Best of the best in Japanese horror.
A poor elderly woman and her daughter-in-law murder missing samurai and sell their property for the barest of rations deep in the windswept marshes of war-torn medieval Japan. The trio’s precarious life is threatened by lust, jealousy, and wrath when a battered neighbor returns from fight, but an evil demon mask seals their horrible fate. Kaneto Shindo’s terrifying folktale Onibaba, which is fueled by primordial emotions, dark eroticism, a frantic score by Hikaru Hayashi, and magnificent pictures that are both poetic and gruesome, evokes a nightmare vision of humankind’s most primal urges and desires.
