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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!
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