Hot Picks

- There's No Such Thing as Zombies 2020

- Ready for My Close Up 2019

- Lost Cos 2023

- Sound of the Surf 2022

- The Stillness 2025

- Frankie Freako 2024

- The Texas Witch 2025

- Cannibal Mukbang 2023

- Bleeding 2024

- No Choice 2025

- Nahual 2025

- Bitter Souls 2025

- A Very Long Carriage Ride 2025

- The Matriarch 2024

- Oxy Morons 2025

- Ed Kemper 2025

- Piglet 2025

- Walter, Grace & the Submarine 2024

- Midnight in Phoenix 2025

- Dorothea 2025

- Mauler 2025

- Consecration 2023

- The Death of Snow White 2025

- Franklin 2025

- ApoKalypse 2025

- Live and Die in East LA 2023

- A Season for Love 2025

- The Arkansas Pigman Massacre 2025

- Visceral: Between the Ropes of Madness 2012

- The Darkside of Society 2023

- Jackknife 2024

- Family Property 2: More Blood 2025

- Feral Female 2025

- Amongst the Wolves 2024

- Autumn 2023

- Bob Trevino Likes It 2024

- A Hard Place 2025

- Finding Nicole 2025

- Juliet & Romeo 2025

- Off the Line 2024

- First Moon 2025

- Healing Towers 2025

- Final Recovery 2025

- Greater Than 2014

- Self Driver 2024

- Primal Games 2025

- Grumpy 2023

- Swing Bout 2024

- Dalia and the Red Book 2024

- Project MKGEXE 2025

- Two to One 2024

- Left One Alive 2025

- Burgermen 2020

- Conspiracy of Fear 2025

- The Haunting of Heather Black 2025

- The Caller 2025

- Talk of the Dead 2016

- A Killer Conversation 2014

- First Impressions Can Kill 2017

- Star Crash 1979

- Strangler of the Swamp 1946

Tokaido Yotsuya Kaidan

Ghost Story of Yotsuya
The Ghost of Yotsuya / Yotsuya Ghost Story in Tokaido

Japan 1959
produced by
Mitsugu Okura for Shintoho
directed by Nobuo Nakagawa
starring Shigeru Amachi, Noriko Kitazawa, Katsuko Wakasugi, Shuntaro Emi, Ryuzaburo Nakamura, Junko Ikeuchi, Jun Otomo, Hiroshi Hayashi, Shinjiro Asano, Arata Shibata, Kikuko Hanaoka, Hiroshi Sugi, Yozo Takamura, Nagamasa Yamada, Hiroshi Izumida, Koji Hirose, Midori Chikuma
screenplay by Masayoshi Onuki, Yoshihiro Ishikawa, based on the play by Nanboku Tsuruya, music by Chumei Watanabe

Ghost Story of Yotsuya

review by
Mike Haberfelner

Quick Links

Abbott & Costello

The Addams Family

Alice in Wonderland

Arsène Lupin

Batman

Bigfoot

Black Emanuelle

Bomba the Jungle Boy

Bowery Boys

Bulldog Drummond

Captain America

Charlie Chan

Cinderella

Deerslayer

Dick Tracy

Dick Turpin

Dr. Mabuse

Dr. Orloff

Doctor Who

Dracula

Edgar Wallace made in Germany

Elizabeth Bathory

Emmanuelle

Fantomas

Flash Gordon

Frankenstein

Frankie & Annette Beach Party movies

Freddy Krueger

Fu Manchu

Fuzzy

Gamera

Godzilla

Hercules

El Hombre Lobo

Incredible Hulk

Jack the Ripper

James Bond

Jekyll and Hyde

Jerry Cotton

Jungle Jim

Justine

Kamen Rider

Kekko Kamen

King Kong

Laurel and Hardy

Lemmy Caution

Lobo

Lone Wolf and Cub

Lupin III

Maciste

Marx Brothers

Miss Marple

Mr. Moto

Mister Wong

Mothra

The Munsters

Nick Carter

OSS 117

Phantom of the Opera

Philip Marlowe

Philo Vance

Quatermass

Robin Hood

The Saint

Santa Claus

El Santo

Schoolgirl Report

The Shadow

Sherlock Holmes

Spider-Man

Star Trek

Sukeban Deka

Superman

Tarzan

Three Mesquiteers

Three Musketeers

Three Stooges

Three Supermen

Winnetou

Wizard of Oz

Wolf Man

Wonder Woman

Yojimbo

Zatoichi

Zorro

Samurai Iemon (Shigeru Amachi) loves Iwa (Katsuko Wakasugi) and wants to marry her - but her father (Shinjiro Asano) won't permit it, instead only mocks Iemon - to such an extent that Iemon slays him in a fit of rage. Now that wasn't a good idea, especially when it comes to his plans of marrying Iwa, and what's worse still, there was a witness to the scene, Naosuke (Shuntaro Emi). But unexpectedly, Naosuke turns out to be a blessing for Iemon, as he helps him against his better knowledge to put the blame on someone else, a certain Usaburo.

