186 - Black Cat (Kuroneko), 1968, Japan. Dir. Kaneto Shindo.

Wednesday, July 5, 2017

186 - Black Cat (Kuroneko), 1968, Japan.  Dir. Kaneto Shindo.

Medieval Japan.

War time.

Yone and Shige are mother and daughter.  (We will find out later they are mother-in-law and daughter-in-law.)

A gang of Samurai appear.  They surround the house.

They enter.

They have their way with them.

They set the house on fire.

They leave.

They are so brutal with these women that they could qualify for General Sherman's army.

The women die in the fire.

A black cat crawls over their corpses.

They will return as ghosts on a mission to avenge their own deaths.

They begin to lure the Samurai back, one by one, to their bamboo grove, appearing as beautiful and available women in an idyllic home, in order to attack them, catlike, biting out their necks with their teeth.

Yone dances.  Shige bites.  Together they enact their revenge.

There is just one problem.

They have made a pact with the underworld to kill not only the Samurai who raped and killed them, but also all Samurai everywhere in Japan.

But Yone's son Gintoki, the husband of Shige, has just been promoted to Samurai for his bravery and success during the war.

And with this we have a dramatic conflict that seems impossible to solve.

Gintoki's superior officer has ordered him to kill the ghosts.  If he does not, he will be executed.

The underworld requires that Yone and Shige kill all Samurai.  If they do not, they will be taken directly to hell.

Gintoki does not yet know that Yone and Shige are the ghosts he is required to kill.

Yone and Shige do not yet know that Gintoki is now a Samurai.

The family members are bound by an unbreakable obligation to kill one another.

Yet they love one another.

Dearly.

And the rest of the movie deals with that conflict when Gintoki comes home from war.