Ghost in the Regiment (1958)

aka The Military Policeman and the Ghost

Original title: 憲兵と幽霊

Imperial Japan during World War II. The vile Lieutenant Namishima (Shigeru Amachi, who does “vile” oh so well) lusts after Akiko (Naoko Kubo), notwithstanding her new marriage to a colleague named Tazawa (Shoji Nakayama). Namishima is a patient man, willing to wait for an opportunity to destroy Akiko’s husband, though. A year or so later, that opportunity comes when important military documents disappear out of the hands of one of Namishima’s underlings. Why not, Namishima suggests, frame the husband of a certain woman for that loss? Underling, only too willing to save his own skin, does of course agree. In truth, it is Namishima himself who is selling secrets to the Chinese, adding double evil to the whole affair.

This being Imperial Japan, the denunciation of Tazawa leads to the torture and execution of Namishima’s rival. Namishima now starts on a campaign of making himself indispensable to Akiko, while at the same time subtly destroying her few remaining prospects. Eventually, he’s going to get her drunk, rape her, play house with her for a while and drop her like a hot potato.

There’s a number of other sins to be committed, of course, but while Namishima is still committing them, he begins to be haunted by the crucified ghost of Tazawa and his increasing number of other victims. This will be an important part of Namishima’s downfall, as will the more worldly fact that Tazawa’s brother never believed in his guilt and has become a military policeman to prove the dead man’s innocence.

Kaidan and horror maestro Nobuo Nakagawa’s Ghost in the Regiment is a sometimes uncomfortable watching experience. There’s nothing at all wrong with the film’s basic idea of putting the narrative of a classic kaidan into more contemporary surroundings, particularly since the kind of kaidan that’s all about a man committing terrible deeds for power and lust until he’s finally brought down either by guilt or ghosts always feels like a timeless mode of storytelling, fitting every society based on injustice.

There’s just as little wrong with Nakagawa’s treatment of the supernatural. Even this early in his career as a horror filmmaker, he is an absolute master at letting filmic reality drift into a weirder space, creating an eerie mood out of simple effects, deep shadows and camerawork that suggests wrongness without hitting an audience over the head with it. He’s so good at it, the possibility of the hauntings only taking place in Namishima’s mind seems to be neither here nor there when thinking about their reality as parts of the movie.

The film’s problem, and what makes it an at times difficult watch, at least in my eyes, is its treatment of its World War II setting. There seems to be at least a tacit approval of Imperial Japan and its culture of “honour” as a whole. It’s particularly unpleasant that the film treats Namishima’s position as a Chinese spy as the worst and most despicable thing ever, even suggesting he’s responsible for Japan losing the war – in a tone that suggests the fascists not winning World War II to be a bad thing.

On the other hand, the kaidan plot does implies that the structures and values which brought us the Axis powers are exactly what enables men like Namishima to come to the power and influence they crave and need to destroy lives (which is as much of an obvious truth as you’ll encounter in history) for their own amusement. There’s never much of an impression of the film seeing the giant gap between these two positions, and most certainly never an attempt to somehow play these positions against one another in any productive manner.

This doesn’t mean Ghost in the Regiment isn’t a highly effective, worthwhile kaidan, but it did leave me at least somewhat sceptical about what it actually tries to say about the setting is chose, and sometimes uncomfortable for reasons other than its tale of ghosts and very bad men.

Vampire Moth (1956)

Original title: Kyuketsuga

Fashion designer Asaji Fumiyo (Asami Kuji) and her stable of in-house models come under dire threat. A shadowy man with a badly disfigured face and a very characteristic set of teeth whom the film will call the “wolf man” (with a good understanding of the European conception of the werewolf as interpreted by Hollywood) because of these strange and creepy biters blackmails Fumiyo for something. He’s also not at all against committing a peculiar murder or two, especially when it means he gets to play with the legs of models. He’s apparently only interested in the legs, too, for the rest of the body of his first victim is returned to sender in a packing crate, with a big moth positioned over one nipple. And hey, he’s also sending moth-themed cake, so he can’t be all bad, right?

