This Month’s Zatoichi: Zatoichi’s Vengeance (Tokuzô Tanaka, 1966)

As observant readers may have noted, April and May saw my household taking a break from our monthly Zatoichi screenings, partly just to allow our enthusiasm to recharge a bit after a few slightly underwhelming installments (#11, #12). Predictably enough though, it wasn’t long before I found myself missing good ol’ Ichi-san pretty, and perhaps it was this sense of returning to a regular routine after the self-imposed break that helped make film #13, which marks the exact half-way point of the series, seem like the freshest and most satisfactory Zatoichi viewing in quite a while.

Originally released in Japan as ‘Zatoichi No Uta Ga Kikoeru’, which literally translates as ‘The Song of Zatoichi Can Be Heard’, this episode’s title could perhaps more accurately could be read as something like ‘We Hear Zatoichi Calling’. Not wasting time with any of that crap however, whoever who came up with the films’ English release titles cut to the chase and just went with ‘Zatoichi’s Vengeance’ (not to be confused with Zatoichi's Revenge).

Basically, the success of ‘Zatoichi’s Vengeance’ is due largely to the efforts the filmmakers’ take to reassert a sense of dramatic seriousness and moral conflict that more recent episodes in the series have conspicuously lacked. Hajime Takaiwa’s script may be built around a set of by now wholly formulaic plot elements (the struggling small town merchants being menaced by yakuza, the orphaned kid in search of a father figure, the brooding samurai with a chip of his shoulder, the broken-hearted maiden condemned to life in a brothel – all are present and correct), but nothing here feels like mere faffing about or narrative water-treading. Whilst there is little going on that we’ve not seen many times before, these storylines are all played out with an elegant, straight-faced simplicity that, as in so much of best Japanese popular story-telling, imbues their melodramatic form with real gravitas.

Zatoichi’s familiar robin hood act (taking the townspeople’s side against yakuza intimidation, etc) seems to have real purpose this time around, as, for the first time in a while, the villains are presented as a genuinely vile bunch – cruel, petty thugs whose bullying behavior actually makes us angry, rather than yet more faceless extra for Ichi to mow down amid some largely uninvolving inter-gang conflict.

More than just a triumphalist good vs evil beatdown though, the film follows the example set by some of the best early Zatoichi installment in taking the time to question the methods and motivations of our ‘noble’ characters, as embodied both by the conventional jideo-geki conflict faced by Shigeru Amachi’s samurai (which I won’t trouble you with here), and also, more interestingly, via a curious character referred to only as the biwa priest – a blind nomad who, after befriending Ichi on the road, essentially seems to function as a dark shade of our hero’s troubled conscience, dispensing fragments of pithy, oblique wisdom that cast doubt upon his violent way of life.

At first, the priest castigates Ichi for inadvertently corrupting the ideals of the local child who has adopted him as a father figure. Seeing the boy completely obsessed by his new idol’s slick swordsmanship after Ichi pulls a few tricks in non-lethal self-defense, Ichi accepts the priest’s point and suffers manfully through a grueling beating when he refuses to retaliate against the yakuza upon their next encounter. When he does finally give in and draw blood against the baddies though, the priest changes his tune and casually exonerates him, declaring that of course it is only human to fight back against such provocation. Well, demands a confused Ichi, should I draw my sword and take the route of violence or not? Both ways are correct, the priest informs him in full zen pomp, you simply lack the insight to comprehend it.

If all this sounds a tad pretentious, well, what can I tell you – within the context of the film, such musings actually work very well, and the priest, played by Jun Hamamura as a cynical, detached, slightly cruel counterpoint to Ichi’s clumsy, trying-my-best-to-do-the-right-thing benevolence, makes for an intriguing addition to the film’s cast of characters.(1)

Interestingly, the biwa hōshi represented by Hamamura’s character were a genuine part of pre-Meiji Era Japanese culture, their origins stretching far back into the nation’s history. A caste of usually blind musicians who seemingly adopted a persona somewhere between that of Byronic Romantic poets and nomadic zen monks, the biwa hōshi travelled the land dispensing lessons in selflessness and the contemplation of beauty via the recitation of epic ballads and histories, accompanying themselves via the ominous, droning sound of the four-stringed biwa lute (a harsher-sounding, more primitive precursor to the koto and shamisen of traditional Japanese music).

