Summer of Demon (1981)
Genre : Drama, Horror
Runtime : 1H 36M
Director : Yukio Ninagawa
Synopsis
A former retainer to a noble family kills his wife's father when he tries to expose his past crimes. When he begins an affair with the daughter of another clan's retainer, her father tries to poison him but the substance instead claims an innocent victim...
While transporting a bride-to-be in a closed carriage (kago) while during a thunderstorm, a group of servants and onlookers suddenly come upon an apparition of a ghostly white-draped female figure floating down to the ground. As she turns to face the crowd, the woman reveals the disfigured right side of her face. As the procession stands in utter horror, the ghost then takes flight again and down a side street. After the shock wears off, the bride is checked on and everyone is safe in the group. Once the wedding party finally arrives at the groom's home, they apologize for the delay... and proceed to open the kago, only to realize that the bride-to-be is now missing... and all that's left in the carriage is a single white snake slithering about.
A master sculptor and his apprentice are trapped in a bad snow storm after finding a special tree for carving a statue for the local temple. Finding refuge in an abandoned hut they celebrate their luck in finding the tree but soon they are visited by the Snow Witch who freezes the sculptor to death but takes pity on the apprentice. He must promise to never speak of this or she'll return and kill him.
A samurai kills a blind man who tells him to repay his debts. Because of the samurai's actions his entire family is to bear a terrible curse.
1. A crash leaves a man dead, and his wife badly injured. Soon, he returns as a ghost to try to take her with him. 2. A caretaker wins the lottery thanks to the saucer spirit. Things begin to go wrong when he breaks his promise to it.
Horror film directed by Minoru Inuzuka.
A remake of Kaidan Saga yashiki (1953).
Nishina Saburouta is powerful but corrupted priest. One night, an old samurai who couldn't bear him any more, attempts to kill him, but without success. Saburouta is rescued by his niece, Keisuke at the last moment. Keisuke is a a good-for-nothing. Since that event, he always turns to his uncle when he needs money. Recently Keisuke feels his uncle isn't as generous as he used to be, he suspects that Saburouta has found out the illicit relation between Keisuke and his uncle's young mistress, Ohasu.
Follows the murder of a money-lending masseur by an impoverished samurai. The slain masseur's daughter will also fall victim to his curse, so that she can become empowered as an agent of her father's vengeance.
A woman loses her son through an evil conspiracy and commits suicide. Shortly afterwards a ghost cat begins haunting the conspirators. This is Takako Irie's first bakeneko (ghost cat) movie; it started a Daiei cycle which was very popular at the time in Japan.
Horror movie directed by Kokichi Uchide.
Horror film directed by Toshikazu Kôno.
Horror film directed by Eiichi Koishi.
A painter leaves his family to paint the homes of his rich clients. A lonely, ruthless samurai falls in love with the painter's wife and rapes her. He later murders the painter and his servants. From the afterlife, the painter's ghost seeks revenge on the samurai, and saves his wife and newborn child.
About 1786 the doings of a demented lord results in many masterless samurai, including Iyemon (Kei Sato) who is used to luxury and cannot adjust to the hand-to-mouth conditions & piecework of umbrella making. Having hired ruffians to make him look like a superior swordsman, he arranges for himself the opportunity of a profitable marriage. He hires the half-blind masseur Takuetsu (Sawamura Sounosuke) to seduce or rape his wife (Kyoko Mikage), so that she can be divorced or killed for adultery. But the masseur takes pity & informs Oiwa of her husband's horrid plot. Assisted by the merchant's daughter he intends to marry, Iyemon disfigures his wife attempting to poison her so he can marry higher. There's a lovingly gruesome sequence as she combs blad patches into her hair, kneeling deformed at her mirror, weeping with bitterness. She eventually cuts her own throat, swearing revenge.
Tanuma Kandayuu is a high class samurai of the house of Nabeshima. He finds a lavish board of Go (a Chinese Board game) at Kinbei's store. He recommend Kinbei to offer it to his lord. Kinbei hesitates at first, since he knows the board has a mysterious legend surrounding it; it's believed that for every game played on the board, one death is required.
Go master Matashichiro Ryuzoji, during the game, was killed in anger by the Lord of the Nabeshima clan, Hizen-no-kami. The mother of the murdered Matashichiro, Akishino, cursing the Nabeshima family, commits suicide. Akishino's spirit passes to Matashichiro's beloved cat, and the monster cat appears in front of Hizen-no-kami along with Matashichiro's ghost...
Horror film directed by Masamitsu Igayama.
A quintessential example of the period "ghost cat" (bakeneko or kaibyo) movie, this was one of at least six such titles released by the studio Shinko Kinema between 1937-40 featuring Japan's first scream queen, Sumiko Suzuki. Here she plays Mitsue, the possessive onna-kabuki actress betrothed to apprentice shamisen player Seijiro. When one day Okiyo, a beautiful young girl of samurai class, is led to Seijiro's house by his lost cat Kuro, she becomes besotted with him. Dark jealous passions are invoked in Mitsue, which are intensified when Seijiro gifts Okiyo his precious shamisen. The cat is the first to suffer at the end of Mitsue's hairpin, but returns from the grave to assist Okiyo's younger sister Onui avenge her sister's murder.
A power struggle in the fief of Okazaki causes the death of Namiji, a nobleman's daughter. As her fiancé seeks revenge, he finds Namiji's cat helping him. Co-starring Shintarô Katsu and Takako Irie.
