Three Outlaw Samurai (Japan, 1964)

When poor peasants kidnap a magistrate's daughter to coerce him into reducing taxes, a wandering ronin and two renegades from the magistrate's guard take up the fight for them.

Akira Kurosawa made pure magic with the jidaigeki genre, but alongside him there was a ton of samurai era films being produced and while maybe not as prolific as his, they were every bit as worthy of praise. Hideo Gosha's Three Outlaw Samurai was an origin-story offshoot of a Japanese television show and delivers everything that's great about the genre; cinematography that enhances and strengthens the Edo period sets, great justice-driven characters and stylish sword fighting. A great film for samurai enthusiasts that proves there were a lot of big players in this genre.

Genre: Action/Drama

Onibaba (Japan, 1964)

Two women kill samurai and sell their belongings for a living. While one of them is having an affair with their neighbor, the other woman meets a mysterious samurai wearing a bizarre mask.

Director Kaneto Shindo made Onibaba a couple of years before his 1968 film Kuroneko, and while they certainly share a few plot points, they're very different overall. While motion picture in color were dominant, Shindo wanted to shoot the film in black and white in order for the essence of the story to reach the viewer. He studied under the legend Kenji Mizoguchi (Ugetsu), and worked as his assistant during the late 1930's, and wrote tons of scripts for a number of well-known directors. He later broke free from the Shochiku film studio and started his own company, Kindai Eiga Kyokai, which produced most of his films. With more creative freedom Shindo made his mark in cinema history, and based his new film on a bedtime Buddhist tale he heard from his mother. It also, coincidentally or not, reminds one of an ancient Japanese saying: "What I thought was a ghost was merely dried grass," referring to the susuki grasses. 

This is what Shindo said in an interview in 1972,

"Yes, the tall, swaying reeds are my symbol of the world, the society which surrounds people, In Kuroneko bushes are used for the same symbolic end. 〚...〛My eyes, or rather the the camera's eyes, is fixed to view the world from the lowest level of society, not from the top."

Onibaba tells a lot of its story with its awesome atmosphere, the reeds swaying in the wind and the thickets almost seem to hide something malicious and wether it's samurai thugs or a much more sinister truth, it's up to the viewer to find out. 

Alternative film poster.

Genre: Drama/Horror. 1h 43min.

Kwaidan (Japan, 1964)

Kwaidan contains four seperate ghost stories, and all of them has roots in old Japanese folk tales. Black Hair: a poor samurai who divorces his true love to marry for money, but finds the marriage disastrous and returns to his old wife, only to discover something eerie about her. The Woman in the Snow: stranded in a snowstorm, a woodcutter meets an icy spirit in the form of a woman who spares his life on the condition that he never tell anyone about her. Hoichi the Earless: Hoichi is a blind musician, living in a monastery who sings so well that a ghostly imperial court commands him to perform the epic ballad of their death battle for them. But the ghosts are draining away his life, and the monks set out to protect him by writing a holy mantra over his body to make him invisible to the ghosts. In a Cup of Tea: a writer tells the story of a man who keep seeing a mysterious face reflected in his cup of tea.

For me, the most striking things with Kwaidan aren't the creepy stories, it's the sets and the beautiful matte paintings that I'll remember long after the film is over. The haunting atmosphere is thick, and because the film is made up of four stories instead of one it never feels like it outstays its welcome even though it's three hours long. Directed by Masaki Kobayashi two years after his thought-provoking and original samurai film Harakiri, he by far proved he's one of the heavyweights in Japanese cinema. One of the most classic and eerily captivating ghost anthologies in film history, a crash course in Japanese folklore and full of lush set design, Kwaidan proves to be a true force when it comes to all sorts of spectres, and a stunning work of art.

Genre: Drama/Fantasy/Horror

Pale Flower (Japan, 1964)

Muraki, a hardboiled Yakuza gangster, has just been released from prison after serving a sentence for murder. Revisiting his old gambling haunts, he meets Saeko, a striking young upper-class woman who is out seeking thrills, and whose presence adds spice to the staid masculine underworld rituals. Muraki becomes her mentor while simultaneously coping with the shifts of power that have affected the gangs while he was interred. 

Pale Flower is a stylish and seriously cool film that takes place in the city's underworld among dangerous yakuza thugs that all have one common passion: playing cards. Beautifully shot, and the bright white mixed with the pitch black is mesmerizing. 

Genre: Crime/Thriller.