‘We’ll have a good story to tell,’ one woodcutter blithely tells another in Tokuzō Tanaka’s philosophically rich ghost story; it’s one of three supernaturally-themed stories told in a new boxed-set from Radiance, Daiei Gothic – Japanese Ghost Stories (LE). Providing the rather startling image for the cover, The Snow Woman is the first disc out of the box, namely because it’s a known quantity; it’s adapted from Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things, published back in 1904 by Lafcadio Hearn. The narrative, adadapted here by Fuji Yahiro, was one of the four stories featured in portmanteau movie Kwaidan in 1964, and I’ve covered that haunting masterpiece here. But there’s more than one way for a wood-cutter to get lost in the forest, and this 1968 version of The Snow Woman is every bit as hypnotic and timeless…..
…Read the Full Article @ Film Authority