Kwaidan (1964)
aka Ghost Stories
aka Kaidan
Genre: Drama | Fantasy | Horror
Country: Japan | Director: Masaki Kobayashi
Language: Japanese | Subtitles: English (Optional, embedded in Mkv file)
Aspect ratio: Cinemascope 2.35:1 | Length: 183mn
Bdrip H264 Mkv – 1280×534 – 23.976fps – 6.90gb
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0058279/
Audio 2: Commentary by Film Historian Stephen Prince
This film contains four distinct, separate stories.
“Black Hair”: A poor samurai who divorces his true love to marry for money, but finds the marriage disastrous and returns to his old wife, only to discover something eerie about her.
“The Woman in the Snow”: Stranded in a snowstorm, a woodcutter meets an icy spirit in the form of a woman spares his life on the condition that he never tell anyone about her. A decade later he forgets his promise.
“Hoichi the Earless”: Hoichi is a blind musician, living in a monastery who sings so well that a ghostly imperial court commands him to perform the epic ballad of their death battle for them. But the ghosts are draining away his life, and the monks set out to protect him by writing a holy mantra over his body to make him invisible to the ghosts. But they’ve forgotten something.
“In a Cup of Tea”: a writer tells the story of a man who keep seeing a mysterious face reflected in his cup of tea.
Thanks very much for including this. Film length, rather deliberate pacing, and the need to read subtitles may cross this off for some, but that will be their loss. This is an all-time classic of cinema, with some incredible art direction. If you like memorably eerie material, this is one that will stay with you. Some earlier prints circulating in the West had dropped the segment “Woman of the Snow” (a.k.a. Snow Witch) to cut the running time, and that was a real shame as it is one of the anthology’s highlights.