Tweet
Released by: Radiance Films
Released on: October 29th, 2023.
Director: Kenji Misumi, Satsuo Yamamoto, Tokuzo Tanaka
Cast: Shigeru Amachi, Noriko Kitazawa, Kôjirô Hongô, Miyoko Akaza, Shiho Fujimura, Akira Ishihama
Year: 1959/1968/1968
Purchase From Amazon
Daiei Gothic – Movie Review:
Radiance Films brings together a trio of ghost stories produced by Japan’s Daiei Studios in their aptly titled Daiei Gothic boxed set Blu-ray collection.
The Ghost Of Yotsuya:
Directed by Kenji Misumi of Lone Wolf And Cub fame, this 1959 (the same year that Nobuo Nakagawa released his version of the same story) adaptation of The Ghost Of Yotsuya, based on the popular stage play of the same name, stars Kazuo Hasegawa as Tamiya Iemon.
He works as an umbrella maker and lives with his kindly wife, Oiwa (Yasuko Nakada) and they seem happy enough with their simple existence. When Oiwa's uncle, a ronin, starts pressuring Iemon to do more in life and maybe even try to become a genuine samurai to provide a better life for himself and his wife, Iemon isn't stoked by the man's interference. Iemon does, however, give in and try to land a job in construction. He doesn't get the job but on the way back home, interferes with a scuffle to save a young woman from a gang of lecherous men. This woman, Oume (Yôko Uraji), turns out to be the daughter of the man who declined to hire Iemon and she very quickly falls for the man who just saved her, hoping to become his wife.
What Iemon doesn't realize is that there are people scheming behind the scenes to drive enough of a wedge between he and Oiwa that Iemon will eventually give in to Oume, and that these plans involve setting up Iemon's servant Kohei (Jôji Tsurumi). Soon enough, there's a death and shortly after that, a vengeful ghost skulking about...
Based on the kabuki play Yotsuya Kaidan written by Tsuruya Nanboku in the 1800s, this adaptation sees Misumi taking some liberties with the story when compared to other versions, particularly in how Iemon is portrayed but overall, this one works so long as you don’t mind the slow burn as aspect of how the story unfolds. The first hour of the movie is focused almost entirely on the human drama element of the movie, pulling us into the machinations put into place to try and pull Iemon and Oiwa apart with plenty of backstabbing and treachery on display. Once the movie does turn into an actual ghost story in the final act, it winds up delivering some great visuals and exploiting some interesting ideas very effectively.
Misumi paces the film very deliberately, asking the viewer to invest in the characters before the supernatural elements kick in, and gets some really strong performances out of his cast. Kazuo Hasegawa is quite good as Iemon, playing his conflicted role quite believably and delivering a pretty manic turn towards the finale. Yasuko Nakada is excellent as Oiwa, a tragic and innocent character in the truest sense of the word, while supporting work from Yôko Uraji as the naïve Oume and Jôji Tsurumi as nice guy Kohei round out the cast quite nicely.
The Bride From Hades:
Also known as Peony Lantern, director Satsuo Yamamoto’s 1968 film The Bride From Hades, based on a story by Enchô San’yûtei IV, the story takes place during the Obon Festival where spirits of the deceased are rumored to return to where they once lived. Here we meet Hagiwara Shinzaburô (Kôjirô Hongô), a man who once worked as a samurai but who is now a teacher. His parents desperately want him to go along with their plans to have him married off to Kiku (Atsumi Uda), whose parents are quite well off, the marriage ensuring that both Hagiwara and his parents are taken care of.
These plans get rocked when Hagiwara meets the beautiful Otsuyu (Miyoko Akaza) and her guardian, Oyone (Michiko Ôtsuka). It's clear immediately that she's as interested in him as he is in her, but things obviously get more than a little complicated when it turns out that Otsuyu and Oyone are actually dead spirits that have come back to walk the Earth during the Obon Festival.
If Yamamoto’s film isn’t ever especially scary, it is a beautifully shot picture loaded with plenty of atmosphere that tells a story that keeps the audience interested. Again, like the first feature, the pacing is fairly deliberate, the film never moves at an especially rapid pace but there’s enough interesting character development going on alongside those aforementioned visuals that it’s never dull.
Performances are pretty strong across the board as well, with Kôjirô Hongô doing a really good job of playing his obviously, and understandably, conflicted character and making it seem believable. Atsumi Uda does good work here too, but it’s Miyoko Akaza who steals the show as a beautiful and completely tragic figure. You can easily see why Hagiwara would be drawn to Otsuyu, as she’s quite captivating, and Miyoko Akaza deserves a lot of credit for playing the part as effectively as she does.
The Snow Woman:
The final film in the collection is Tokuzo Tanaka’s 1968 film The Snow Woman, a film that introduces us to a sculptor named Shigetomo (Tatsuo Hananuno) who works alongside a younger apprentice named Yosaku (Akira Ishihama). When the pair travels to the mountains in hopes of finding a tree that they can use to create a Bodhisattva statue for a local temple, they wind up getting trapped in a freak snow storm and having to hide out in an old, seemingly abandoned cabin until it passed.
