The Snow Woman

I'm more used to the version on criterion, but this was pretty awesome too. It's a little bit cheaper (just a little) but the acting carries it, and in my opinion is the better version. Has much more expanded plot than the original, and it gives it a very good vibe. I really loved this movie so to speak. It deals with very dark themes, and it's the reason why I love this story so much. It has a lot of really good elements that make it worth watching. I highly recommend getting the collection that's coming out from Radiance to properly watch this. Very much worth the time. Very good movie is what I'm saying!

A wonderful story told so well in this adaptation. It is so much more than a horror story. It is a story of love and compassion but with great sadness. It captures the imagination in a way that the Japanese are true masters at.

I want more of these kind of movies!

After taking refuge from a deadly blizzard, a sculptor (Akira Ishihama) encounters a beautiful yuki-onna (a demonic 'Snow Woman') who spares his life if he promises never to tell anyone about the encounter. Soon after, Yuki, a lovely young woman (Shiho Fujimura), travelling alone and with no family, appears in his village. The sculptor is captivated by the mysterious women and soon marries her, but not before she catches the lecherous eye of a cruel, dishonorable samurai. This is one of several film versions of the frosty fable, others include 'The Woman of the Snow', one story in Masaki Kobayashi's excellent supernatural anthology 'Kwaidan' (1964) and 'Snow/Woman' (2000) an awful, bargain-basement 'pinkie', worth watching solely for the cute, and occasionally naked, white-witch. Tokuzo Tanaka's 1968 version is creepily surreal at times, especially the scenes where the otherworldly woman with the golden eyes seems to glide over the snow. Shiho Fujimura makes for an enchanting yokai, the story is engaging, the music good (the film was scored by Akira Ifukube, the composer behind many of Toho's great kaiju themes) and the special effects (the witch's demonic eyes and the preternatural 'freezing') are nicely done. Slow moving and subtle by modern horror-film standards but still an excellent candidate for a midnight viewing with a fine bottle of sake or Japanese whisky to keep you warm when the spectral snow starts to fall.

This is essentially the same Snow Witch story as told in the well-known Japanese ghost film anthology, "Kwaidan". Here it is extended out into a 75 minute excursion into the supernatural.

A master sculptor and his apprentice are trapped in a bad snow storm after finding a special tree for carving a statue for the local temple. Finding refuge in an abandoned hut they celebrate their luck n finding the tree but soon they are visited by the Snow Witch who freezes the sculptor to death but takes pity on the apprentice. He must promise to never speak of this or she'll return and kill him. Back in town, the apprentice is promoted and given the task of making the statue. A mysterious beautiful woman arrives during a torrential rain storm and quickly falls in love with the apprentice. Soon she comes under the lustful eye of the evil Baliff who controls the town. And so it goes....

While the painterly method this story is told in Kwaidan is well-known and appreciated, here the story is accomplished with very careful lighting effects and lens filters. In some ways this is a much more beautiful telling of the story. Akira Ikufube provides a familiar yet unique score. Aside from a couple of clumsy spots in the script and the actor playing the apprentice underplays his part, this is an excellent film.

Three years after an adaptation in 1965's KWAIDAN, the classic Japanese ghost story of the yuki-onna (snow woman) gets a feature-length telling. While Tokuzo Tanaka's film might feel a little redundant after the wonderful adaptation of the story in KWAIDAN, KAIDAN YUKI JOROU is still well worth a look for fans of Japanese folk horror.

Extending the tale to eighty minutes doesn't feel like stretching it too thin; the feature-length story gets to focus more time on character development and crafting emotional connections, which helps the climax reach surprisingly emotive heights. You almost forget it's a horror flick in the middle, with the vibe lying somewhere between fantasy and family drama, but these portions don't drag like they could have.

The film is beautifully shot and has some wonderfully memorable visual moments, especially near the end. These '60s Japanese horrors do such a wonderful job creating a spooky atmosphere, which is amplified by the setting and time period. It's like you're seven years old, telling ghost stories around the fire, except you're in rural Japan and wearing a kimono for some reason.

It is rather predictable and features a lot of the missteps of Japanese cinema from this time period (overacting, a tendency towards ham-fisted asides and monologues, etc.), but if you enjoyed the likes of KWAIDAN and ONIBABA, this should tickle your fancy.