Samurai Horror Tales is a collection of
three classic Japanese horror stories brought to life in animation
by three different directors. The stories they picked for this
series are: Yotsuya Ghost Story, Goddess Of The Dark Tower, and
Goblin Cat. The show is structured like a anthology horror show like
you would see in sonething like Showtime's “Masters Of Horror”.
I'm going to do something a little different with this review as I'm
going to talk about each feature individually as if each feature were
its own thing. So let's dig deeper into this dark hole of a review
(ghost sounds). (Click "Read More" for the rest of the review).
Yotsuya Ghost Story (Directed by
Tetsuo Imazawa)
Our first tale is about the horror of Oiwa's Curse and the origin of
how it came to be. This part of the trilogy is hosted and narrated
by the ghost of Nanboku Tsuruya the fourth (who wrote the original
play) not actual ghosts however as we have no way of resurrecting the
dead...yet (I hope you have a zombie plan). I really enjoyed them
adding in these host segments as it added a nice touch of charm that
you would've seen in HBO's “Tales From The Crypt”.
The main feature tells a sad story of a wonderful relationship gone
sour when a ronin named Tamiya falls in love with the beautiful Oiwa.
The first tragedy happens before they are wed when Tamiya murders
Oiwa's father in the middle of an open field but he isn't the only
one doing a bit of midnight slashing. Naosuke is a man obsessed with
Oiwa's prostitute sister Osode who keeps rejecting him no matter if
he pays for her services or not (the selfish bitch). Naosuke just
happens to kill a man that he thinks was Osode's fiance only a few
feet away from where Tamiya was murdering Oiwa's father. The two of
them notice each-other and have a friendly chat about the people they
killed and exchanging advice on how to dispose of a corpse. Oiwa and
Osode turn up in shock to see their loved ones sliced up into
unrecognizable piles of meat. Tamiya and Naosuke turn up to comfort
them saying they will avenge their deaths even though they were the
murderers. Oiwa and Osede don't suspect anything from the two and
rely on Tamiya to do the task. They refuse any help from Naosuke as
he is no relation but Naosuke takes advantage of this and proposes
marriage to Osode so he can qualify to avenge their deaths but this
is a mere excuse to have Osode all for himself. Osode accepts and
then the story flashes forward to when Tamiya and Oiwa are married
but even though they seem happy the worse is yet to come for the
couple.
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| I have money! |
Oiwa gives birth to a beautiful baby and Tamiya feels very irate
about it so he goes to a bar to drink. Oiwa then receives a gift
from the very rich Ito Kihei which turns out to be medicine for
post-natal depression. Tamiya returns home and Oiwa shows him the
gift she got and sends Tamiya out to give Ito their thanks. When
Tamiya shows up to Ito's place he is offered a fair amount of gold to
marry his granddaughter which Tamiya accepts (what a dog). It cuts
back to Oiwa as she is drinking her medicine but something terrible
happens as she drinks it as the medicine ended up being a poison that
horrible disfigures faces. Tamiya returns to see Oiwa one last time
only to abandon her and their child which sends Oiwa into madness and
she runs around the room only to trip and decapitate her head on a
displayed sword. Tamiya nails her lifeless body to a door and throws
her into a river and proceeds to live life with his second wife but
as soon as he is about to make love to his new love, the ghost of
Oiwa shows up and curses him forever. Tamiya is scared out of his
mind and starts slashing at her with his sword but as the ghost fades
he sees something very shocking as he ended up murdering his new
family. Tamiya now wanders around trying his best not to let the
curse beat him but will he succeed?
Out of the trilogy of tales this one was the weakest one. The story
wasn't too bad but it was a little hard to sit through as the scenes
just dragged out longer than what I would like. The final act of
this story ends with the host giving creepy facts about weird
coincidences about the play and boy do they creep me right the pluck
out making it even scarier than the main features and will mess with
your psyche for the rest of the night.
The animation and art style for this feature was very beautiful but
there were some inconsistency like when Oiwa clearly got her head
sliced off by the sword but then the next scene shows her with her
head attached like the sword had never touched her when you could
clearly see her head rolling in the previous scene. The English dub
was OK but there were some very laughably bad lines like “Tamiya:
I'm single. Random Lady: But aren't you married?” no joke they
have lines that are completely backwards like something you would see
out a classic film like “The Room”. OK maybe not that bad but
they were still pretty laughable. I can barely just recommend
watching this part of the trilogy just because of the host bits but
other than that I wouldn't recommend it as a stand alone so thank
goodness we got this as part of a trilogy. Moving on to the good
stuff we have...
