of pictures of it, thus eliminating the element of surprise. But no amount of pictures can do it justice quite like seeing it on the screen for yourself. Even though the same mask is used in every shot, Mr. Shindo brilliantly utilizes light and shadows to give the impression that the mask is moving to convey the samurai’s emotions—it’s an astonishing effect that has to be seen to be believed, and the scenes involving the mask really do manage to be frightening.

Anyway, the masked swordsman is merely lost, and at first asks the mother to help him find his way out of the seemingly neverending maze of susuki grass that surrounds their home. The mother declines the request…at least, until the samurai threatens her with death if she does not comply. Reluctantly, she agrees. Along the way she asks him why he wears the mask, to which he replies that he is so handsome, people cannot stand the sight of him. She asks him to show her his face in exchange for leading him out to the main road, but ends up tricking him into falling down the hole.

Eager to see his true face, she rappels down the hole herself, and eventually manages to rip the mask off, only to discover it’s the face of a normal-looking man, save for the bits of his flesh that have been torn off, along with the mask. Not really curious as to why, or how, a mask would get so stuck on someone’s face, she begins using it to scare her daughter-in-law as she treks to Hachi’s house…

What we get with Onibaba is certainly great, but my mind was awash with everything that we don’t get. Given its reputation in some circles as one of the scariest movies ever made, I anticipated a certain level of mystery and intrigue—for example, I was expecting the identity of the masked swordsman to play a more crucial role, or to at least build suspense (is he the murdered son looking for revenge on his wife and friend?; an actual ghost or demon?), but it’s never really allowed to. In fact, everything is so…straightforward…that it’s somewhat disappointing that the story cannot even come close to matching the dreamlike visuals. Did Hachi have anything to do with Kichi’s death, in an intentional bid to close in on the wife? Such questions, which really could have added some depth to the story, go unexplored; yet given the actions of the characters, could be legitimate concerns.

Despite my feelings of being a little under-satisfied given its immense reputation, Onibaba is still an excellent horror picture, and one that any true fan of horror cinema should check out. Even if you’re not a fan of foreign movies, you can simply pop it in, mute the TV, turn off subtitles, and just get lost in the film’s stunning black and white photography. But if you don’t mind a few subtitles and want to immerse yourself in the full experience, Onibaba will certainly deliver, though one can't help but feeling that it could have delivered a lot more.

RECAP: Rife with haunting, and sometimes terrifying, imagery, Onibaba is great for what it is: a straightforward horror tale. My biggest complaint is that it’s too straightforward, with many potential subplots, which could have provided both some added scares and depth, ignored. That being said, the mask is one of the scariest ones ever used in a horror movie, with director Kaneto Shindo cleverly utilizing camera angles and lighting to give the insinuation that it’s continually moving. It falls just a bit short of being a horror classic for me, but there are no doubts in my mind that it should be required viewing for all fans of the genre.

RATING: 8/10

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Kuroneko (1968)

Director: Kaneto Shindo
Writer(s): Shindo
Starring:  Kichiemon Nakamura, Nobuko Otowa, Kiwako Taichi, and Hideo Kanze

I have seen a lot of well-shot horror movies lately—Night of the Hunter and Eyes Without a Face spring immediately to mind—and yet none of them can touch the visual poetry on display in Kaneto Shindo’s Kuroneko. Oftentimes, when focusing on primarily-visual films, critics will mention how you can take a snapshot of every single frame of film, and every one would be a beautifully composed, perfect picture. But more often than not, this comes off as pure hyperbole. Kuroneko is perhaps the closest, if not the only one, where such lavish praise is completely true—every scene seems intent on furthering its eerie atmosphere, and it does this through a series of inventive shots. Just from witnessing this movie, I am unsurprised that Mr. Shindo lasted a whopping seven decades in the film industry.

Though sometimes touted as a horror story, Kuroneko is, at its heart, a surprisingly poignant tale of love. There are the typical trademarks of a horror film—some graphic violence (for the time), the haunting images, and two ghosts as the main stars—but it never seems interested in crossing the line from eerie to truly terrifying, instead focusing on the emotional aspects of its tale.  This is a welcome change from the norm; one that attacks and plays on our emotions in an attempt to elicit fear, rather than relying on a series of shocks that quickly wear off.

In a house surrounded by a bamboo grove (in fact, its full Japanese title translates to “A Black Cat in a Bamboo Grove”) lives Yone, and her daughter-in-law Shige. As the film opens, a group of samurai close in on the house, looking for some food and perhaps a place to stay. When they find two women, they see a way to release some built-up desires; the group take turns raping the women, before leaving them for dead. To ensure that they complete their task, they set the house on fire.

Curiously, the house burns down around the corpses, leaving them in relatively good shape for having suffered third-degree burns over their entire bodies. A black cat enters the frame, and begins to purr and meow around them, before licking their faces.

A short while later, a man who is related to the two women, and who is a swordsman, returns from fighting in a war. He sees the burned-down shell of his former house, and interrogates the neighbors about the events, hoping to find someone that knows what happened; since none of the neighbors witnessed anything concrete, he remains unsure as to the circumstances surrounding their fates.

As it turns out, the women have made pacts with a demon to grant them revenge—in exchange for the ability to roam about the Earth as ghosts, thus avoiding a hellish eternity in the underworld, they must lure and kill every samurai that they encounter. To do this, Shige, who is young and attractive, lures passing samurai to their elegant home, by pretending she is lonely and in need of help. When they arrive at their destination, she invites them in; perhaps sensing an opportunity to sleep with the young lady, they always accept. From there, the mother loads them up on some strong sake, and once the samurai pass out, usually frolicking in the sheets with the young woman, Shige bites out their throats.

This happens like clockwork many times before it captures the attention of local Japanese authorities, who send Hachi, their best swordsman, to figure out what is leaving throatless male corpses all over the Japanese countryside. But as it turns out, Hachi is Shige’s husband, and Yone’s son, who was off for several years fighting in a war, where he attained the role of samurai. This leads to a conflict of interest on both sides: Do the ghosts ignore their pact and let Hachi go, thus incurring the wrath of the underworld? Does Hachi have the nerve to kill his own wife and mother?

Kuroneko’s biggest problem is how much stock it puts into its images: we’ve already mentioned that it’s a gorgeous work, but the story is rather repetitive. Even worse, it squanders a rather emotional middle section, by far the peak of the entire film, by featuring a lackluster ending that feels like a total regression. Judging from the way Mr. Shindo confidently handles his material, I figured he had a final trick up his sleeve; a final image or scene to one-up them all. On these grounds, the finale was a huge disappointment.

If you like your horror Japanese, then you will probably love Kuroneko even more than I did. Fans of visually-driven horror will also find plenty to like, so I’m recommending it heartily to this kind of crowd—all others should approach with a fair amount of caution.

RECAP: I liked Kuroneko, but for me, visuals can only carry a film so far. The story is good, but doesn’t even come close to matching the level of quality that the visuals clearly strive to maintain. There is some depth to the story—the aforementioned relationship between Hachi and his dead wife, which sounds creepy when I say it that way, is surprisingly resonant—but it relies all too often on repetition, which really bogs certain sections down, all the while leading to an ending that just feels anti-climactic. Recommended to fans of Japanese horror cinema, but others should approach with caution; this certainly isn’t a movie I’d want to watch again, at least anytime soon, despite the excellent photography.

RATING: 6.5/10

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