The scene in ‘Zatoichi’s Vengeance’ in which the priest plays his biwa for Ichi whilst the two sit along in a forest clearing – building a slow, droning song of heavy resonance as Ichi listens out for any approaching attackers – is mesmerising, with the instrument’s thick strings and gigantic plectrum producing a dense pattern of sustained overtones that, to my cloddish Western ears, sounds like nothing so much as some kind of medieval doom metal. “You cannot play biwa if you just depend on the strings,” the priest tells Ichi after he breaks a string mid-performance, “and if you depend wholly upon that hidden sword, you will not live long”. Words for our hero to contemplate as he once again strides off into the sunset, amid a more melancholy and ambiguous conclusion than usual.

Tokuzô Tanaka, who previously directed the very good Zatoichi The Fugitive, does an excellent job here too, not only ensuring that the slightly more serious tone of the material is appropriately pitched throughout, but adopting a foreboding and stately pace that serves it brilliantly. Establishing shots and other wide-screen compositions are beautifully rendered by justly-celebrated DP Kazuo Miyagawa, whilst, in Tanaka’s hands, the obligatory fight scenes once again become brutal and exhilarating.

As in ‘..Fugitive’, Tanaka particularly excels at switching back to long shot during action scenes, maintaining the suspense and emotional engagement of his set ups from a greater distance than most action directors would be comfortable with, stressing the physical distances between his fighters and letting landscape elements add to the drama, making his brief returns to close-up all the more effective as a result.

Particularly impressive in this regard is the film’s central set piece, which is played in shadow puppet style silhouette on a narrow bridge, as Ichi’s opponents close in on him from either side, attempting to deafen and disorientate him using the clamour of the town festival's ‘thunder drums’. Of all the hare-brained schemes baddies have used thus far to try to take Ichi down, this I think is the most sensible, and also the most suspenseful for us as viewers. For all of the Zatoichi films’ many virtues, it is often difficult for the filmmakers to generate much excitement within the fight sequences whilst we know that our hero is basically invincible, so to realise here that Ichi is suddenly just lunging randomly, in great pain and unable to sense the enemies around him, is a real shocker that, few a few moments at least, makes us uncertain how things will play out.

As the nature of this finale suggests, ‘Zatoichi’s Vengeance’ is also notable as one of the few films in the series thus far that really makes an effort to explore the nature of Ichi’s blindness on a level that goes beyond mere sight gags and comic misunderstandings. The importance of sound and music is woven into every aspect of the story, and it is their shared blindness that allows Ichi and the biwa priest to build a rapport around the shared experience of the world as revealed to them by their heightened sensory impressions; a development that adds significantly to the reality of the film’s drama.

Throw in yet another epic original score from maestro Akira Ikufube and the return of the always excellent Shigeru Amachi – who memorably played Hirate in the very first Zatoichi film – as a slightly more convincing rogue samurai than usual, and we’re left with the reassuring feeling that the series is really cooking with gas again here.(2) Definitely the best entry since the films hit double figures, ‘Zatoichi’s Vengeance’ is an example of popular chanbara film-making at its finest, and here’s hoping that Kazuo Ikehiro can manage to maintain this standard for film # 14, ‘Zatoichi’s Pilgrimage’, which debuted only three months after this one in August 1966.

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(1) Yet another celebrated character player with more notable credits to his name than you’ve had hot dinners, Hamamura (1906 – 1995) appeared in Kon Ichikawa’s revered ‘The Burmese Harp’ (1956), Kurosawa’s ‘High and Low’ (1963) and Masaki Kobayashi’s ‘Kwaidan’ (1964) amongst others…. not that that stopped him also earning a crust in ‘Watch Out, Crimson Bat!’ (1969) and turning up as “public official” in Fear of the Ghost House: Bloodthirsty Doll (1970).

(2) Interestingly, a quick scan of IMDB reveals that Amachi, in addition to roles in numerous iconic chanbara productions, was actually also a bit of a “horror man”, appearing for director Nobuo Nakagawa in ‘The Ghost of Yotsuya’ (1959), ‘The Vampire Woman’ (1959), and the epic ‘Jigoku’ (1960). Happily for us Euro-horror buffs, he also turned up years later in Paul Naschy’s bonkers Japanese co-production ‘The Beast With The Magic Sword’ (1983).

