The Bride from Hades (1968)

The Bride from Hades is a 1968 gothic horror movie from Japan’s Daiei Studio and based on one of the most famous of all Japanese ghost stories, Peony Lantern (Botan-dôrô). The story exists in multiple versions and it has been filmed several times.

It is necessary to keep in mind that ghosts in Japanese and Chinese folklore are not like western ghosts. They are corporeal. They can eat and drink. You can touch them. You can even have sex with them although it may not be advisable to do so. You can become emotionally involved with a ghost. 

And it can be almost impossible to tell if someone is a ghost.

The setting is clearly sometime during the Tokugawa Shogunate.

Zenjiro, the ambitious second son of an important lord, married the daughter of a shogunate elder. It was a very advantageous match. Sadly Zenjiro died in an accident soon afterwards. Now the family has to decide what to do with his young widow. They do not want to give up the connection to the shogunate. The ideal solution would be for her to marry Zenjiro’s younger brother Shinzaburô. It would be a fine marriage for the young man. Shinzaburô does not seem to see it that way.

At a religious festival he encounters a young lady and her maid. Later they come to visit him unexpectedly. The maid, Oyone, unfolds a strange tale.

Her mistress Otsuyu is a high-born young lady but as a result of family misfortunes she was sold into a geisha house. She claims that she is still a virgin. Given the very complicated nature of the institution of the geisha that might be plausible. Either way she is being put under unbearable pressure to surrender her virginity to a customer.

Otsuyu also goes under another name in her professional life, a name taken from a species of beetle that changes its appearance dramatically in different lighting conditions. Perhaps this is a clue that Otsuyu’s story should not necessarily be taken at face value.

Then Shinzaburô makes an unnerving discovery. Otsuyu and Oyone have both been dead for a year. This is particularly unsettling in view of the fact that he’s had sex with Otsuyu. Having sex with a ghost is generally considered to be unwise.

What’s worse is that he has fallen in love with her.

But what does Otsuyu want? Ghosts in Japanese (and Chinese) folklore are not necessarily evil in a straightforward sense but consorting with them can be dangerous in various ways.

Japanese ghosts can fall in love with the living - is Otsuyu in love with him? She is certainly giving him that impression.

Shinzaburô also does not know the exact circumstances of Otsuyu’s death, and that could be important.

Shinzaburô already has a difficult choice to make, a choice which he considers to be a moral one.

A good gothic horror movie with a period setting should have a slightly other-worldly look and feel. Japanese gothic horror has a certain distinctive feel and Daiei’s movies in this genre have a very impressive visual style. The Bride from Hades is a great looking movie.

This is horror that relies mostly on creating an atmosphere of unease and a rather melancholy mood.

The makeup effects are restrained, and deliberately so. This movie is not trying to gross out the viewer but rather to be slightly creepy and unnerving.

Kôjirô Hongô is very good as Shinzaburô, a man who is a bit of an innocent. Miyoko Akaza is excellent as Otsuyu - seductive but in a way that makes us uneasy from the start.

The Bride from Hades is top-notch subtle gothic horror. And nobody does ghost movies better than the Japanese. Highly recommended.

This film is included in the must-buy Daiei Gothic Blu-Ray boxed set from Radiance Films.

Ghost of Yotsuya (1959)

Kenji Misumi’s 1959 gothic horror film The Ghost of Yotsuya is one of several film adaptations of a very famous kabuki play. Nobuo Nakagawa’s version came out in the same year so the two versions can easily be confused. There have in fact been countless film, television, manga and anime adaptations.

Iemon Tamiya (Kazuo Hasegawa) is a samurai down on his luck. He cannot find a position. He lacks the connections and the money needed to secure a decent position. He is a proud man but he is almost penniless and heavily in debt. He is basically a good honourable man but he is embittered by poverty and failure. Perhaps that clouds his judgment a little. His wife Oiwa (Yasuko Nakada) is ailing which adds to the pressures and the bitterness.

Iemon has become involved with some disreputable characters. He trusts them, which is a very foolish thing to do.

The loyal family servant Kohei (Jôji Tsurumi) is devoted to Oiwa. He is a good man but his devotion to his mistress may be just a little excessive. He would not think of doing anything dishonourable but his judgment my perhaps also be a bit clouded.

Oiwa’s health is failing. There is a medicine that could cure her but it is very expensive.

Iemon attracts the attention of Oume (Yôko Uraji), the beautiful young daughter of Lord Ito. Oume is in search of a husband. She has chosen Tamiya. The fact that he is already married does not deter her. She is a stubborn girl and she has become obsessed by Tamiya. She must have him.

