Audience Member
When a poor farmer named Yasuke dies, all of his fields are taken — legally if not ethically — by landlord Chobei Onuma. That man now takes Yasuke's wife Sue and daughter Asa as servants to work off his debt, an action that introduces Chobei to the ghost of the farmer. He orders their home destroyed and a gigantic snake appears before being killed — a bad omen in Japanecultureure and but the start of the curse.
Asa and Sue are abused not only by Chobei but also by his Masae and son Takeo. Sue tries to protect another snake but pays for that act with her life, leaving her mother alone to deal with the sexual advances of her new master's son. Yet the ghosts haven't left and while rich men may rule the physical world, they have no say over the supernatural one.
Directed by Nobuo Nakagawa (Jigoku) and written by Fumi Konami (Female Prisoner #701: Scorpion), this may not be the all-out shock that later Japanese horror would spray all over the screen, but it has moments of eerie calm amongst the otherworldly.
Rated 2/5 Stars •
Rated 2 out of 5 stars
02/06/23
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Audience Member
Kind of a generic feudal era, Japanese drama that barely qualifies as horror until the last half hour. There are no real supernatural elements, so it's difficult to see this one as horror. So, if I'm not going to look at it as a horror movie, I suppose I'll look at it as a drama. And with that, it's still kind of underwhelming. It's basically an hour and a half of landlords tormenting farmers and workers by basically forcing them into slavery to pay off debts. It's not sleazy to appeal to that kind of audience, and it's not very emotional for those who want a deeper connect to the story. It's just kind of ho-hum. The ending is okay, with characters going insane, ghosts showing up (and they promise they'll eat dirt!), women looking like snakes, and a nice ending shot that felt out of place with the rest of the movie. I just didn't get much out of this movie, despite not really hating it either. It just came and went.
Rated 2/5 Stars •
Rated 2 out of 5 stars
01/25/23
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Audience Member
I wanted this to live up to the lurid title and I was let down in a big way, unfortunately. Instead of snakes attacking people or freaky ghosts grabbing unsuspecting victims, I get a ghostly apparition appearing and croaking out lines from earlier in the film, slowly driving someone mad, which just isn't all that exciting to me.
Rental? Maybe?
Rated 2/5 Stars •
Rated 2 out of 5 stars
02/07/23
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Audience Member
??????was one of the later films in Nakagawa's filmography, during his prime as a director of Japanese horror. Not as visceral as "Jigoku" or as creepy as "Yotsuya Kaidan", "Snake Woman's Curse" is a little on the weaker run-of-the-mill side on the storytelling. We've seen these locations before, and seen the characters in similar movies.
Rated 3/5 Stars •
Rated 3 out of 5 stars
01/18/23
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Audience Member
Nobuo Nakagawa's return to the Kaidan/Ghost Story genre after career shifts, Snake Woman's Curse is a terrifically stylized tale of supernatural revenge with psychological, gender & class elements. Reflecting its turbulent time of production in the late `60s, he calls into question the merits of modernity and development in the similar Meiji period. He does this often by using the symbolic form of it's tokens: Western furnishings, dress and hats, the wheel of the Landlord's carriage, and the spinning wheel & loom.
The gender and class inequality of changing times is represented in technique as well. The introductory establishing shot mats the 2.35:1 frame down to a narrow band which depicts the pastoral idyll as a traditional, scroll-like screen.
This is quickly followed by the Landlord emerging from a tunnel by carriage. This scene is shot with alternating high-angle and handheld shots of the dramatic humiliation of the old farmer narrowly avoiding being crushed beneath the unstoppable progress of the carriage wheel. The old man pleads, "Landlord. Even if I have to eat dirt, I'll pay you back." This line, as well as the aforementioned implements, will come to ironic use later.
Another great sequence that calls the viewer to question the value of modernity is a tragicomic one. Two lovers in close-up are confessing the landowner's abuse which has doomed them. The camera pulls back to place them in a seated-level shot reminiscent of Ozu, but revealing a group of comic relief characters framed in an open doorway like a reflection of the movie theater audience itself. This proxy audience then comments on what seems at their distance to be a "Love Scene", jokingly practicing their English pronunciation and laughingly chiding the tearful couple.
The framing device is repeated in another sequence with a Shinto priestess acting as a medium to the departed that is at first reminiscent of that near the end of Rashomon. The Landlord has supernatural visions which include the sight of his family altar retreating into the wall as if down the tunnel of the film's beginning and (near) end.
The return of the repressed is not really the dominant theme here, but fans of classic American horror should find this film easily accessible and fun. Particularly those sick of the many terrible U.S. re-makes of recent J-Horror.
To me this film seems like a condensation and refinement of the four early films that Nakagawa did before his terrific version of the classic Tokaido Yotsuya Kaidan and his personal masterpiece, Jigoku/Hell, (available in an excellent Criterion edition). The dvd of Snake Woman's Curse also includes a sporadic but highly insightful commentary track by UC Irvine's Jonathan M. Hall, a gallery of wild vintage poster art, and a director bio by Chris Desjardins.
Rated 4/5 Stars •
Rated 4 out of 5 stars
01/26/23
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Audience Member
I wish there was more going for this but the very last shot is worth it.
Rated 3.5/5 Stars •
Rated 3.5 out of 5 stars
02/06/23
Full Review
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