Kwaidan

 A three-hour collection of ancient Japanese ghost stories? Hell yes.

 Kwaidan collects four folkloric stories that were popularized in the west by author Lafcadio Hearn in a few books published at the turn of the twentieth century... as reclaimed by Yôko Mizuki and directed by Masaki Kobayashi (of Harakiri fame). There's something very pleasing about the continuous cycle of adaptations there. Keeping the old stories alive.

Do not fall asleep first in a party with monks, those guys are -thorough-.

 The first story - The Black Hair - is the most influential, particularly in Japanese horror: A poor samurai (Rentarō Mikuni) leaves his wife (Michiyo Aratama) to marry into a rich clan in far-away Kyoto. He comes to regret his deeply shitty decision and after a few years abandons his new life to go back to his old one. He finds his old estate in disrepair, but his wife - looking exactly as she did when he left her - welcomes him with open arms. That is, until he wakes up the next day and gets chased around by tangles of black hair. Hey, don't look at me like that - it works. Mostly. OK, it did make me laugh a couple of times. But it's amazing, too.

 The Woman of the Snow, meanwhile, is more of a fable, and this is where the film really hit its stride for me. Two woodcutters get stranded in a snowstorm and take shelter in an abandoned shack. There they're attacked by a Yokai (basically, a ghoul/spirit/ghost/etc.) taking the form of a beautiful woman (Keiko Kishi); she freezes the older woodcutter to death, but takes pity on the younger one (Tatsuya Nakadai) and lets him live... on the condition that he never tells anyone what happened that night.

 As the years go by, the young woodcutter meets another beautiful woman... also played by Keiko Kishi! Welp, you can probably see where this is going. They have three children, and share a happy life until Minokichi puts his foot in it in the same way people always do in this type of stories.

 Hoichi the Earless is the longest and most elaborate of the film's chapters. It even has its own prologue: a reenactment the battle of Dan-no-ura, a huge sea battle where two opposing samurai fleets faced off against each other, leading to the near-destruction of the Taira clan and the death of the infant emperor.

 A shrine is erected near the site of the battle to pacify the spirits of the many warriors died that day. Many years later Hoichi (Katsuo Nakamura), a young blind musician who's being looked after by the monks there, is summoned by a samurai to play for his lord at his house over several nights. The monks recognize that he is being drained of life by ghosts, and come up with a plan to save him - but commit an oversight, with horrific consequences.

 Finally, In a Cup of Tea is a more playful, slightly meta story where a writer tells the story of a samurai who drinks another man's soul in a cup of tea, leading to a fight with his ghost and his ghost retainers and a fun twist ending.

 This is a gorgeous, gorgeous film, with some staggeringly beautiful, complex sets accompanied by almost psychedelic matte paintings of the sky - sometimes there's eyes painted on them. It's got a very theatrical feel and many of the special effects are just lighting changes. Aggressively artificial and stagebound, but very effective.

 The film does tend to ramble on - even split into four stories, the pacing is a little glacial. I didn't mind it too much except on Hoichi the Earless, where a lot of the narration comes from Hoichi himself, singing the exposition along with his biwa; That got old pretty quickly.

 Other than the singing, though, Hoichi's segment is the clear standout; It's not just a great story (all of these are), but it's also the most transportive of the film's segments and the one that hits the hardest.

 The writing is stately and tries to convey the (beautiful) stories as respectfully as possible, which makes for a somewhat sedate film. It might not be particularly scary, but there's a reason these stories have survived a millennium or more - and this film more than half a century.

Onibaba

 "The Hole/ Deep and dark/ Its darkness has lasted since ancient times"

 Say the stately kanji superimposed over an open pit in the middle of a wind-stirred field of tall grass. Then the title comes on to cymbals and a discordant note, followed by a vigorous, jazzy theme.

 I've been meaning to watch Onibaba's for ages, as I like these old Japanese folk-drenched stories; but that's not quite what writer/director Kaneto Shindō had in mind; The film's a deeply fucked up but unjudgmental psychodrama about civilians caught up in other people's wars.

 It centres on two women - one middle-aged, with wild hair (Nobuko Otowa), and the other her young stepdaughter (Jitsuko Yoshimura). They're introduced ruthlessly murdering two fleeing soldiers -got to love that stark shot of blood splashing on the susuki grass- then stripping them and throwing the naked bodies into the pit. Later, they take the soldiers' arms and armour down to a local broker who'll sell the items back to the one warring army or the other; he pays them with a couple bags of millet, which the women take back to their hut. There's a nest of crows on their roof. How's that for symbolism?

 Kiyomi Kuroda's gorgeous black and white photography manages a lot of very striking images, with a lot of focus on the women's very expressive eyes.

 I guess it's a living. Barely. Hey, I'm not going to judge- I've seen enough samurai movies to know the effects of their wars on the peasantry. The film, luckily, underlines this; While the action never leaves this one field, the news from abroad are dire - Kyoto has fallen, and armies rove the land, killing and raping and taking, as armies do. The way it's described is near apocalyptic: "As if the earth had turned upside down." 

 Complications arrive when their neighbour Hachi (Kei Satō), who had been conscripted along with the young woman's husband, returns from the front lines a deserter. He brings bad news: the husband was killed by a mob when they tried to rob a farm. Later, he gleefully describes how he killed an enemy soldier while he was taking a shit in the bushes. This movie is bleak.

 In any case, Hachi soon starts sultrily coming on to the young woman. And despite him... well, being a complete dipshit who vents his sexual frustrations by screaming and running around in the fields like a lunatic, I guess he's the only man available so they quickly start boning. For a while I got worried the movie was going to go down a different path there.

Hachi piles on the charm.

 The older woman doesn't take it well - not because her stepdaughter is sleeping with a ne'er do well who lived while her son died, though she absolutely plays that card - but because she's worried that the girl will leave her for Hachi, and she needs the help to continue their line of work. And because she's also horny as fuck, and when she offers herself Hachi coldly turns her down; Brutal.

 And that's the main conflict here. A very (very) slight, but pretty cool supernatural element is introduced later, and steers the film towards its very cool, folk-horror-ish final destination.

 It's a simple, primal story set in a sort of amoral limbo bounded by the whispering, constantly shifting susuki grass. It's aged beautifully; I can see why so many consider it a classic.