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Really Surprised!

Absolutely brilliant

Too much about the plot just didn't add up, the writing was bad, some of the scenes were cringey and awkward,

The movie is made so realistic it has a lot of that WoW feeling at the right moments and never tooo over the top. the suspense is done so well and the emotion is felt. Very well put together with the music and all.

The classic tale of 'The Ghost of Yotsuya' is entertaining enough, and zips along in its 76 minute run time, but it didn't deliver any knockout blows. The story is fairly black and white, with a ronin and his sidekick committing murder to get the women they want, but the depth of the blackness in their hearts is surprising, and makes it effective. Personally, I didn't find their supernatural comeuppance all that frightening, and felt that director Nobuo Nakagawa relied too much on the shock value of visuals, instead of creating real tension. The visuals are decent, but they're also dated, and we rarely fail to see what's coming. The performances were also generally over-done, though I understand my perspective is from another culture. Anyway, fans of the genre will probably enjoy this one.

Funny how things change. In 1949 Shintoho was producing prestige films like Akira Kurosawa's STRAY DOG. Ten years later they were producing scores of everything from lurid melodramas to nationalist war movies to cheap gangster flicks to kaidan period horror movies like this. Two years later, in 1961, they declared bankruptcy and closed shop, the first semi-big studio in postwar Japan to do so. Nobuo Nakagawa, along with Teruo Ishii who graduated from the film noir of the Chitai series into full blown sleaze and torture 10 years later, was one of those prolific studio filmmakers responsible for many of their kaidan pictures. His biggest call to fame is JIGOKU from the following year but this is an ample showcase of both the good and the bad of Shintoho film-making.Based on the classic story by Nanboku Tsuruya about a conniving lowly samurai who is haunted by the ghost of the wife he murdered, a lot of the drama is hackneyed, the characters simple caricatures of good and evil, innocent and scheming, the dialogues delivered on-the-nose. Iemon, the murderous samurai, is played and depicted as the worst villain possible. No grey areas here, nothing morally ambiguous, the movie is melodrama played to the back of the house. And yet, the first appearance of the ghost sent chills down my spine. Ringu and Ju On didn't invent the pale-faced ghost that creeps along the edge of the frame. It was there 50 years ago and in Kabuki theater before that.With the eye of a stylist, Nakagawa orchestrates a vision of hell on earth, ghosts rising from the ground or peering down from the ceiling, and it's all very stagey and theatrical probably to appeal to an audience already familiar with the story from Kabuki theater and as much creepy/atmospheric as it is graphic, certainly more graphic than American horror would dare to be for the next 10 years (we have blood gushing from wounds, facial deformities, and even an amputated limb), and while the whole is never as good as the parts, those parts should appeal to the horror fan who likes his lighting bright red and torquoise and his ghosts slow-moving and disfigured.

Iemon Tamiya ( Shigeru Amachi, the hero of Jigoku ) is a samouraï without Master ( ronin ) who wishes to marry Iwa, the girl of the Samon lord. One evening, it waits on the property of Samon that this one returns to him, in order to ask him last once the hand of his daughter, but Samon wants nothing to know, and milked Iemon of libertine, doubled of an imbecile. Iemon perhaps, which does not have a row but does not remain about it less one man of honour, carries out Samon and its continuation at once, under the amused glance of its servant, Naosuke, which sees an occasion there to increase its capacity on its Master. The two men decide to make wear the hat in Usaburo, a samouraï of which any Okayama knows hatred towards the late one. Yomoshichi, whose father belonged to the guard of Samon, decides to avenge the death for his/her own father, but also for that which was on the point of becoming his/her father-in-law: indeed, it had obtained the hand of Sode, the sister of Iwa. The two couples in becoming get under way in order to avenge death for Samon, accompanied by Naosuke. Six months later, Naosuke, in love with Sode, decides to make sing Iemon so that it helps it to get rid of Yomoshichi - death that the two men put again on the back of Usaburo. Naosuke and Sode leave to the continuation the "culprit" while Iemon and Iwa, patient, settle in Edo. Two years pass, and the two sisters, from now on separated, still did not satisfy their thirst for revenge: Usaburo always runs. Iemon, married to Iwa, claims more not to have re-examined Naosuke whereas the two men find together means of tapping money with the Ito old man to remain, each one on their side. Iemon sees in EMU, the girl of this last, the possibility of obtaining a honourable position, and it is put consequently at the head to marry it. But for that, it must get rid of Iwa, become cumbersome - as well as faithful Naosuke suggests to him...Tokaido-Yotsuyakaidan takes again a traditional history of phantoms to the Nakagawa sauce. One finds at the same time elements of Jigoku there , that the realizer would turn one year later, and of Borei-Kaibyoyashiki , filmed one year before. The three films put in scene a murder more or less reflected, made under an access of anger, which involves others of them before taking along the heroes to know the revenge on In addition to world. But the similarities do not stop with the topic. The character of Naosuke precedes that of Tamura in Jigoku , character of background which encourages the hero to make ignominies more and more. The end of the film, during which one rocks in pure film of horror, mixes the hallucinations of the assassin of Borei... and visual hallucinated hell of Jigoku . Moreover, Tokaido... is also a film rather gore for the time: that it is with the make-up of Iwa, properly horrible, or the torn off arm of Takuetsu, friend of Iemon victim of one of his machinations, Nakagawa never underestimates the impact of visual truly bloody.But principal qualities of Tokaido... are of a visual nature: the realization is once more impeccable, modern for the time in its use of the framework and the out-field ( the scene where Iwa discovers the decomposition of its face in is an excellent example ), and contributes to make mount the trouillometer in a very convincing way for such an old film. The appearances of Iwa, nailed on the board on which it was drowned, show again some many modern "monsters". As for the last image of film, it returns as much to Jigoku as at the end of beyond Fulci ( very adequate comparison definitely for the study of the case Nakagawa ), with its ghostly figure within a monochromatic landscape which one guesses without difficulty infernal. A remarkable film of horror, which more is easily accessible to any fan from cinema from terror ( what is not inevitably the case of all films of the realizer ).

This classic japanese tale has been filmed many times. It's the story of a samurai's betrayal of his wife and the ultimate vengeance her spirit seeks. The spectre of her ghost haunting the mind of her husband is almost like seeing a japanese "The Shining".