Irezumi

The first thing that stood out to me is how beautifully this movie is shot and has some amazing freeze frames that should be framed on a wall. Having the lead woman have so much control not only when she receives the spider tattoo, but also in her own relationship before it was a surprising thing to see in a movie from the 60s. There is an interesting mystery of how much the spider tattoo is influencing her or if a large part of her actions are a understanding result of her being kidnapped and sold. This movie could have easily gone down the exploitation route, but it clearly had more to say and took itself way more seriously. I am very thankful for that.

A woman is kidnapped and drugged, then covered in a huge spider tattoo that may or may not have taken over her soul and turned her into a killer. She gets revenge on those that wronged her by becoming a geisha and causing their deaths.

A slow moving revenge movie centred around a geisha using her charms to manipulate men and killing them off. It's not really that much of a horror movie as the supernatural side isn't played up, even though it's hinted at. It's more of a samurai movie that happens to focus on the geisha and brief outbursts of violence that take the lives of others. It's interesting but not an amazing movie or anything.

This one is too well shot, stylized and acted to NOT be noticed. And, in all honesty, the main protagonist has all my sympathies because she's got guts, talent and EXTREME beauty (and I can't stress enough how beautiful the main actress is) while all the men around her are whimps at best or lurid, disgusting profiteers at worst of which the world would be better ridden off. If you love like I do dominant, strong women, go with it with no problems. You'll end loving the main character.

A wonderful short movie with beautiful colors and characters acting like they are in Japanese Play, it works so well.

Female main character really sells the sexy but also dangerous kind of woman, that you can never really tell what she is really thinking.

Does she loves you, does she just use you? What is she really on about, she is a spider even before tattoo.

And the sad male mean character that truly displays what a slipper hero is, an goes way to for in this doom relationship.

It feels like watching and old Japanese tale that has been showed in the theater many many times.

It has a good length, but I think the sand of time made it so I didn't enjoy the movie as much if if I watched it when it came out. It's the sad fate of movies that have been built on so much.

Following the doomed and star-crossed love between the feisty daughter of a wealthy merchant and the timid clerk that works for her father, IREZUMI is cut from the mould of classic Shakespearean tragedy but with a distinctly Japanese spin. For reasons that elude me, the Japanese have taken quite an affection to their idea of the deceitful femme fatale, the "spider woman". Here the feisty daughter becomes one quite literally by having a grotesque "spider woman" tattooed by force on her back on orders of the pimp she's sold to. While her lover prowls the red districts of Yoshiwara looking for her, she leads a luxurious life as a geisha by scamming people off their money with her pimp as an accomplice.

Weaving together a typical revenge plot and the idea of psychosomatic auto-suggestion as the woman starts to believe that she's "really" a spider woman after being tattooed and urged by her pimp to leech money off her clients, director Masumura and writer Kaneto Shindo (who also scripted MANJI for Masumura and directed some very famous Japanese horror movies like ONIBABA and KURONEKO) create in IREZUMI a bold, beautiful, no-nonsense revenge drama that doesn't skimp on the violence. When people get killed, it's ugly and messy. When they don't, they weave around them webs of lies and deceit or find themselves caught in one.

Masumura's assured but laconic direction (no tracking shots, no moving cameras - his camera remains locked on a tripod with the occasional imperceptible pan) is a masterclass in miss-en-scene, careful framing and pacing a movie without calling attention to his work as director. Simply put, the guy knows how to take a great shot and he knows how to pile great shots one upon the other to make a great scene and he knows how to orchestrate his scenes to make a great movie that moves effortlessly from start to finish. Add to that the superb editing and some great acting by Ayako Wakao (gorgeous in the lead role) and you've got yourself a proper forgotten gem from the classic epoch of Japanese cinema. I'm looking forward to catching more of the director's work.