Oume’s obsession grows. She is tempted to take drastic steps to separate Tamiya from his wife. Oume is headstrong and spoilt and selfish and she is a young girl carried away by love and lust. She might not be evil to begin with but she is vulnerable to temptation.

Iemon’s disreputable friends can see the potential for profiting from this situation.

The stage is set for tragedy.

In gothic horror the aesthetic is everything. If the aesthetic is lacking then any gothic horror film is worthless. The aesthetic is certainly no problem in Ghost of Yotsuya. This is a visually dazzling film. Like any good gothic horror film it was shot entirely in the studio and like any good gothic horror film is has a deliberately and exaggeratedly artificial look. The film was shot in colour so this is not the world of shadows of black-and-white gothic horror. This is a misty world of sickly disturbing colours.

The basis of the story was an 1825 kabuki play although the origins of the story go back much further in time than that.

The various film adaptations differ slightly. In some versions Iemon is much more of an out-and-out villain.

The problem for Daei studio was that Kazuo Hasegawa was a very big star. They were reluctant to have him play a mere villain. In Daei’s version Iemon’s character is softened somewhat. This actually woks quite well. He becomes almost a Shakespearian tragic hero, an Othello manipulated by the true villains. Iemon is no paragon of virtue. He is a bit of a fool. His bitterness has warped his character just a little. He is vulnerable to Oume’s seductive charms. He never becomes evil but his actions are unfortunate and have tragic consequences. And he is aware of his follies and is haunted not just by a ghost but by his own guilt about his cruel behaviour and his foolishness.

We feel some sympathy for him, and we feel a great deal of sympathy for Oiwa. She is not perfect. She is jealous and perhaps not sufficiently understanding of her husband’s frustrations but she is a woman who is horribly wronged.

It takes a long time for the supernatural elements to kick in but since we know that this is a ghost story that becomes quite effective. We can see the tragedy unfolding and we know that the ending will be disastrous.

The Ghost of Yotsuya is classic ghost story and it’s a classic Japanese ghost story that deals with themes of honour and ambition as well as jealousy and emotional betrayal. Highly recommended.

The Radiance Blu-Ray looks gorgeous (and this is a visually stunning movie in a weird fantastic otherworldly way). There are some decent extras.

The Radiance Blu-Ray set also includes the excellent The Snow Woman (1968).

The Snow Woman (1968)

The Snow Woman is a 1968 Japanese gothic horror movie.

The first thing to note is that in Japanese (and Chinese) folklore the supernatural is treated in a way quite different from western folklore. Ghosts are not necessarily malevolent. And ghosts are corporeal. They can have sex. They can fall in love. Getting involved with ghosts can be dangerous, but not always. The boundary between the natural and supernatural worlds is not clear-cut. There are supernatural entities that are vaguely similar to the old western idea of the land of faerie - these entities are not evil as such but they’re dangerous because although they can look human their motivations are entirely alien. Witches are not quite the same as westerns ideas of witches.

And of course there’s no Satan as such, and not quite the same obsession with evil. There’s obviously no trace of the Christian concept of sin. Evil exists, but it’s viewed in a slightly different way.

The supernatural world can be tricky to deal with. It has to be approached with caution.

The setting is presumably some time during the Tokugawa Shogunate. It is certainly some time in the past. The Snow Woman begins with two men caught in a snowstorm in a forest. Shigetomo is a master sculptor. Yosaku (Akira Ishihama) is his pupil. Yosaku lives with Shigetomo and his wife. They are more or less his adoptive parents.

The two men are looking for a particular tree, a very special tree. From this tree Shigetomo will sculpt a statue of a goddess for a temple.

They encounter the Snow Woman. She is a supernatural creature although it might be an oversimplification to describe her as a witch. Yosaku survives the encounter. The Snow Woman thinks he’s so handsome that she cannot bear to harm him.

Shortly afterwards a very pretty young woman turns up at Shigetomo’s house. Her name is Yuki. It’s quickly obvious that Yosaku and Yuki are falling in love.

They get married and have a son.

On their wedding night Yosaku notices one odd thing about her. She is very cold. Not cold emotionally or sexually. She is a very loving wife. It’s just that her skin is strangely cold.

Of course we, the audience, know Yuki’s secret. She is, in some sense at least, the Snow Woman. She is not human. Or perhaps she is both a supernatural being and a human woman. During that encounter in the snowstorm she fell hopelessly in love with Yosaku. But she made a bargain with him, and part of the bargain was that he would remember nothing about that night.