This Month’s Zatoichi: Zatoichi The Fugitive (Tokuzô Tanaka, 1963)

For an itinerant blind man who has presumably spent the majority of his spare time achieving his uncanny mastery of swordsmanship, Zatoichi sure has a lot of hobbies, and carries a wide variety of talents up his sleeve. Whether in the field of massage, music or fishing, he’s already proven himself a force to be reckoned with, and now ‘Zatoichi the Fugitive’ begins with our man cheerfully entering a sumo wrestling championship, where of course he embarrasses the local contenders by beating all comers and walking away with the prize.

As usual, this gets our hero in hot water, and he only discovers that a yakuza gang who were rigging the matches have put a price on his head when an inexperienced young warrior turns up to try to kill him for the reward money. Regretful as ever at having been forced to slay this young lad, Ichi sets out to find the boy’s mother, so as to atone for his actions.

Turns out he needn’t have bothered: the dead warrior’s mum is a thick-skinned brood mother to the local yakuza, who takes her son’s demise in her stride (“he was always useless son”, “at least he died honourably..”, etc.), leaving Ichi temporarily hanging around in a town that, whilst it may seem bright and happy on the surface, is absolutely riddled with unsavoury underworld intrigue.

Even the owners of the inn in which Ichi is staying are a yakuza-affiliated family who used to run a profitable gambling joint, until their allegiance to a ‘banished’ former gang boss saw them knocked down from their lofty position, and forced instead to run a humble guesthouse as the father covertly plots his patron’s return. Further straining the already tense atmosphere, Otane (Masayo Banri), Ichi’s sweetheart from the first film, is staying there too. Turns out she didn’t marry a quiet carpenter after all - in fact her husband is Tanakura (Jutaro Hojo), a surly, ill-mannered ronin with a drinking problem and bit of a Mifune kinda look about him. Oh dear.

Trapped again in very much the same situation she was in when we encountered her in Tale of Zatoichi, poor Otane is deep into her doomed Enka singer victim trip by this stage. “Being a woman is a serious business”, she laments, “blowing in the wind from one man to another”. This being a chambara / ninkyo yakuza film, such expressions of doomed fatalism send just as clear a message regarding her likely fate as a soldier in a war film showing off pictures of his family back home before going into battle.

Though the plotting here is just as convoluted, digressive and downbeat as director Tanaka’s earlier New Tale of Zatoichi, ‘Zatoichi the Fugitive’ is nonetheless a far brighter and more visually appealing film than its predecessor, with dazzlingly bright blue skies and picturesque summer landscapes accompanying hearty scenes of rural summer festivals and associated merry-making. Chishi Makiura’s cinematography is, as usual, first class, and the whole movie captures the atmosphere of a sweltering June day perfectly. The title sequence alone – in which Ichi trudges into town, wiping his brow, before getting mixed up in the crowd at the sumo tournament – is assured and iconic filmmaking of the highest order, with Akira Ifukube ‘s music further adding to the sense that whatever happens here, we’re in safe hands.

Less satisfactorily, ‘..Fugitive’ is also the first of the Zatoichi films that fails to really reel us in with a big, emotional hook that directly affects our hero’s future, and, in the absence of such an anchor, things quickly become pretty vague and confusing as the various plot elements pile up, and I confess that I rather lost the thread of what was going on through much of the film’s middle section. Why for instance does Ichi, who is as yet not formally involved in the local gangs’ disputes, choose to march into the gang bosses’ big pow-wow and make a scene, right after Otane’s surly samurai husband has just done the same? Well, it doesn’t really matter at the end of the day, so perhaps it’s best just to go with the flow and enjoy Katsu’s characteristic grand-standing, regardless of the narrative purpose it’s supposed to serve. (The skit he pulls off here with a dice and a flask of sake is a hoot – one of the series' best swordplay stunts to date.)

Amongst other interlinked diversions, Ichi spends a lot of time here looking after Boss Sakichi, a gormless youngster who has been forced against his will into gang leadership, helping the craven youth both his yakuza business and his love-life, and in the process fighting an initial duel with the glowering Tanakura – a hair-raising skirmish that sees the samurai actually succeeding in landing a blow on Ichi, cutting his cheek; a shocking event, given our hero’s usual invincibility, and a sign that he has found another worthy adversary.

