1968 • Japan • Directed by Noriaki Yuasa
What do you get when Noriaki Yuasa, director of Daiei Studios’ much-beloved Gamera series, makes a monochrome film adaptation of the works of horror manga pioneer Kazuo Umezu (The Drifting Classroom)? The answer is 1968’s The Snake Girl and the Silver-Haired Witch, a fantastically phantasmagorical slice of twisted tokusatsu terror ostensibly made for children that will irreparably traumatise any child that sees it! A young girl named Sayuri is reunited with her estranged family after years in an orphanage – but trouble lurks within the walls of the large family home. Her mother is an amnesiac after a car accident six months earlier, her sullen sister is confined to the attic and a young housemaid dies inexplicably of a heart attack just before Sayuri arrives… is it all connected to her father’s work studying venomous snakes? And is the fanged, serpentine figure that haunts Sayuri’s dreams the same one spying on her through holes in the wall? This rarely-screened, nightmarishly disorienting creepshow not only displays a seldom-seen side of kaiju auteur Yuasa, but its skilful blending of Umezu’s comics (published in English-language markets as Reptilia) arguably anticipates many of the trends seen in J-horror decades later.
Up Next in 60s Cult
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The Strange World of Coffin Joe
1968 • Brazil • Directed by José Mojica Marins
The Strange World of Coffin Joe is an anthology horror film hosted by Zé do Caixão featuring three short films directed by José Mojica Marins which feature a strange dollmaker, a necrophiliac balloon seller with a foot fetish, and a psychotic profes...
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The Third Eye (Italian version)
1966 • Italy • Directed by Mino Guerrini
Mino, a young count who lives with his dominant and jealous mother, begins in a downward spiral into madness after his fiancée, Laura, dies in an accident.
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The Threat
1966 • Japan • Directed by Kinji Fukasaku
IMPRISONED IN HIS OWN HOME!
The Threat is a gritty crime drama in the vein of Kurosawa's High and Low, set against the backdrop of a rapidly modernising Japan that has left many of its citizens behind.
Misawa (Rentarō Mikuni, Fugitive from the Past, Ve...