Yosaku has been given the commission for that goddess statue that Shigetomo was supposed to carve. The commission has also been given to a rival sculptor. This is due to the machinations of the wicked Lord Jito. The sight of Yuki has awakened Lord Jito’s lusts. He will stop at nothing in order to have her. To achieve this he intends to destroy Yosaku.

Yuki must find a way to save herself and also her husband and herself.

The Snow Woman is a yōkai. These supernatural creatures can be malevolent, they can be benevolent or they can be neutral. Sometimes they’re merely mischievous. Sometimes they’re deadly. The Snow Woman in this movie is also somewhat vampiric.

The Snow Woman in the film does not just take on the physical form of a woman. She develops a woman’s emotions. We assume that in some way this is due to the power of love.

By 1968 filmmakers in Japan (and indeed in all countries) had developed astonishing skills in cinematography, lighting, makeup and practical effects. Skills which are now mostly lost. To do a remake of this movie today you would have to use CGI and it simply would not look as good.

Everything looks unreal, otherworldly and mysterious which is of course exactly right.

The Japanese were particularly good with makeup effects and the makeup work here is superb - it conveys an other-worldly feel without being in the least crude.

This movie was based one of Lafcadio Hearn’s retellings of Japanese ghost stories. If you haven’t read Lafcadio Hearn do so immediately. You will thank me. Start with Kwaidan.

This is a horror story, of sorts, although quite different from western horror films. Don’t expect non-stop thrills and gore. This is also a supernatural love story. Very highly recommended.

This film is included in the Radiance Film Japanese gothic horror Blu-Ray set. The transfer is immaculate.

Woman Chasing the Butterfly of Death (1978)

Kim Ki-young’s Woman Chasing the Butterfly of Death (also known as Killer Butterfly and several other titles) is a 1978 Korean horror movie. Although whether it’s really a horror movie can be debated. It’s certainly an exercise in weirdness.

At a picnic a young woman offers a young man named Young-gul an orange juice. She then tells him the orange juice was poisoned and that they will both die. Young-gul survives.

He then tries to kill himself. He is obsessed with death.

A strange old man turns up in Young-gul’s seedy apartment and tries to sell Young-gul a book on the will. The old guy claims that he cannot die. When it’s put to the test it appears that the old guy might be right, in a way.

Young-gul gets a job with an archaeologist who collects skulls. He is trying to prove that Korans are descended from Genghis Khan’s Mongols. Young-gul finds a 2,000-year-old skeleton for him.

This is when Young-gul encounters the ghost. In Chinese and Japanese folklore ghosts are corporeal. They can even have sex. They can also fall in love. On the evidence of this movie that is true of Korean folklore as well. The ghost is a very attractive young woman. She wants to have sex with Young-gul. She wants his love. She also wants to eat his liver. Young-gul doesn’t know much about women. He wonders if all girls are like this.

Later Young-gul gets mixed up with the archaeologist’s daughter. She is obsessed with death as well. She is a virgin. The archaeologist offers to pay Young-gul to pop her cherry.

There’s also a cop investigating the headless corpse mystery. And strange masked guys stealing corpses.

There’s still more weirdness to come. And butterflies are important.

I have to confess that this is my first Korean movie and I also know nothing of Korean culture so I may be missing some cultural nuances in this movie. It’s not always easy to understand the humour of other cultures. It’s possible that quite a few scenes in this movie were being played for laughs. Or the movie might just be very crazy. It is very crazy, but maybe it’s supposed to be crazy in a funny way.

There are plenty of horror movie elements here but this does not feel like a horror movie. It feels like an art-house movie or an experimental film.

It’s a depressing movie obsessed with death. Maybe it’s supposed to be about the triumph of death over life, or the triumph of life over death.

I like weird movies but I did not find watching this movie to be an enjoyable experience.

It is however undeniably very very strange and morbidly fascinating. They don’t make movies like this any more. In fact sane people never did make movies like this.

This was a very low-budget movie. The special effects are laughably bad. I don’t mind bad special effects if they’re done in a fun way but in this case they’re just very very bad. It includes the worst skeletal transformation scene I have ever seen in a movie.

I have no idea what the director was trying to achieve in terms of tone. Despite all the weird goings-on it doesn’t really achieve an effectively creepy atmosphere but maybe Kim Ki-young was just aiming for morbid artiness.

It’s a movie that should tick all my boxes (I generally like arty horror) but somehow it just never grabs my interest. I don’t think I could honestly recommend it but it might just be a case of a movie that doesn’t work for me but might work for others so I’m hesitant to advise people to avoid it. It sure is weird.

Woman Chasing the Butterfly of Death is available on Blu-Ray from Mondo Macabro.

