Daiei Gothic: Volume 2


The iconography of classic horror films from the West is comforting in its familiarity: tilted headstones in a foggy graveyard, musty castle corridors and laboratories full of inexplicable equipment. But this library of imagery wasn’t completely universal (pun intended). In fact, Japanese horror, despite leaning on American and British tropes, built their monster universe on homegrown legends inhabiting a landscape of bamboo forests and spooky swamps, phantasms that stalked their victims in silhouette behind a translucent paper screens. Daiei Gothic: Volume Two collects three more films that explore the bizarre and pleasantly unfamiliar world of Japanese horror.

Demon of Mount Oe (1960) is the most formalized film in the trio. A loose retelling of the Shuten-dōji legend, it fuses period samurai adventure with a parade of grotesque monsters that feel equal parts mythic, psychedelic and kaiju-inspired…not to mention all the disembodied heads! It’s as if Kurosawa had been handed a pile of props from various genres and told to make a spectacle about guilt, true love, redemption and misguided vengeance. The result is stagey and theatrical, a “golden week” all-star production that gathered Daiei’s biggest stars for maximum audience impact.

The Haunted Castle (1969) brings things back down to earth, though the earth here is perpetually mist-covered and littered with angry spirits. A “ghost cat” story, part of a longstanding Japanese cinematic tradition, here a mistreated family places a curse on an evil lord whose concubines become possessed by a vengeful feline. This one offers up more than just atmosphere. Director Tokuza Tanaka stages effective jumps scares, high tension and full-on demonic body gymnastics that predates Sam Raimi’s similar techniques by a good 30 years. Creepy, classy and full of teeth, this one is easily the highlight of the set.

Ghost of Kasane Swamp (1970) rounds things out with a story as tragic as its title suggests. There’s not a single protagonist worth rooting for in this film that’s part ghost story, part melodrama and part yakuza morality lesson. It takes quite a while to get to the film’s spectral apparitions - half-seen reflections or ripples in the water. And when they finally do arrive, it’s less about supernatural shocks than the slow moral punishment of those who think they’ve escaped justice.

Horror reimagined through a lens of myth, vengeance and fate, Radiance’s set offers up something new for genre fans jaded by homogenized Halloween fare…and just in time for the upcoming season. Each film in this 4000-copy limited edition is newly restored in 4K with well-produced interviews and visual essays that explore the specific folktales adapted here. In fact, watching the extra beforehand provides a good refresher on just where these stories originated from and how embedded they are in Japanese culture. A limited-edition booklet tacks on more info as well.

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