Given the moth-obsession, one might suggest our wolf man could somehow be connected with an elderly moth specialist who has the habit of visiting fashion shows to glare at the models and sneer at the fashion. That guy even lives in a moth-themed creepy mansion. For the first half of the film, a fashion company man (the film seems to dislike actually using character names, so your guess is as good as mine) and model Yumi (Kyoko Anzai) are trying to understand what the heck is going on the amateur detective way. Pretty much at the movie’s halfway mark, their job is taken over by legendary consulting detective Kosuke Kindaichi (Ryo Ikebe). He’s obviously got his work cut out for him.

About half the sources on the English language net I’ve seen seem to mix up this adaptation of one of Seishi Yokomizo’s Kozuke Kindaichi detective novels with The Ghost Man, a different 50s Kindaichi movie. It’s an easy mistake to make when you can only go by secondary sources, for the plots of both films do have rather similar set-ups. As with The Ghost Man, I can’t say if the different tone and style of the film to the Kindaichi books which have been translated into English is actually coming from the adaption or Yokomizo’s source. I can at least say that I find the film’s suave version of Kindaichi a bit bland compared to later movie versions of the character as well as the books in the series I have been able to read.

While they start out somewhat similarly, Vampire Moth does become increasingly different from the other movie. While they share a pulpiness in plotting and their approach to the mystery genre, the film at hand does contain no relevant nudity apart from a couple not quite bared breasts, and director Noboru Nakagawa downplays the proto ero guro elements he could have used.

Instead, Nakagawa – well-known for some brilliant kaidan movies in those parts of the West who care about old Japanese horror films – does dial up the spookiness whenever possible, using all the tricks of the creepy trade that stand him so well in his ghost movies. As usually, these are very much of a kin with the techniques of gothic horror used in Italian black and white movies of the same era, while also keeping to the slick visual standards of Japanese studio films of this and later times. There’s an absolutely incredible sequence where we follow our amateur detectives and the moth fan’s servant through a series of creaking doors through a mansion that’s all shadows and moth-fixated art, as if we were walking through a mind that becomes increasingly decrepit and weird, until our protagonists and we find another corpse. There are also fine macabre set-pieces concerning a pair of dancing legs, as well as a highly improbable and confusing plot to enjoy, where counting the number of villains and their actual identities can become too much for the armchair detective in front of the screen, and so adds to the strangeness of the film as well.

The Japanese gothic is only half of the film, however, for it seems highly interested in contrasts between the gothic and the high fashion modern (quite clearly following a parallel development to the giallo in another of these regular parallels between Japanese and Italian genre film). To my eyes, Nakagawa’s style often suggests the gothic, the macabre and the strange as the repressed underside of the glitter and the light, embodying all the ugly, unpleasant and nasty things the high modern won’t admit into their world. Until the repressed violently drags them into its world, of course.

Which isn’t at all a bad impression to achieve for a pulpy pot boiler of a macabre mystery movie that’s twenty years older than the guy watching it.

In short: Snake Woman's Curse (1968)

A cruel landlord drives the elderly farmer Yasuke to his death. Afterwards, he takes Yasuke's wife and daughter on as house servants. The wife is mistreated, worked nearly to death and finally kicked into a heap of wood, resulting in a deadly wound to the head.

The daughter is mistreated, worked nearly to death, raped twice by the landlord's son and afterwards rejected by her fiancé with the nice question why she didn't kill her rapist (who is about twice her weight). Not surprisingly, her mother's ghost suggests suicide as the best way to have less trouble. The daughter agrees.

Afterwards, the family's ghosts drive the evil bastards to madness and death. Only the fiancé is allowed to live, probably out of a misguided sense of sentimentality.

Snake Woman's Curse is one of Japanese ghost story specialist Nobuo Nakagawa's lesser films. The melodrama might be effective (and oh, do we want the evil bastards to die), but is still too heavy for my tastes. It's like the emotional version of torture porn - after a while, you start to shrug and wish the film would get on with its business.

Visually there is little of Nakagawa's usual stylish use of colored lighting and shadow on display. It is competently made, but lacks personal flair.

 

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