About 1786 the doings of a demented lord results in many masterless samurai, including Iyemon (Kei Sato) who is used to luxury and cannot adjust to the hand-to-mouth conditions & piecework of umbrella making. Having hired ruffians to make him look like a superior swordsman, he arranges for himself the opportunity of a profitable marriage. He hires the half-blind masseur Takuetsu (Sawamura Sounosuke) to seduce or rape his wife (Kyoko Mikage), so that she can be divorced or killed for adultery. But the masseur takes pity & informs Oiwa of her husband's horrid plot. Assisted by the merchant's daughter he intends to marry, Iyemon disfigures his wife attempting to poison her so he can marry higher. There's a lovingly gruesome sequence as she combs blad patches into her hair, kneeling deformed at her mirror, weeping with bitterness. She eventually cuts her own throat, swearing revenge.
The boozy mercenary of the title, based on the actual historical figure of Naoyuki Ban (1567-1615), ...
A samurai kills a blind man who tells him to repay his debts. Because of the samurai's actions his e...
Nominated for Golden Berlin Bear.
A ghost story about a woman who dies a violent death and appears to the man she loves as a vengeful ...
In Numada, Jyoshu, Seijun's mistress dies a horrible death at the hands of a gang of vicious vassals...
The video is a compilation of six short stories based on Japanese folklore legends. Each story is ap...
A master sculptor and his apprentice are trapped in a bad snow storm after finding a special tree fo...
The curse of a jealous woman destroys lovers on the run. Considered a lost film.
A quintessential example of the period "ghost cat" (bakeneko or kaibyo) movie, this was one of at le...
Tanuma Kandayuu is a high class samurai of the house of Nabeshima. He finds a lavish board of Go (a ...
A woman loses her son through an evil conspiracy and commits suicide. Shortly afterwards a ghost cat...
Okoyo, the mistress of Lord Arima, fears that she is being replaced by a younger woman named Otaki. ...
The Lord of Okazaki is killed by his brother-in-law. Although the Lord's widow bears a child, she is...
A film about the Ghost of Okiku that's based on the kabuki play Bancho Sarayashiki.
A tryst between the young warrior Hagiwara Shinzaburo and beautiful Otsuyu is discovered, and the sh...
A power struggle in the fief of Okazaki causes the death of Namiji, a nobleman's daughter. As her fi...
When a nobleman finds a woman to be an obstacle to his growing political influence, he kills her and...
While transporting a bride-to-be in a closed carriage (kago) while during a thunderstorm, a group of...