Meanwhile, Onobu (Miwa Takada), the inn-keeper's daughter and subject of Sakichi’s affections, takes Ichi to the location of her family’s old gambling house – a beautiful river-side ruin, apparently shot on a genuine location, that goes on to provide a memorable setting for the film’s closing battle.
And speaking of which, well, let’s put it this way: if the first hour or so of ‘..Fugitive’ seems like pretty standard Zatoichi business, make sure you stay tuned for the finale, because it’s a real doozy - probably the most astonishing (and violent) extended sequence we’ve seen in the series thus far.

A frantic and chaotic confrontation, with many volatile elements in play, this showdown begins with Ichi cornered in the ruined house along with the craven child-boss Sakichi, the furious Onobu, and the kidnapped Otane, whilst big, bad boss Toru Abe’s swordsmen, including a sniper with a rifle, mass outside, and Otane’s vengeful samurai husband lurks in the sand dunes, determined to have another crack at taking down the legendary Zatoichi.

This tense siege culminates in the samurai’s shocking slaying of his wife Otane as she begs him not to go after Ichi – a horribly cruel move aimed solely at drawing Ichi out from his hiding place, a goal in which it succeeds admirably. Upon being informed of what has happened to the woman he once loved, Ichi totally loses his shit in a manner we have never before witnessed up to this point, ploughing into the assembled yakuza like a whirling dervish, killing dozens of men and leaving the landscape scattered with corpses in a frenzied, cathartic rampage.

When he eventually reaches Tanakura, the two men’s final battle becomes a real gritted teeth business, the filmmakers milking the tension for all it’s worth, as the combatants are convincingly presented as an even match. Anyone looking for a clear demonstration of the extent to which duels in samurai films influenced the equivalent scenes in Spaghetti Westerns will find all the evidence they need here. For a moment, when Ichi is pushed to the ground, his sword broken, it even looks like he might be a goner. Of course, he isn’t, but the fact the film can make us think that, even for one gasping moment, is quite an achievement.

In his dying breaths, the cruel samurai bad-mouths Otane, saying that it was her idea to set a trap for Ichi and claim the bounty on his head, trying to besmirch Ichi’s memory of her forever. Are his words truth or lies? With both parties dead, we will never know, but the sentimental Zatoichi is buying none of it. “Otane was a beautiful person!”, he shouts at his opponent’s corpse before walking away.

After this exceptionally grim yet fiendishly gripping finale, ‘Zatoichi The Fugitive’ ends, rather incongruously, with a cheesy, upbeat closing scene that sees our hero bidding farewell to the survivors of the conflict, placing Onobu’s hand in Sakichi’s and wishing the couple a happy future (the young boss’s craven treachery apparently already forgotten), before he makes his usual exit, this time laughing heartily, and even performing a merry folk dance as he skips off happily down the road.

A strange ending, but perhaps one reflecting the fact that, in spite of the cruel and unnecessary death of a woman he loved and his ensuing instigation of a crazed massacre, this film has seen our hero relatively unscathed by the kind of emotional apocalypse that the scriptwriters put him through in previous instalments. Well, either that or he’s just getting used to it I suppose. Whatever the case, he was actually allowed a surprisingly long time to catch his breath before ‘Zatoichi on the Road’ hit cinemas over a year later, in October 1964.

This Month’s Zatoichi: New Tale of Zatoichi (Tokuzô Tanaka, 1963)

Hitting Japanese cinemas in March 1963, the third Zatoichi film saw the series moving to colour for the first time, with a suitably heroic new main theme from the legendary Akira Ifubuke pointing the way toward a new identity for the character as the star of a successful, ongoing franchise.

Brighter colours and rousing music haven’t done much to lighten the load of the emotional baggage we left our hero carrying at the end of the previous film however, and only five minutes into this one, he’s already weeping, having been forced to needlessly slay a gang of young warriors out to avenge the boss he killed in the last film, setting the scene for another tragedy-laden instalment, in which Zatoichi’s anguish about his past life choices and the unending cycle of violence in which he is caught up informs the whole of the narrative.

Drinking in an inn with a childhood friend (a poverty-stricken itinerant musician, on the road with his young family) shortly after this initial confrontation, Ichi is already rueing his decision to take up swordsmanship in the first place. “I did things I shouldn’t have done, cut those I shouldn’t have cut”, he muses, establishing a tone that is even more deeply melancholic than his previous adventures, if such a thing is possible.

