Forces loyal to the Mikado are under assault from an army assembled by a demon who lives atop Mount Oe. There is chaos in the streets of the capital, and loyal samurai Shintarô Katsu has been attacked by the demon and cut off its arm.... only for it to show up inthe guise of his aunt and take it back. Three women seem to be key to the demon's downfall: Katsu's sister, who insists on spying on the demon herself, a disgraced woman passed around like a bottle of wine, and the women who is the demon.
At first I thought this was going to be another fantasy with swordplay, special effects that called attention to themselves and suitable for children. Well, the special effects were there: the clumsy camera halts for teleportation or the transformation of giant spiders into dead men, and rolls of streamers to turn into webs. It certainly had those, but it also had a fairly complicated plot as good guys struggled to remain good despite the worst their allies could do, and some lovely camerawork under the supervision of cinematographer Hiroshi Imai. I was particularly taken with his graceful, panning group shots, even if the mountain sites seemed to be set in abandoned quarries, like DOCTOR WHO. While the cheap special effects may put off the high-browed, it's a well written, directed and shot samurai movie.