The Living Skeleton (1968)

In the late 60s Japan’s Shochiku studio made a short-lived and tentative attempt to break into the booming market for science fiction, horror and monster movies. Criterion’s Eclipse Series 37 DVD boxed set When Horror Came to Shochiku includes four of the movies made at Shochiku at that time. When Horror Came to Shochiku is a cool name for a boxed set but a bit misleading since these movies are not quite what one would think as typical late 60s horror films.

The Living Skeleton (Kyûketsu dokuro-sen), made in 1968, is one of these four movies.

You have to bear in mind that this is not a low-budget independent film. It was made by a major studio, with the resources of a major studio. It was made by people who had learnt their craft in a studio system. They were professionals. They knew how to make movies. It has a certain amount of major studio polish.

The Living Skeleton opens in fairly spectacular style. A freighter, the Dragon King, has been captured by pirates. The setting is contemporary - it’s worth remembering that piracy still goes on today. These pirates are particularly ruthless and the crew and the handful of passengers are massacred.

Three years later we meet a young woman named Saeko (Kikko Matsuoka). She lives in a small Japanese costal town. She is an orphan and along with her identical twin sister Yoriko was more or less raised by the village priest. He’s a Catholic priest - Japan has a large Catholic community.

Saeko is a nice girl but she has been troubled since her twin sister disappeared. The sister is assumed to have been drowned when the freighter on which she was travelling went down in a typhoon. Of course the audience knows that the twin sister was killed by those pirates.

Saeko has a boyfriend, Mochizuki (Yasunori Irikawa). He’s a decent guy and they plan to get married.

They go scuba diving and see something unexpected - skeletons.

Later they see a ship. Not on the bottom of the sea, but afloat. Maybe it’s the ship on which Yoriko met her fate. Saeko wants to reach the ship, she does so, and she is disturbed by what she finds.

Then things get spooky for a bunch of people all of whom have something to hide. What they have to hide is connected with the events on board the Dragon King.

Viewers will have their suspicions about what is going on but it may not be so simple.

This is one of those movies that plays around with genre. You think you know what kind of movie it is and then you start to think it’s not that sort of movie at all. And then you find yourself thinking it could belong to any one of several genres. Is anything supernatural going on? Certainly strange creepy things happen. We’re kept guessing. Maybe we’ll get a definite answer at the end. You’ll have to watch the movie yourself to find out.

There are some nicely crazy plot twists.

There’s a touch of ambiguity to at least one major character. We might understand a character’s motivations without entirely approving of the actions to which those motivations lead.

We have to talk about the special effects. There are some very obvious miniatures shots. I don’t mind that. In fact in a movie such as this where you’re not always entirely certainly that everything you see is real or truthful obvious special effects can be an asset. There are some really ambitious effects shots and they’re often quite effective and disturbing.

This film was shot in the ’scope aspect ratio in black-and-white, a combination I always find rather appealing. The cinematography is suitably moody.

This movie has a lot of the qualities you expect in a horror exploitation movie combined with some genuinely unsettling atmosphere. It has some outlandish moments and a few crazy moments.

Overall The Living Skeleton is entertaining with enough weird touches to make it a cut above average. Highly recommended.

The DVD transfer is very good. So far I’ve watched three of the movies in the boxed set. The X from Outer Space (1967) is goofy fun while Goke, Body Snatcher from Hell (1968) is delightfully demented.

The Haunting (1963)

The Haunting, released in 1963, has the reputation of being one of the best ghost movies ever made. There was a remake in 1999 which I haven’t seen and don’t intend to see. It is the original 1963 version with which we are concerned here.

This was from the start a personal project for Robert Wise. He had read Shirley Jackson’s novel The Haunting of Hill House and knew he just had to make it into a movie. The movie retains the novel’s New England setting but was shot in Britain. MGM’s British branch offered Wise the budget he needed.

Anthropologist Dr John Markway (Richard Johnson) is obsessed by the idea of scientifically proving the existence of the supernatural. For this he needs a haunted house. The notorious Hill House is ideal - it has a particularly sinister reputation. He will also need witnesses. He needs people who have had some previous encounter with the supernatural. Eleanor Lance (Julie Harris) and Theodora (Claire Bloom) seem suitable. The two women along with Dr Markway and Luke Sannerson (Russ Tamblyn), the nephew of the house’s current owner, will spend several days at Hill House.

Spooky things start to happen early on. Lots of disturbing noises. Cold spots. All clear signs (to Markway) of ghostly presences.