Before that though, we have at least a few moments of jollity and good cheer to enjoy. Settling into what was already becoming his best-loved role, Shintaro Katsu’s charisma is certainly firing on all cylinders here, in spite of his character’s remorseful mood. Visibly delighted at the chance to catch up with his old buddy, it’s only a matter of minutes before he grabs his friend’s shamisen and knocks out a few verses of what seems to be Zatoichi’s new theme song!

Suitably doleful in tone, the lyrics of this composition largely seem to concern his financial situation, but, somewhat in the manner of a delta blues singer, Katsu’s haunted, world weary delivery imbues the material with a heavy depth of meaning lurking just below the surface, earning Ichi an immediate round of applause from the Inn’s patrons… just before a gang of black-masked bandits burst in, and his cycle of troubles begins again.

Actually though, Ichi’s handling of this particular situation provides a good model for how he might begin to escape his blood-soaked wheel of karma. Mutely submitting to the robbers’ demands so as not to imperil his fellow drinkers, the next morning finds Ichi dragging the ne’erdowells out from their yakuza hideout like naughty school boys, publically shaming them for their conduct in front of their gang boss, who obliges them to return with interest the money they stole from the destitute travellers lodged at the inn. Thus, justice is served, villainy is punished, and Ichi’s credentials as a champion of the people are reasserted, without a drop of blood being spilled. If only it could always be that simple…

‘New Tale..’s main plot-line hoves into view shortly thereafter when another confrontation between Ichi and the would-be revengers on his tail is disrupted by the intervention of none other than Ichi’s *sensei*. Yes, that’s right, the man who taught our invincible hero all he knows about the way of the sword, no less.

Those who were a bit put out by the second film’s weight of back story will be further disconcerted here, as Ichi accompanies his teacher Banno (Seizaburô Kawazu) back to his training academy in Ichi’s hometown, where a warm welcome awaits him. (1) He even finds him to visit his grandmother, for goodness sake! But, as always, a mass of new trouble and moral dilemmas await him.

By this stage in the series, we know very well the value Zatoichi places on loyalty and friendship, and how fervently he respects those he considers his friends . But, unfortunately for our hero’s sensitive nature, it is gradually made clear to us viewers that the venerable Banno-san is actually a bit of an underhanded fellow on the quiet – a real jerk, you might even say. He is heavily involved with some sinister covert dealings involving large sums of money, a kidnapping scheme and a gang of renegade samurai, and… well in short, things aren’t looking too good at Ichi’s alma mater, to be honest.

Ignorant of these goings-on though, our hero is busy reacquainting himself with the sensei’s beautiful and demure young sister Yayoi (future series regular Mikiko Tsubouchi ), who of course throws herself at the blind man almost immediately, declaring her undying love for him in much the same manner that every pure-hearted woman he has thus far encountered in the series seems to have done. (2)

This time though, perhaps reflecting the longer time they have known each other, Ichi is sincerely moved by Yayoi’s feeling for him and agrees on the spot to marry her and settle down, furthermore vowing upon his life that he will forthwith become an honest and peaceful man, abandoning his ties to the yakuza lifestyle and rejecting the way of the sword. Katsu’s performance here is, as ever, is very affecting, but oh dear, given that there are still twenty-plus blind swordsman adventures yet to come, we can probably see where this is going, can’t we? Shall I start the clock to see how many minutes of screen-time his heartfelt oath of non-violence lasts..?

Well actually, he makes a pretty credible effort over the next half hour, in spite of the heavy odds laid against him. First off, when the mismatched couple announce their wedding plans to Yayoi’s brother, be proves to be a right sod about it, ranting and raving, revoking Ichi’s status as his star pupil and hurling all sorts of insults around re: the masseur’s lowly status, before throwing him out of his house for good and refusing to let him say goodbye to his betrothed.

Ichi’s vow of non-violence also holds firm through what to me is definitely the stand-out scene in this film- the wonderful (and indeed, bloodless) confrontation that ensues when Ichi and his future bride come face to face with the brother of that dead boss from the earlier film, still determined to get his revenge. I won’t bother outlining in words what transpires when, instead of drawing his sword, Ichi merely kneels before his attacker awaiting the death-blow, but it is a beautiful little scene that symbolises the very best of the ‘honour and humanity’ ethos embodied by these ninkyo yakuza films.

