THE GHOST OF YOTSUYA (1959)

In ancient Japan, a wandering ronin named Iemon asks for the hand of Samon's daughter Iwa, but Samon turns him down, calling him a libertine. When Iemon kills Samon and his friend Sato, a wandering apprentice named Naosuke witnesses the murder and helps Iemon get rid of the bodies in exchange for a mutually beneficial partnership; as Naosuke wants to marry Iemon's sister Sode, he gets Iemon to help him kill Sode's fiancé Yomoshichi. During a visit to a waterfall shrine, the two stab Yomoshichi and toss him over the falls, then tell Sode that the killer was actually a fellow named Usaboro. Some time later, Iemon and Iwa are married and living in poverty with a newborn child; she expects Iemon to avenge her father's death and Iemon is unsatisfied with his condition. Naosuke and Sode are also living in low circumstances, with Naosuke selling "Dutch medicines" in the street; Sode won't officially marry (or have sex with) him until he gets revenge for the death of Yomoshichi. When Iemon saves the honor of Ume, a nobleman's daughter, Naosuke convinces Iemon to kill Iwa so he can marry Ume and get good positions for both of them in Ume's family. The elaborate plan involves Iemon setting up a masseur friend named Takuetsu to be found in a compromising position with Iwa so Iemon will be justified by the samurai code to kill his adulterous wife and be free to marry Ume. The plan works, more or less, but with unforeseen consequences involving vengeful ghosts.

This Japanese horror film doesn't look like a product of the 1950s; its widescreen color visuals and splashes of blood and gore (including a fleeting shot of a man's arm being cut off) make it feel more like something from the 1960s. I was also surprised to see the image of a wet, stringy-haired, sullen female ghost which I think of as having emerged in more recent movies like The Grudge or The Ring. The first half of the film is a bit slow as it sets up the various situations calling for resentment and revenge. But the last half builds nicely to a lengthy climax which results in two people being killed, nailed to wooden shutters, and thrown in a river. Needless to say, they don't exactly stay in the river but instead trigger more blood and gore with only a couple of people left alive by the end. It looks like a fairly low budget affair with murky and stagy settings, though to be fair, the opening shots of the film are explicitly set on a stage as a song is sung with lyrics about "the fury of a woman driven mad." (The story is based on a famous Japanese play which has been adapted for film several times.) I find it difficult to judge the acting in Japanese films set in the samurai era because both theatrical overacting (Shigeru Amachi as the angry Iemon) and underacting (Katsuko Wakasugi as the passive Iwa, pictured above) are common. Here, the most interesting performances come not from the two leads but from Shuntaro Emi as Naosuke and Noriko Kitazawa as Sode as the secondary leads who don't seem as bound by narrative convention. Directed by Nobuo Nakagawa with lots of flowing horizontal shots. If you're OK with subtitles, this would be a good Halloween viewing choice. Yotsuya in the title refers to the area where the first part of the film takes place; it's also known as  The Ghost Story of Yotsuya. [TCM/Criterion]