Kaibyô Otama-ga-ike

A soon-to-be-married couple get lost in the woods near Otamo pond.When they stumble across an old house in the woods, we get a feature length flashback about the curse surrounding the house and pond (the usual edo-period tale of murder and revenge).The acting is pretty bad and most of it is boring, but it's kind of interesting for a "gaijin" (foreigner) interested in Japanese horror cinema (like myself).It's surprisingly bloody for the time (compared to European and American cinema), with a vividly colourful pond full of blood and a decapitation by samurai sword.What's also interesting is that it's beautifully photographed, the Japanese (to this day) taking non "respectable" genre films just as seriously as their arthouse dramas and more conventional "quality" cinema.Along the same lines, the Japanese seem to take film restoration seriously.Therefore even this mostly forgotten potboiler was perfectly realised in Widescreen on the videotape i rented from a Tokyo video shop.By the way, the human/cat monster is pretty laughable-just a long haired woman wearing furry gloves!