The story of the movie is the gradual disintegration of Eleanor. She provides voiceover narration so this is very much her story. Eleanor is pretty crazy to begin with. She has wasted her youth caring for her invalid mother. She is guilt-ridden over her mother’s death. She feels she doesn’t belong anywhere. It’s also a fair assumption that she is both sexually and emotionally frustrated. She is timid and mousy. We can be quite certain that she is a virgin.

We can be quite certain that Theodora is no virgin. She’s Eleanor’s polar opposite - sophisticated, worldly, confident, comfortable with being a woman, outgoing and sexy.

There is immediate tension between these two women.

Apart from the noises nothing obviously supernatural happens. The four people in the house cannot be certain at first that there is anything inexplicable going on. Odd noises in old houses are not unusual. Dr Markway believes the sounds are evidence of the supernatural, but that’s what he wants to believe. Eleanor becomes convinced that the house wants her in some way. She becomes increasingly distraught and unstable.

The spiral staircase scene is terrifying but again there’s no certainty that anything supernatural is occurring. It’s a decaying old house and such houses are full of perfectly natural dangers. Of course eventually someone is going to crack and try to escape, but will the house let anyone leave?

Wise, cinematographer Davis Boulton and and production designer Elliot Scott create the right gothic atmosphere without resorting to the obvious. There are no cobwebs. No crypts. No mysteriously empty coffins. No mysterious figures glimpsed on the battlements. Wise and Boulton do employ plenty of camera tricks. Exterior shots of the house were shot using infra-red film. Wide-angle lenses were used. Things look distorted, but in a fairly subtle way which adds to the creepiness. Eleanor thinks the house is watching her and that’s the impression the audience gets as well.

There are so many ways this movie can be interpreted. We do eventually have fairly clear signs that something outside the range of the normal laws of nature is occurring but what it is remains obscure, and Wise wants it to be obscure. These people are isolated and highly suggestible.

Does the evil come from the man who built the house ninety years earlier, wicked old Hugh Crain? Does it come from his daughter Abigail, or from the nurse who allowed Hugh Crain’s wife to die? Does it come from some demonic entity? Does the evil come from the house itself? Or does it come from Eleanor? Is there in fact anything supernatural going on or is it just Eleanor’s madness? You will have to decide for yourself. Wise has no intention of spoon-feeding the viewer with a glib explanation. What I do like is that neither a supernatural nor a non-supernatural explanation can simply be dismissed out of hand.

The lesbian sub-text between Theo and Eleanor feels a bit tacked on but it does serve the purpose of increasing Eleanor’s feelings of isolation. Her normal instinct would be to turn to another woman for emotional support but she does not want to turn to Theo. And it certainly adds extra tension.

This is also a movie about a woman falling apart, and Eleanor has been falling apart for a very long time. She sees Hill House not so much as a threat but more as her last chance to find herself.

This would make a great double bill with Kubrick’s The Shining - there are some striking similarities in the way these two films approach the haunted house movie.

The Haunting is an object lesson in how to do horror that is very subtle indeed, and very frightening indeed. Highly recommended.

The Vampire Doll (1970)

The Vampire Doll is a 1970 Japanese horror movie, the first in what became known as the Bloodthirsty Trilogy.

Kazuhiko Sagawa (Atsuo Nakamura) has been overseas for six months. As the movie opens he is on his way to see his fiancée Yûko Nonomura (Yukiko Kobayashi). He will be staying at the home of the Nonomura family in the country for a few days. He arrives only to be told by her mother that Yûko was killed in a car accident two weeks earlier. He is of course devastated. That night he thinks he sees Yûko but of course it must have been a dream.

The focus of the film now switches to Sagawa’s sister Keiko (Kayo Matsuo). She’s worried that she hasn’t heard from her brother. Keiko and her boyfriend Hiroshi (Akira Nakao) decide to drive out to the Nonomura home to make sure that Sagawa is OK.

What they find there makes them just a little uneasy. Yûko’s mother seems a bit evasive. Keiko finds a doll that Sagawa has bought for Yûko as a present. The doll has been smashed, which seems odd. Keiko and Hiroshi are not exactly alarmed but they’re not entirely satisfied, and they’re worried that they have found no trace whatsoever of Keiko’s brother.

And they hear some slightly disturbing stories about the Nonomura family.

Something very bad happened in the past and it may be the key to what is happening now.

Speaking to Yûko’s doctor increases their unease.

What does alarm them is seeing Yûko.

The story develops in much the way you would expect a gothic horror tale to develop, with a few significant differences.

Keiko and Hiroshi start to suspect that something bad has happened to Sagawa, and that they might be in danger as well.