The more brutal logic of the martial arts / chanbara film is also very much in play though, and setting Zatoichi up in direct conflict with the guy who taught him his skills is of course a classic move within the genre; a fool-proof way of maintaining dramatic tension after two and a half films in which we’ve basically established that our hero’s near-superhuman abilities allow him to kill any regular opponent in three seconds flat. For all of this story’s more high-minded ideals, I’m sure the folks in the cheap seats were well-aware of what they paid their money for, and a suitably gruelling master vs. pupil showdown between Ichi and Banno is clearly on the cards.

Perhaps on this film’s original release there might have been at least some impressionable viewers still wondering whether Zatoichi would manage to uphold his vow and settle down to live a peaceful life with his young bride, but, fifty years down the line, modern viewers can well assume that they didn’t make another twenty movies about Shintaro Katsu hanging around his homestead growing cabbages, and I’m sure I won’t be spoiling anything by telling you that the film ends exactly as you’d expect it to, with a bereft Yayoi standing alone amid a forest clearing full of slain yakuza, her dead brother in the centre, as Zatoichi marches forlornly into the foggy night. “Miss, I guess I am just that kind of a man” he concludes before turning away in shame, resigned to his fate.

Another handsome looking production from Daiei studios, ‘New Tale..’ brings an earthy, subdued colour palette to the Zatoichi series that seems to emphasise the character’s lowly social standing, conveying a deeper feeling for rural Japanese life than many other period genre films, in spite of a few instances in which studio sets are clearly used as stand-ins for exterior locations.

Director Tanaka proves himself a solid hand on the tiller even if he doesn’t quite match the sense of visual drama that Mizumi and Mori brought to the proceedings, and overall the film is another highly entertaining business, lovely to look upon, always watchable, and well played, with Ifubuke‘s remarkable score adding a pretty epic feel in places.(3) It suffers somewhat in the script department however, with poor pacing and a lot of largely inconsequential toing and froing padding things out and rather diluting the central dramatic arc. Perhaps it could have benefited from a shorter run-time, ala film # 2, but nonetheless - during its best scenes at least, ‘New Tale..’ is a match for anything that came before, following the example of its predecessors in weighing down our poor hero with more emotional turmoil than a normal man could bear.

By the end of this instalment, Ichi has found and lost happiness, regained and destroyed his honour as a respectable citizen, and lost his respect for a friend father figure whom he has subsequent killed with his own hand. With all the grief and regret he has piled up over the past three films, it’s a wonder Ichi hasn’t packed it in and settled down with his cabbages by this point, wife or no wife. But whether he likes it or not, the franchise must roll on, and a mere five months later he was back in cinemas in ‘Zatoichi The Fugitive’, which seems appropriate.

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(1) A prolific character actor and instantly recognisable ‘face’ for Japanese movie fans, some of Kawazu’s more notable credits include parts in ‘Mothra’, ‘Yojimbo’, Shôhei Imamura’s ‘The Insect Woman’, Seijun Suzuki’s ‘Tattooed Life’, Kinji Fukasaku’s excellent ‘Japanese Criminal Gangs: Boss’ and Norifumi Suzuki’s astounding ‘Sex & Fury’.

(2) It won’t spoil anyone’s enjoyment of the film either way I suppose, but it seems pretty unlikely that the 50-something Banno would have an 18 year old sister, don’t you think? Wouldn’t it have been easier all round for the script to make her his daughter, or is there some sort of culture-specific element here that I’m missing..? If not, maybe we can just put it down to another example of the weird minor inconsistencies that seem to frequently pop up in these Zatoichi scripts…

(3) An extremely busy director of action and chanbara pictures throughout the ‘60s, Tanaka handled two more Zatoichis, a few ‘Sleepy Eyes of Death’ pictures and numerous sequels to Yasuzô Masumura’s 1965 yakuza/war film ‘Hoodlum Soldier’ (also starring Katsu), amongst others. In the ‘70s he moved over to TV, where he picked up a yet more work from Katsu-affiliated franchises, directing numerous episodes of both the ‘Zatoichi ‘and ‘Lone Wolf & Cub’ TV series. He also made a pretty fun-sounding horror film – English title ‘The Haunted Castle’ – in 1969; now added to my “must track down” list.