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| Images courtesy of Radiance Films |
Radiance Films’ new Daiei Gothic boxed set of three
late 1950s and 1960s Japanese period ghost stories may very well be the
quintessential home video disc release of October 2024. Immediately following Arrow Video’s frankly
mixed and uneven J-Horror Rising 7-film boxed set of varying quality (Noroi:
The Curse being the best), Daiei Gothic presents three integral
examples of the yurei supernatural horror subgenre with elements of the macabre
bristling with stunning filmmaking quality across the board. Featuring all three films digitally restored
in 4K including newly conducted interviews with Kiyoshi Kurosawa, Hiroshi
Takahashi and Masayuki Ochiai, an audio commentary by Jasper Sharp and an 80-page
booklet consisting of original essays by Tom Mes, Zack Davisson and Paul
Murray, Daiei Gothic is a stacked box beautifully housed in a black box
with a dark purple spine.
In the first film, Lone Wolf and Cub director Kenji
Misumi’s 1959 The Ghost of Yotsuya (not to be confused with Nobou
Nakagawa’s film of the same year and name), we see an adaptation of Tsuruya
Nanboku IV’s 1825 kabuki theater play Yotsuya Kaidan adapted in the
first color filmed version of Japan’s most globally famous ghost story. Altered considerably in its journey from
stage to screen, in this version of the story adapted by Fuji Yahiro (Sansho
the Bailiff) we find samurai Iemon (Kazuo Hasegawa) growing distant from
his wife Oiwa (Yasuko Nakada) ever since she miscarried. Meanwhile pretty young well-to-do Oume (Yoko
Uraji) seeks to win the affections of Iemon much to Oiwa’s chagrin. However, his associates take Oiwa out via
poisoning to make room for Iemon to marry Oume, thus prompting the vengeful
horribly disfigured spirt of Oiwa to return from beyond the grave to torment
those left alive.
Visually stunning thanks to Yukimasa Makita’s lush panoramic
widescreen period photography often comprised of dark dimly lit vistas and
disarming makeup effects work and given a particularly spooky original score by
Seiichi Suzuki (Akira Kurosawa’s debut Sanshiro Sugata), this version of
The Ghost of Yotsuya while overshadowed by the Nakagawa film on its
terms nevertheless packs an unnerving supernatural horror punch. Predating what would or wouldn’t become the emergence
of disfigurement in J-horror throughout the 2000s and one of the earliest color
examples of the vengeful yurei thriller, Kenji Misumi’s elegant and mannered
horror piece starts off mannered and slow but quickly transforms into a crescendo
of increasing encroaching terrors. All
in all, a terrific start to the Daiei Gothic series in maybe the
grisliest film of the year not directed by Mario Bava.
Continuing onward with Tokuzo Tanaka’s 1968 variation on the
1904 short-story collection Kwaidan which itself was adapted into a
feature film and later touched on again in Akira Kurosawa’s Dreams, the
story of The Snow Woman is among the most memorably chilling (no pun
intended) yurei tales of terror.
Deceptively simple in form, it concerns a Japanese female kind of ‘Old
Man Winter’ spirit with angry eyes and long black hair who like Medusa freezes
to death anyone who makes eye contact with her or speaks of her presence. But in this version of the story, the film
asks what if she tried to live a normal life among the human people and perhaps
even birth and raise a child of her own?
Starting off in the woods involving two woodcutters who on a snowy night
who witness the snow woman, she kills off one but spares the other on the promise
he never speaks of the incident to anyone.
Years pass and the surviving woodcutter Yosaku (Akira Ishihama) goes on
to marry the mysterious but beautiful Yuki (Shiho Fujimura) with whom he sires
a child. However, when a lascivious lord
tries to rape her, she is cornered into revealing her true natures which spell
icy death for any who sees her demonic eyes.
Featuring a trademark mournful score by legendary Gojira composer
Akira Ifukube, breathtaking set pieces by Seiichi Ota with lush glistening
cinematography by Chishi Makiura, from start to finish The Snow Woman begins
as a spooky journey replete with stark terrors which we can’t help but recoil from
before segueing into perhaps one of the most emotional examples of horror next
to David Cronenberg’s The Fly.
One key image of the film which catapults it into artistic emotional
heights involves the snow woman’s angry eyes shifting to tear soaked when she
is faced with either following through with her murderous convictions or
sparing the life of her husband for the sake of her child she cannot stay
behind with. The film also is one of the
first examples of Japanese horror to show off shamanism as the titular snow
woman crosses paths with one which engenders shock and horror in both
characters. All in all, a terrific home
run of a Japanese horror movie that has the capacity to make you scream and/or
cry.
Lastly and also from 1968 and third in the set is Shinobi
director Satsuo Yamamoto’s adaptation of Ugetsu screenwriter
Yoshikata Yoda’s Peony Lantern or as it is titled here The Bride from
Hades, a kind of A Chinese Ghost Story precursor involving spirits
of the dead trying to form marital bonds with the life of a living person. Zeroing in on samurai Shinzaburo (Kojiro
Hongo) during the height of the Obon summer festival, he is visited one night
by a beautiful courtesan Otsuyu (Miyoko Akaza) and her mother. Infatuated with her and determined to give
her a life outside of the confines and abuses of a brothel, his bond with
Otsuyu grows only for close friends and associates of his to recognize she is
in fact a ghost. Over time, petty
thieves get involved and try to rip off of the ghosts’ hidden money while
friends try to intervene on Shinzaburo’s behalf, only driving his conviction to
the undead unknowingly even further.
Shot by The Snow Woman cinematographer Chishi Makiura,
given a haunted score by Sei Ikeno and co-starring legendary Akira Kurosawa
actor Takashi Shimura as a fortune teller who picks up on the presences of yurei,
The Bride from Hades is another excellent ghostly doomed romance of
sorts echoing the sentiments of The Snow Woman with the vengefulness of The
Ghost of Yotsuya. Also touching on
prayer and efforts to ward off yurei including but not limited to prayer
scrolls plastered on door walls forecasting what would or wouldn’t become Kiyoshi
Kurosawa’s Pulse, the film also boasts startling makeup effects work
rendering some of the previously beautiful characters as skeletal grotesques
worn down by death. From its recurring
visual effects of the spirits floating in midair across the screen to the
remarkable makeup effects, The Bride from Hades closes out the Daiei
Gothic box elegantly and chillingly as it sears unshakable vistas into your
mind’s eye.
Arguably the best blu-ray set to come out all of October
2024 and presented in a beautiful black and purple display hardbound box to
show off on your blu-ray shelf, Daiei Gothic is all but the complete
antidote to Arrow’s J-Horror Rising set and proof positive the Japanese
decades before arguably had a better handle on horror than they do now. Able to conjure up emotions and imagery distinctly
East Asian while ushering in gothic horror tales of evil apparitions at
crossroads with our own world and universe, Daiei Gothic posits itself as
a trilogy of lush, bountiful horror masterpieces beautifully restored in 4K for
a whole new generation of western filmgoers keen on unearthing any and all
examples of J-horror new and old. Buy
with extreme confidence!
--Andrew Kotwicki