There’s also the Nonomura family servant, Genzo. He has a habit of attacking people and gives the impression that he sees himself as defending the Nonomura family.

This is a Japanese horror film with an unusually strong western influence. Vampires are part of the western gothic horror tradition. Vampires as such are not really a feature of Japanese folklore. The Japanese (and Chinese) concept of the supernatural is much more focused on ghosts but Japanese ghosts are not quite like western ghosts. They’re corporeal rather than being disembodied spirits.

There is a vampire in this story but in many ways this vampire is more like a ghost than a western vampire.

A lot of the familiar elements of the vampire myth are missing in this movie. There are no crucifixes or holy water and no mention of garlic. There are no mentions of stakes through the heart. The vampire does not sleep in a coffin.

Crucially this vampire does kill but does not drink blood. Blood is not the motivation for the killings. Revenge is the motivation. And revenge is the motivation you would expect of a ghost.

My impression is that this is essentially a ghost story with the apparent western influences being entirely superficial. Vampires were a big thing in western pop culture and the Japanese have always been very aware of trends in western pop culture. The Japanese have always been willing to absorb western pop culture influences but somehow Japanese pop culture remains Japanese pop culture. In this movie the vampire elements are like a seasoning but the main dish is a Japanese ghost story.

Director Michio Yamamoto provides some gothic trappings but doesn’t overdo them. He is not trying to make this movie look like a Hammer horror film. It has a certain Japanese aesthetic austerity.

The vampire makeup is also not overdone but it’s effectively creepy. There’s one brief gore scene but overall this is a movie that relies on creepy atmosphere rather than gushing blood.

The Vampire Doll manages to be a rather interesting slightly unusual vampire movie and on the whole it works. Highly recommended.

The Arrow release offers a nice transfer and there’s an appreciation by Kim Newman which is, as you would expect, informative and entertaining.

The Turn of the Screw (1974)

The Turn of the Screw is a 1974 TV-movie adaptation of the famous Henry James ghost story. The original novella was published in 1898. The Turn of the Screw was produced and directed by Dan Curtis and scripted by William F. Nolan. It originally aired on the American ABC network. It was one of a series of TV-movies he made around that time based on gothic horror classics.

Miss Jane Cubberly (Lynn Redgrave) has accepted the position of governess at Bly House in Essex. She will be in charge of the household which includes nine-year-old Flora (Eva Griffith) and fourteen-year-old Miles (Jasper Jacob). They are orphans. Their uncle and guardian, Mr Fredricks (John Barron), is perfectly prepared to accept the costs of their upbringing but he has no interest in children and wants to have as little to do with them as possible. He expects Miss Cubberly to assume the entire responsibility for the children and the household.

Bly House seems at first to be a spacious, airy, cheerful house and the children seem likeable and rather charming.

On her first day there Miss Cubberly thinks she sees a man standing in the grounds but no-one else sees him and when she looks again there is nobody there. She decides that she is probably over-tired from her journey.

One things that seems a little odd is that the children are forbidden to mention the previous governess, Miss Jessel. All that Miss Cubberly knows is that Miss Jessel is now dead.

Nobody wants to talk about Peter Quint either. He had been in charge at Bly House until his own death a few months earlier.

Several things make Miss Cubberly uneasy. She hears stories about Peter Quint. It seems that he was regarded as an unsavoury character. She finds some letters that make it plain that Peter Quint and Miss Jessel were having a sexual relationship. Miss Cubberly is horrified. It is obvious to her that Miss Jessel must have been a wicked evil woman.

Miss Cubberly is convinced that she has seen both Peter Quint and Miss Jessel in various places in the house and in the grounds.

She is certain that Peter Quint and Miss Jessel were evil influences on the children and that they are still exerting a demonic influence from beyond the grave. She feels that the children are in extreme danger from the powers of evil.

She is also rather disturbed by the behaviour of Miles.

The reason that the Henry James novella is regarded so highly is that it’s a somewhat ambiguous ghost story and it can be, and has been, interpreted in various ways. A successful adaptation of the novella has to maintain a certain level of ambiguity for as long as possible. We have to be unsure whether Miss Cubberly has actually seen ghosts or whether it is all the product of her overheated imagination. Of course when adapting the story the screenwriter might choose to resolve the story in different ways, either strongly suggesting a supernatural explanation or suggesting that it really is all in Miss Cubberly’s imagination.

This adaptation maintains the ambiguity fairly effectively. We know that Peter Quint was an unpleasant man who may well have been a bad influence on Miles. We know that Quint and Miss Jessel had a sexual relationship. We know that Miles is rather odd, and that he seems to be inclined to be cruel. But Miss Cubberly is the only one who sees ghosts.