Goddess Of The Dark Tower
(Directed by Kouzou Nagayama)
...Goddess of the Dark Tower is about bird keeper Zushonosuke
Himekawa who is entrusted by the misogynistic Lord Harima to retrieve
a white falcon (that flew away from them during a storm) in hopes to
bring peace between the surrounding towns. Zushonosuke sees that the
bird has flown to an abandoned castle that rumor say there are demons
taking residence in. On his way to inspect the surroundings of
castle he sees a beautiful naked woman bathing in a pool of water and
just stares at her admiring her beauty. The woman sees him and
doesn't seem to mind him watching. Zushonosuke then returns home
after and can't seem to get her out of his head and this worries his
wife to the point she gets jealous and refuses to let her man go back
to inspect the castle. Zushonosuke journeys to the castle anyway and
meets up with the beautiful woman and she chats to him about how the
castle isn't haunted by demons but by forgotten gods. After the
story they get attacked by actual demons and our hero ends up beating
them. The beautiful woman leaves and as soon as Zushonosuke tries to
continue his mission but the two demons regenerate and tell him how
they were only saving him from the beautiful woman as she is a
forgotten god and forgotten gods like to eat human flesh.
Zushonosuke is shocked and refuses to believe it and tries to
continue his mission but the demons interrupt again and offer helping
him get there in which he accepts.
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| The role of the demons are played by Bulk and Skull. |
Our gang then enter the castle but end up getting captured but get
lucky as the beautiful woman (which we find out her name is Tomihime)
lets them go. The other gods are not pleased and warns her if she
falls in love with a human it would mean the end for them all.
Zushonosuke ends up not leaving and tries to get the bird but
Tomihime refuses to give him the bird (insert middle finger pun).
Zushonosuke ends up confessing his love to her and Tomihime admits he
has the same feelings for him and they end up in bed together.
Zushonosuke's wife is worried about his safety and ends up going to
the castle herself but she wishes she never did when she sees her
husband with the beautiful goddess and runs off. Zushonosuke asks
Tomihime to run away with him but she refuses as her family needs her
as they are dying from lack of eating human flesh. Lord Harima gets
fed up with having the forgotten gods living in the castle and
decides to attack them and burn down the castle. How will this final
battle end?
 |
| Spooky |
Despite my crudely done description of the story this one was very
good and the strongest of the trilogy. The format for this feature
is pure supernatural romance unlike a “Tales From The Crypt” like
show the previous feature was. The romance between the bird keeper
and the goddess was very well done and very strong making me give a
huge damn about the relationship all the way to the very end. The
animation and artwork complimented the story very well adding to its
strong bind of a story. The dub (like Yotsuya Ghost Story) is
average and there are some laughable lines but not nearly as bad as
the previous feature. I recommend watching this one the most out of
the three.
Goblin Cat (Directed by Kenji
Nakamuru)
Our third and final feature of the trilogy is a original tale done
exclusively for this series and takes more of a hybrid form of
mystery, martial arts, and the TV show “Supernatural”. Our hero
of the story is a traveling medicine merchant (that is nameless but
for the sake of this review we shall call him “Medicine Merchant”)
who is trying to sell his goods to a servant that just happens to
wants to check out some sex toys and indeed our hero has some in
stock. The Medicine Merchant later gets told off as there is a
wedding about to take place then suddenly the bride gets murdered
with everyone suspecting our hero of the crime so they tie him up.
While Medicine Merchant is tied up more deaths happen and they all
hear some strange cat noises outside. He breaks free and determines
the deaths are being caused by a demonic spirit called Goblin Cat.
Everyone just laughs and think he is full of nonsense but our hero
continues to research this demon despite being laughed at. He finds
out that in order to kill this unholy beast he will have to kill it
with his magic sword that has the ability to kill demons but the
catch is that he needs to figure out why the Goblin Cat is attacking
people before the sword can be sheathed. Will he succeed or will he
become cat nip?
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| It's a good thing I can read brail ransom letters. |
I really enjoyed watching this one but the story does suffer from
having a mixture of anime and modern monster hunting movie cliches.
This doesn't ruin it by any means but it did hold it back from being
amazing. The Goblin Cat was a very terrifying thing to see but it
could have had more of an impact if they didn't spoil what the monster
looked like right on the DVD cover. The animation and artwork in
this one has a very modern shonen look and it worked very well with
it's modern storytelling. I did have an issue with some of the
lip-syncing in some scenes as it looked very stiff like I was
watching a play performed by people who have half-paralyzed faces
from having a stroke. The English dub in this one is just as average
as the other two but I liked the lines of dialogue better in this one
as the goofiness worked with what I was seeing happen on screen.
This one was the second best one of the trilogy and it was way better
than “Yotsuya Ghost Story” but it was also far from being way
better than “Goddess of the Dark Tower”. I'm going to give this
collection a “yes” rating but mainly for the last two features as
the first one was pretty average.
Title: Samurai Horror Tales
Animation Studio: Toei Animation
Genre: Animation/Anime, Horror
Running Time: 273 Minutes (11 Episodes)
Distributor: Siren Visual
Rating: M15+ (Animated Violence)
Price: $49.95
Recommended: Yes
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