Kato's interpretation of this oft-told tale is so bone-chillingly realistic in the buildup that we can only believe in Oiwa's ghost-and root for her-in the end. Typically of Kato, the cast wore no makeup (we assume this excludes Oiwa following the poison she is given!) and the setting among the outcast and indentured of the Tokugawa shogunate gives nothing to fantasy. It is fantastic enough, as the impoverished samurai Iemon Tamiya (Tomisaburo Wakayama), whose wife Oiwa (Yoshiko Fujishiro) has left him, contrives to get her back, only to murder her when a more socially propitious marriage avails itself. Kato uses his wily camera to show Iemon-usually a tragic hero trapped in madness-in a grisly light. With it he spies on Iemon and Naosuke, Iemon's cohort in unrestrained misogyny; later, he traps him with an unrelenting, audacious circular shot of the director's own invention. (JB)