A Black Cat in a Bamboo Grove

One of the movies that TCM ran last year for Halloween that I hadn't seen before is the Japanese ghost story Kuroneko. So I watched before it expired from my cloud DVR in order to be able to do a post on it this October.

The movie is set sometime during the samurai period; I don't think it mentions specifically when. It's a warring samurai period, however, which if I understand correctly would place it before the Edo period that began in 1600. There's an introductory scene of two women who live by themselves, a mother and wife of a man who's gone off, although more on that later. Their house is in the middle of nowhere, and a bunch of samurai show up, raping and killing the two women. After their deaths, a black cat passes by and licks them, apparently not realizing the two are dead.

Black cats apparently have some of the same supersitions attached in Japan as in the west, as we see the two women show up at the gates of one of the fortresses that dot the region since Japan isn't unified at this point. Of course, they didn't survive; these are just the ghosts or spirits of the two women, in a way that the Japanese would visualize such spirits. The samurai who killed them show up, and the women get their revenge by taking the samurai away from the fortress and killing them.

Cut to northern Japan, where a different part of the warring period is going. A man who looks like he's seen better days is being chased through the reeds by another man who is much better dressed. The two meet up and fight a duel to the death, with the peasant winning. That peasant, calling himself Gintoki, is, as you can eventually deduce, the man whose mother and wife are killed in the opening scene. He shows up back on his home turf, first stopping at his old house, which burned down after the women were killed. He's been away for several years fighting, so there are new people here who don't remember him.

The local chife, Minamoto, however, is impressed by Gintoko's courage, and gives Gintoko the task of finding those spirits who are showing up outside the fortress gates every night and doing away with them so that the people can be safe again. But what's going to happen when Gintoko finds out who the spirits really are?

Being a Japanese "horror" (really, supernatural) movie, Kuroneko has a decidedly different tone from Hollywood or even Hammer horror movies. On the one hand, that makes it an interesting watch. However, I also get the impression that it would probably help to be fairly familiar with both Japanese culture and history to get more of the subtler nuances of the movie. As a result, I didn't dislike the movie, but I can also see where other people are really going to enjoy it.

Having said that, Kuroneko is definitely quite well-made technically, with the black-and-white cinematography often being quite crisp and striking. So Kuroneko is definitely worth a watch for anybody who's a fan of horror movies.