The idea that it’s her overactive imagination is certainly very plausible. Miss Cubberly is clearly horrified by any thought of sex, but at the same time the stories about Peter Quint seem to have unlocked her repressed erotic longings. She has erotic dreams about him.

And she is perhaps out of her depth with Miles, who at times seems a bit more grown-up than he should be. It’s as if he’s fourteen going on thirty. He seems perhaps a bit too aware of Miss Cubberly’s womanliness. Of course this could be because he is possessed by the spirit of a grown man, Peter Quint. That’s assuming that he really is possessed, which is by no means certain.

This version has a very TV-movie look, which was obviously unavoidable. It was shot on videotape in Britain, using a multiple-camera setup.

The lack of real visual flair does have the effect of putting the focus on the performances. Lynn Redgrave is superb. She conveys the fact that Miss Cubberly is becoming more and more unhinged but manages to convince us that this could be explained by her own psycho-sexual problems or by the fact that she really is up against the supernatural. Jasper Jacob is extraordinarily unsettling as Miles. Everything about the relationship between Miss Cubberly and Miles is unsettling.

The Dan Curtis Macabre Collection includes this movie and three other gothic TV-movies produced by Dan Curtis in the late 60s and 70s (not all of which he directed himself). The transfer is OK considering that it’s a TV-movie. The only extra for The Turn of the Screw is a mini-doco which includes interviews with Dan Curtis and Lynn Redgrave. I must say I was surprised by Curtis’s explanation of his ending. It’s not at all the way I interpreted it.

This is a reasonably effective adaptation and a fairly decent low-key gothic horror movie. Compared to the novella it doesn’t quite manage to achieve the same level of truly disturbing ambiguity. Recommended.

I’ve also reviewed Curtis’s TV-movie version of The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1968).

The Bride from Hell (1972)

The Bride from Hell (Gui xin niang) is a Shaw Brothers movie from the period when they were making tentative forays into horror territory.

Nieh Yun Peng (Fan Yang) is a wealthy young man travelling through the countryside with his faithful servant Dahuozi. They encounter a young woman. They fear she is contemplating throwing herself into the lake. They suspect she is a ghost. After this slightly disturbing incident they seek shelter for the night in a lonely house. The mistress of the house, a young woman named Anu (Margaret Hsing Hui) seems rather reluctant to take them in but eventually relents.

That night Nieh Yun Peng accidentally sees Anu naked. She is shocked. She explains that she is a virgin and that her reputation has now been compromised. Nieh Yun Peng (a good-natured but perhaps slightly naïve young fellow) gets rather flustered and quickly agrees to marry her. Meanwhile his servant has blundered into the bedroom of Anu’s maid, with the same result. Nieh Yun Peng and his servant have both now acquired brides.

Given that both Anu and her maid are young, beautiful and charming this is not such a great hardship.

Nieh Yun Peng’s uncle and aunt are rather disturbed. They suspect that Anu may be a ghost. The aunt takes the precaution of sewing a Taoist image into a gown they are giving Nieh Yun Peng as a wedding present. The image is a kind of talisman against ghosts.

Anu is strangely frightened by her husband’s new gown and insists that he toss it into the garden, where she burns it.

While praying at his mother’s grave Nieh Yun Peng encounters a Taoist master, Taiyi. Taiyi can summon ghosts but he suspects that in this case he’s dealing with a very powerful ghost indeed.

Of course a complication is that ghosts don’t always know that they’re ghosts.

Twenty years earlier a woman was raped and murdered and there may be a connection. She may have come back looking for revenge. And she may be looking for revenge on certain members of Yun Peng’s family.

I always get a warm feeling inside when I see the Shaw Brothers logo come up at the start of a movie. Their movies were variable in quality but even their lesser films are at the very least interesting and enjoyable. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a Shaw Brothers movie that left me truly disappointed. And of course their movies were always visually interesting. Like all Shaw Brothers releases from this period The Bride from Hell was shot in Shawscope (their version of Cinemascope) and in colour - extremely vibrant colour.

I love Chinese ghost stories. They’re fascinatingly different from western ghost stories. Chinese ghosts can be malevolent or benign and they are corporeal. They can eat and drink, and they can engage in the pleasures of the flesh.

Unfortunately this movie really does turn out to be a bit of a letdown. The special effects are embarrassingly crude. Surprisingly for a Shaw Brothers film it looks cheap. The script is rather unfocused - we need to get to know Anu in order to care about what happens but too much time is spent on the comic subplots involving Yun Peng’s servant. It’s also a bit too obvious. Very early on we know exactly what is going on so there isn’t a great deal of dramatic tension.

