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Just perfect...

There are better movies of two hours length. I loved the actress'performance.

It's a movie as timely as it is provocative and amazingly, for much of its running time, it is weirdly funny.

There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.

Since I'm intent on writing only about films I like, daresay love, I end up abjectly writing the same things over and over again. One might be led to believe that I would thus write these reviews with greater ease. Not that I mind repeating myself: great films are rare and precious.Yet I'm quite at a loss trying to capture, in vain, the many rewards of Shindô's epochal "Kuroneko" (1968) – I'll use the familiar, shortened version of the title so I won't scare anyone away with the original one. I could, of course, throw in the many English variants to really spice things up. As for trying, I could, then, go on about the magical atmosphere, poetic and impressionistic theatrical lighting, the apt companion this film makes for both Mizoguchi's "Ugetsu monogatari" (1953) and Kobayashi's "Kaidan" (1964) and the rich allegorical narrative of the films in terms of self-reflexiveness. But mentioning all this still wouldn't do justice to "Kuroneko" and its most elementary virtue: whilst being artistically exuberant it manages to be authentically spooky and scary, and through its atmosphere transmit the presence of an actual threat. I think much of this comes from the sexual tension inherent also in "Onibaba" (1964), obviously something Shindô masterfully uses to advance his cinematic ends.I think this contradistinction of light and shadow is the strongest visual motif of the film, something the film consciously works towards. The demon-mother, at the end while pretending to be a seer, refers to this as she lies that she prays to the powers of yin and yang, of light and darkness. No better allegorical dimension, then, to shoot this in black-and-white and with such mastery in staging and lighting. Watching all of it unfold on Blu-ray is quite an experience.

I got this movie ('Masters of Cinema' DVD series) after having been blown away by the same directors 'Onibaba'. This is a similar movie in many ways - an indefinable ghost story that doesn't fit into any neat category. Even more than Onibaba it is clearly heavily influenced by traditional theatrical forms - the setting is literally theatrical at times, particularly in the ghostly house where the demons, in the form of dead women raped and murdered, take their revenge on samurai.While the story is stilted and owes more to folklore than conventional movie making narrative, it is full of memorable and chilling imagery. This is as much an art movie as a horror story, but its all the more effective for it. The special effects and photography are both beautiful and chilling. Kaneto Shinudo was truly a master at this type of movie making, and it is a must-see for anyone interested in Japanese film - or horror films for that matter. Its not quite of the brilliance and originality of Onibaba, but its not far off.

First of all, I would LOVE to know why this classic of Japanese 60's cinema is NOT in VHS or better yet, DVD, format in Region 1 format???It's a real shame, as it is a perfect pairing with Onibaba(which was a terrifying double bill in San Francisco in 1978, thereabouts). It explores the touchy subject of revenge, revenge for terrible deeds done to the women, and how perfectly they exact their revenge from the grave. Guaranteed you will never hear the rustling sounds of bamboo ever the same again.This is a movie for adults, as the subject matter is intense. It is an indictment of how women were and are treated in warfare, and the horrifying toll it takes on everyone.I highly recommend this film. If you can locate it-for some odd reason it is extremely hard to get, and it deserves a much wider audience.

Very similar to Shindo's masterpiece "Onibaba". A mother and daughter-in-law seek vengeance on the samurai class for the suffering they have been put through. Female spirits luring lustful men to their doom is a very common theme in Japanese ghost stories ie. Ugetsu, Kaidan, etc. In this tale there is the added conflict when the son/husband is sent to destroy them. Very well done and very creepy.