GHOST STORY OF THE SEVEN WONDERS OF HONSHO (1957)
aka Kaidan Honsho nanafushigi
Article 4897 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 8-11-2015
Directed by Goro Kadono
Featuring Juzaburo Akechi, Namiji Matsuura, Shigeru Amachi
Country: Japan
What it is: Japanese ghost story

An evil nephew kills his uncle so he can take possession of his wife and his money. However, the uncle once spared the life of a Tunuki (a ghostly were-badger), and the Tunuki vows to help the uncle’s son get revenge.

Here’s another of the many ghost movies made in Japan during the fifties. This one runs only about fifty-five minutes and looks rather cheaply made. The story is pretty perfunctory, and it features some scenes that look pretty common for this sort of movie; once again, we have scenes of a man trying to attack the ghosts only to accidentally clear his own allies. Still, it has a fun assortment of weird-looking ghosts who manifest themselves in various ways. It also features a ghost I’ve seen in several other movies, and I hope someday to figure out if it’s a traditional Japanese ghost or the result of someone’s imagination; it looks for all the world like the “major prize” won by Darren McGavin in A CHRISTMAS STORY, which is to say, it’s a leg wearing a lampshade.