The Bride from Hell was directed by Hsu-Chiang Chou who also helmed a slightly earlier Shaw Brothers horror film, the odd but intriguing The Enchanting Ghost (which is a much more interesting movie than this one).

88 Films in the UK have released this movie on Blu-Ray. The only extras are the liner notes by Calum Waddell and they’re mostly concerned with politics.

The Bride from Hell is a bit of a mess although it does have its spooky moments. It’s mostly worth seeing as an early example of Hong Kong horror which (aside from the comic relief with the servant) takes its subject matter fairly seriously. If you’re interested in Chinese ghost folklore then it’s possibly worth a look.

On the subject of Chinese ghost stories I reviewed Pu Songling’s fascinating early 18th century collection of such tales, Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio, not too long ago.

Kuroneko (Black Cat, 1968)

Kuroneko (or Black Cat) is a 1968 Japanese ghost movie written and directed by Kaneto Shindô and made by the Toho studio.

Japan is being torn apart by war. Yone (whose son was taken away by the army to fight in the endless wars) and her daughter-in-law Oshige live alone in their humble house near a bamboo grove. One day a group of samurai arrive. They loot the house and rape and murder the two women. Nothing is left alive, except for two black cats.

Three years later a samurai encounters a young woman on a lonely road at night. She tells him she is afraid to walk though the bamboo grove alone. If only the brave and noble samurai would escort her home? When they arrive at her home she invites him in. She and her mother live alone in the house. The two women ply the samurai with sake. The samurai thinks he’s going to get a roll in the hay with the daughter. In fact he gets his throat torn out (there’s more than a hint of vampirism here).

The sequence in the bamboo grove is clever. We naturally think it’s the young woman who is likely to be in great danger. But in fact she is the hunter, not the hunted.

This samurai will not be the last to meet this grisly fate. The so-called Rajo Gate Ghost will claim many victims. The mother and daughter who were murdered are of course now ghosts, or more specifically they’re cat-spirits. Any samurai passing near the Rojo Gate will get seduced and slain by them.

So this is very much a revenge movie, among many other things.

The local warlord, Raiko, is at his wits’ end. It’s bad enough to lose so many samurai but he is also under pressure from imperial officials to put an end to the Rajo Gate Ghost. Perhaps his bravest samurai, Yabu-no-Gintoki, will be the man to do this.

The twist is that Gintoki is Yone’s son, now returned from the wars and now a samurai.

Gintoki does not know if his mother and wife were killed or simply fled into the mountains. All he knows is that his home is now a charred ruin.

Gintoki encounters Oshige on the road and escorts her home. He doesn’t get his throat ripped out. He is recognised by the women. He notices immediately that they look just like his mother and wife but he does not know whether they are alive, or spirits who have taken the form of Yone and Oshige, or ghosts.

Gintoki will be torn between his duty as a samurai (to kill the ghost or in this case ghosts), his duty to his mother and his love for his wife. Yone and Oshige will be torn between their affection for Gintoki and the vow they made to the dark gods to kill every samurai they encounter.

It’s important to remember that the Japanese (and the Chinese) have a very different concept of ghosts compared to western folklore. These are very corporeal ghosts. And they can (and do) have sex.

There’s emotional drama but, as in so many Japanese films of this era there’s also a strong political subtext involving the contempt of the samurai for the common people and the cruelty and violence of the samurai. There’s also a pretty obvious message about the miseries and brutality of war. Unlike a lot of other Japanese movies this one doesn’t get too heavy-handed with the politics.

This is a very stately film, clearly drawing heavily on the traditions of the Noh and Kabuki theatre. In fact it has a very stagey feel. There’s an air of theatrical unreality to everything, with the opening sequence being the only minor concession to any kind of realist aesthetic. The theatricality emphasises the supernatural aspects.

The action scenes all involve the women flying through the air (obviously suspended by wires). Even the scenes of action and violence are therefore determinedly artificial.

The film was shot in black-and-white in Tohoscope (2.35:1).

This is not a movie that you want to try to over-analyse. What you see is what you get. The political subtext is trite. The symbolism is obvious. There’s some obvious half-baked Freudianism. There is some emotional resonance to the relationship between Gintoki and his now ghostly wife. It’s the theatricality that is by far the most interesting and successful thing about Kuroneko. That’s the main reason to see the film. Apart from that it’s a reasonably decent ghost movie and it’s recommended for its visual interest.

The Eureka UK release includes the movie on both Blu-Ray and DVD. The only extra is a 32-page booklet which includes an extraordinarily uninteresting interview with the director.