Why? Because Naosuke is in love with Iwa's sister Sode (Noriko Kitazawa), and just like with Iemon and Iwa, Iwa and Sode's father was the stumbling block here. However, Naosuke is from a lower caste, and Sode's brother (Ryuzaburo Nakamura), too, would never allow her to marry him - so Naosuke persuades Iemon to help him kill the brother. Which they do while they're on an expedition to track down Usaburo, the murderer of Iwa's father. And because it's just so convenient, the two of them put the blame for this murder on Usaburo as well.

Years have passed, Iemon and Naosuke have long parted ways, each with the woman he longed for, and Iemon and Iwa had a son, while Sode still refuses to have sex with Naosuke, not before her brother and father are avenged - and eventually, Iemon even kills the totally innocent Usaburo, just to get into his wife's panties.

In the meantime, Iemon has gotten tired of his impoverished life, and when he meets with Naosuke once more, he helps him get romantically involved with Ume Ito (Junko Ikeuchi), daughter of a gouvernment official who could grant Iemon a good position should he marry his daughter. Iemon would love to, but there's still Iwa, but how to get rid of her, unless ...

Naosuke, always the schemer, makes up a perfect scheme to poison her, then put the blame on a masseur (Jun Otomo) who had the hots for her, and slay him as well, to make it look like a crime of jealousy. The plan, put into effect on the day of Iemon's wedding to Ume no less, works like a charm, and when they nail Iwa and the masseur to a shutter and sink them in a nearby lake, which should be the end of them ... but it isn't: In his wedding night, the ghosts of Iwa and the masseur return to Iemon to haunt him, and they trick him into killing Ume and her parents. Once Iemon realizes what he has done, he goes into hiding.

Then Iwa appears to Naosuke and Sode, and he is so shocked that he confesses everything. Iwa then leads Sode, who doesn't yet know she is a ghost, to their brother, who has survived Iemon and Naosuke's attempt on his life after all and unbeknowest to everyone. Sode and her brother decide to have their revenge on Iemon.

Naosuke pays a visit to Iemon to warn him and tries to persuade him to leave this part of the country to start somewhere else anew - but Iemon kills him in a fit of rage. Then Sode and her brother show up to have a showdown, and it looks as if Iemon would have the upper hand - until the spirits of all those he has killed appear to him, make him lose his cool and ultimately make him run into his adversaries' swords ...

 

Roughly the frist half of this film looks like nothing other than your typical samurai tale of honor and betrayal. The whole thing is told and directed in a rather old-fashioned way , which doesn't hurt its rather traditional story one bit, but doesn't exactly suggest too much promise either. It's about halfway through the film when the tone changes with Naosuke and Iemon starting to plot Iwa that the film starts getting a life of its own, and when the poison horribly distorts Iwa's face (depicted in quite a gruesome manner), the film reaches a level of the macabre from which it never again descends and which is supported by many an imaginative (and sometimes quite gory) shock scene. Especially the last third of the movie, in which Iemon is hanted by the spirits of his wife and her masseur, is pretty impressive and quite creepy.

Recommended, actually!

 

review © by Mike Haberfelner

 

Feeling lucky?
Want to
search
any of my partnershops yourself
for more, better results?
(commissions earned)

The links below
will take you
just there!!!

Find Ghost Story of Yotsuya
at the amazons ...

USA  amazon.com

Great Britain (a.k.a. the United Kingdom)  amazon.co.uk

Germany (East AND West)  amazon.de

Looking for imports?
Find Ghost Story of Yotsuya here ...

Thailand  eThaiCD.com
Your shop for all things Thai


Thanks for watching !!!

 

 

In times of uncertainty of a possible zombie outbreak, a woman has to decide between two men - only one of them's one of the undead.

 

There's No Such Thing as Zombies
starring
Luana Ribeira, Rudy Barrow and Rami Hilmi
special appearances by
Debra Lamb and Lynn Lowry

 

directed by
Eddie Bammeke

written by
Michael Haberfelner

produced by
Michael Haberfelner, Luana Ribeira and Eddie Bammeke

 

now streaming at

Amazon

Amazon UK

Vimeo

 

 

 

Robots and rats,
demons and potholes,
cuddly toys and
shopping mall Santas,
love and death and everything in between,
Tales to Chill
Your Bones to

is all of that.

 

Tales to Chill
Your Bones to
-
a collection of short stories and mini-plays
ranging from the horrific to the darkly humourous,
from the post-apocalyptic
to the weirdly romantic,
tales that will give you a chill and maybe a chuckle, all thought up by
the twisted mind of
screenwriter and film reviewer
Michael Haberfelner.

 

Tales to Chill
Your Bones to

the new anthology by
Michael Haberfelner

 

Out now from
Amazon!!!