Secret Chronicles of the Ghost Cat
Hiroku kaibyo-den
Directed by Tanaka Tokuzo
Starring: Koichi Uenoyama, Mitsuya Kamei, Akihisa Toda, Kojiro Hongo
The year is 1729 and Lord Tangonokami Nabeshime of Saga Prefecture has taken a fancy to the blind monk's sister, Sayo. Monk Matashichiro refuses to bow to Lord Nabeshime's lecherous interest in Sayo and so the Lord and his Chamberlain ultimately kill the monk. Sayo is then ordered to leave Saga the next morning, but instead she commits suicide by cutting open her stomach and asking her brothers cat Tama to lap her blood as she dies so that the cat can gain supernatural powers and curse the castle...
Ghost-cats / Avenging spirits, usually of wronged handmaidens, incarnated after their cats lap up their spilt blood, are a staple of Japanese ghost stories as well as that nation’s Classic Horror Cinema. Scores of Japanese kaibyo (or ghost-cat) films have been made since the silent era. Director Tokuzo Tanaka was an accomplished genre specialist (and veteran of many Zatoichi Blind Swordsman films). Here he spins his rip-roaringly macabre take on the ghost-cat mythos, a tale of the suicided sister of a murdered noble monk returning to avenge herself on the guilty Lord Nabeshima and his Samurai.
Directed by Tanaka Tokuzo, who began his film career as assistant director under Mizoguchi Kenji on "Rashomon" and "Ugetsu Monogatari", went on to direct "Demon of Oe Mountain", "The Betrayal” with Ichikawa Raizo, three of the original 60s Zatoichi films (including "Shin Zatoichi Monogatari"), the first and the tenth entries in the Nemuri Kyoshiro series, and numerous Yakuza and Ninja films.
REMASTERED Print
1969 - COLOR - 16:9 ANAMORPHIC WIDESCREEN - 83 MINS.
JAPANESE with OPTIONAL ENGLISH SUBTITLES
|
