Japan

"An eerie Japanese fantasy... creates a fine atmosphere of creepy horror" Sunday Telegraph. "It suggests feelings so deeply rooted in primitive legend that they defy analysis" Morning Star. Japan is torn by civil wars, but this is past of legend, not of history. Two women - a mother and her daughter-in-law - live alone in a forest clearing. A band of war-crazed samurai, scouring the forest, come upon their cottage. The women are raped and murdered, the men go on their way. Before long, the forest is terrorised by two vengeful spirits, which come tumbling out of the inky night to strike at passing warriors. The bodies of the samurai are left savagely scratched and disfigured, as if mauled by incredibly powerful cats... Kuroneko is less an Oriental version of Cat People than a dazzling variation on Kaneto Shindo's own Onibaba. But this time, instead of merely evoking the mood of Japanese ghost stories, Shindo comes up with a minor classic of the genre, brimful of macabre beauty and terror. Even Shindo, always a versatile and resourceful director has rarely dreamt up such startling images: the elder ghost luring her prey from atop the huge gateway at the edge o the forest, the young woman whose movements are suddenly unmistakably cat-like, the ghosts, swathed in yards of ethereal kimono, somersaulting towards their victims with a truly hellish energy. If the opening scenes are cruel, the story's development is crueller. The young samurai detailed to annihilate the spirits is none other than the young woman's husband, a hero of the wars. Unlike the other warriors, he is welcomed by the ghosts: his mother dances mysteriously to greet him, and his wife invites him back into her bed. Only later does he learn that his wife faces eternal damnation for having spared him. But this discovery changes nothing. His duty is to rid the forest of the ghosts, and a samurai's duty is always paramount... Tony Rayns