(1964)
Directed by Kaneto Shindo
Starring Nobuko Otowa, Jitsuko Yoshimura, Kei Sato, Taiji Tonoyama

Back in the days before the internet, horror reference books are where we learned about older movies. For me, Phil Hardy’s Encyclopedia of Horror (the title of the first version of the book I had) was very key into helping me discover a wide variety of titles from around the world. There was a shot from this movie in there, of a woman wearing a demon mask, with grinning mouth and wide eyes, that immediately made me want to know more about it. Eventually I would track down a copy and then understood why it was praised so much. When you are talking about classic Japanese horror cinema, this must be in the conversation.