As the pair spends the night in the cabin, the ghost of a woman arrives and steals away the life force of poor Shigetomo before turning to Yosaku, agreeing to let him live so long as he never tells anyone what he has just witnessed. If he ever tells anyone about the ghost and her ways, she'll know and she'll take his life. Yosaku agrees to this and as time passes, he decides, in honor of Shigetomo, to complete the Bodhisattva for the temple. Around this time, a mysterious woman named Yuki (Shiho Fujimura) arrives and the two are clearly drawn to one another, but when the local bailiff wants pretty Yuki for himself she fights back and her true nature is revealed.
Based on the same story that inspired the better known 1964 film Kwaiden, directed by Masaki Kobayashi, The Snow Woman is an impressive work of gothic storytelling. Once again, the visuals here are really impressive, with the use of snow thrown into the mix a few times to provide some interesting use of color, particularly when it comes to creating contrast on the screen. The film moves a bit faster than the other two entries in the film, but it’s still a bit of a slow burn, but don’t let that dissuade you, as there’s plenty here to keep you intrigued and wanting to know where the story is headed.
Again, performances are quite strong with Akira Ishihama really shining here. He’s very good in his role and he has an interesting chemistry with Shiho Fujimura, who is quite stunning in this film. It might not take a rocket scientist to figure out how the story is going to finish up, but even if that element of the plot is a bit on the predictable side, The Snow Woman is an excellent film well-worth seeking out.
Daiei Gothic – Blu-ray Review:
All three films in the Daiei Gothic boxed set arrive on their own separate Blu-ray disc in this collection from Radiance Films in AVC encoded 1080p high definition transfers provided by Daiei Films framed at 2.35.1 widescreen. Picture quality is similar across all three films. You can expect nice color reproduction and generally pretty impressive levels of detail across the board. There’s very little print damage here at all, only the occasional small white speck, nothing to take you out of the presentations. Black levels look good, skin tones appear lifelike and accurate and the transfers are free of compression artifacts, noise reduction and edge enhancement problems.
The only audio options on each of the three discs are 24-bit DTS-HD 2.0 Mono tracks in Japanese with optional subtitles provided in English only. Audio quality is also quite good, with each film exhibiting properly balanced levels, clear dialogue and pretty solid range for some old mono mixes. There are no problems to note with any hiss, distortion or sibilance.
Extras are spread across the three discs in the set as follows:
The Ghost Of Yotsuya:
Extras on the first disc include a new interview with filmmaker Kiyoshi Kurosawa that runs twenty minutes. Here, the famed horror director talks about Kenji Misumi's work and life as well as the director's influence on Japanese horror films, particularly The Ghost Of Yotsuya. He talks about why Misumi's adaptation of the story is his preferred version, what sets it apart from other adaptations, the story's kabuki theater roots, the character development in the film, how the first two thirds are a drama with no horror elements at all, the impact that the final third of the movie carries, thoughts on the performances in the film and some of its powerful visuals and more.
Additionally, this disc includes a twenty-two minute visual essay on the history and adaptations of the classic Ghost Of Yotsuya story by author Kyoko Hirano. This pieces goes back to the story's origins in the 1800s, the influence of folk lore on the store, the story's historical and geographical setting, how the story is adapted in the version included on this disc and how it compares to earlier and later adaptations of the story, the importance of building anticipation when adapting this story, and some of the historical details depicted in the film's version of feudal Japan.
The Bride From Hades:
An audio commentary by author Jasper Sharp starts off the extras for the second feature. It’s an interesting and very well-researched track that goes into quite a bit of very welcome detail about the roots of the story, different adaptations in different media formats, some of the cultural details that make it as interesting as it is as well as the requisite cast and crew details, thoughts on the director’s work on the picture, the visuals, what works in the film and much more. Definitely worth a listen.
Also included on this disc is a new interview with filmmaker Hiroshi Takahashi, who wrote the screenplay for The Ring, who speaks for just under eighteen minutes about his own thoughts on the film, seeing it for the first time, the impression that it made on him, it’s importance in Japanese genre cinema, elements of Japanese folk lore that work their way into the story and more.
The Snow Woman:
A new interview with filmmaker Masayuki Ochiai running sixteen minutes sees him speaking about some of the visuals on display in the movie and the impact that they had on more modern Japanese horror and ghost story movies, the enduring popularity of ghost stories in Japanese culture and what makes this particular entry a unique and important one.
The disc also includes a visual essay on writer Lafcadio Hearn. Here, over seven minutes, Paul Murray explores how a writer of European birth became fascinated with Japanese culture, made the move to the country and became involved in the horror story business in Japan.
All three discs also contain an original theatrical trailer for their respective features and come with some reversible cover sleeve art.
Also included in this boxed set is a limited edition eighty-page perfect bound book featuring new writing by authors Tom Mes, Zack Davisson and Paul Murray, newly translated archival reviews and ghost stories by Lafcadio Hearn. All of this comes packaged in a rigid box with full-height Scanavo cases for each film and removable OBI strip leaving packaging free of certificates and markings.
Daiei Gothic - The Final Word:
Radiance Film’s Blu-ray release of the Daiei Gothic collection is impressive, offering up three intriguing ghost stories in very nice presentations with some solid extra features, great packaging and a great insert booklet as well. The movies themselves are each worth seeing, and the stories they tell quite compelling. Highly recommended.
Click on the images below, or right click and open in a new window, for full sized Daiei Gothic Blu-ray screen caps!