Version of Botan Dōrō.
A comedy based on NBC's "People Are Funny" radio (and later television) program with Art Linkletter with a fictional story of how the program came to be on a national network from its humble beginning at a Nevada radio station. Jack Haley is a producer with only half-rights to the program while Ozzie Nelson and Helen Walker are the radio writers and supply the romance. Rudy Vallee, always able to burlesque himself intentional and, quite often, unintentional, is the owner of the sought-after sponsoring company. Frances Langford, as herself, sings "I'm in the Mood for Love" while the Vagabonds quartet (billed 12th and last) chimes in on "Angeline" and "The Old Square Dance is Back Again."
At the height of Reign of Terror Maximilien Robespierre orchestrates the trial and execution of several of his fellow leading French revolutionaries including Georges Danton.
Produced in 1943 under the guidance of Army Air Force Lieutenant Clark Gable, this film follows a single 8th Air Force B-17 crew from training through a series of missions over Europe.
Letters, Riddles and Writs is a one act opera for television by Michael Nyman broadcast in 1991.
Iskyss is a strong and poetic love story based on Gunvor Galtung Haavik’s double life through 30 years. During the Cold War, she was employed by the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and assigned to the Norwegian Embassy in Moscow. With the information she had access to in the capacity of her position as interpreter and secretary, she frequently fed the KGB secret information.
A girl has to decide who to marry: a poor country boy or a rich nightclub owner.
Moody, atmospheric ghost story starring Mason as a retired tradesman who purchases an old mansion that has been vacant for 40 years because it is believed to be haunted by the spirit of a young woman who had died there. Unaware of the mansion's reputation, Mason and his wife Mullen move in and hire a young woman, Lockwood, to keep house. Soon after Lockwood's arrival, strange things begin to happen in the household, and it becomes apparent that she is possessed by the spirit of the dead girl, though Mason scoffs at the idea. On death's door and bedridden, Lockwood asks for the same doctor who treated the woman who died 40 years ago. He arrives and treats her. The next morning Lockwood is cured, and it is revealed by the police that the doctor's dead body was found in his carriage hours before the time Mason claims he arrived to see Lockwood. Convinced that not only the ghost of the girl but that of the doctor as well entered his home, Mason finally believes in the supernatural.
A loving couple struggle to fend for themselves in modern day Los Angeles, One a loner and down and out, the other a lonely but hardworking secretary. Eventually, as cracks form in their passionate relationship, they resort to robbing an aging actress for money.
A filmmaker returns to Normandy thirty years after a working on a movie based on a local homicide and tries to find the actors who worked on the project.
This is not merely another film about cinema history; it is a film about the love of cinema, a journey of discovery through over a century of German film history. Ten people working in film today remember their favourite films of yesteryear.
The story of the Dassau family, a family of artists: Frau Dassau is a composer, her husband is a writer, and their children are equally gifted as painters, poets and musicians. But unfortunately, no one wants to invest money in their art. The family is about to starve when Nicole comes up with a marvelous idea: She is going to write the "most scandalous book", the sex memoirs of a teenager. For this, she hides under the pseudonym of Eva. The book becomes an enormous success indeed, but Nicole's parents are decent people, and the public interest in their sluttish daughter begins to bother them. Things begin to get even more unpleasant when Nicole falls in love with an American publisher who'd prefer a virgin…
Four nights in Caracas. A documentary essay about chaos and civilization.
On Christmas Eve, Léa and Juliette, a couple, want to rob a supermarket that Juliette knows is empty of surveillance on this festive evening. But, as much for each of them as for Eric, the vigil who is there after all, nothing will happen as planned. Besides, shortly before leaving him alone, the store manager gave Eric a gun, just in case.
While Douglas Coupland works on a grand art project about Canada, the writer recounts his life and his musings about the various aspects of Canadian identity.
I love Vienna is a social comedy that explores the clash of cultures and values.
Based on a story by Vietnam veteran Paul Staples, the film concerns six American Green Berets, held for 17 years in a Vietnamese POW camp. They are finally released in secret, during a delicate trade-talk session between Vietnam and the United States. Captain Tom Watkins, the ex-prisoners' CO, begins to suspect that government-man Adam Roth, who is in charge of the debriefing, may be pursuing a hidden agenda that will result in the early deaths of Watkins and the five men under his command.
A humorous and satirical comedy, which places a man from the year 2222 one day in the (then) present day life in GDR, East Germany under Communist regime. Using a crystal for mind reading he uncovers some improprieties and moral weaknesses in the "Beautiful future" professed by VEB ("Volkseigener Betrieb" – "State Owned Holdings").
The subject of this historical drama is a splintering Berlin in the years of 1948 and 1949. Played against the backdrop of social upheaval, the characters in the drama come to epitomize the best and worst of each pole of the political sphere. A 17-year-old hoodlum by the name of Gladow works hand-in-glove with a local white-collar criminal to rob and pillage every day and night, defying capture. While he and his gang of thugs are terrorizing the people of Berlin, the Soviets are trying to make the blockade of their region of control impermeable. The future casts long shadows over the drama, as Berlin's problems take the shape of times to come.
The same day of their marriage, Jean's wife dies of a strange ailment in the middle of surgery. Afflicted by the loss, the young man abandons his medical studies and takes refuge in the memories of his time of courtship. At the same time that this happens, a wave of murders shakes the city with the same pattern of behavior: the victims are surgery students whose bodies have had both hands amputated.