In Kaneto Shindô’s 1968 Kuroneko (“Black Cat”), a beguiling supernatural horror-romance that doesn’t seem to belong to either genre, the spirit world not only co-exists with the material world, but is literally carved into it, like a secret portal or booby trap. Set in a feudal Japan where samurai are more scourge than savior to the peasant class, the film opens with a harrowing scene of weary warriors invading a country home, raping and murdering the two women inside, and burning it to the ground. When the victims return as vengeful spirits, they reside in a fog-shrouded netherworld in the bamboo forest and spend their days luring samurai into their realm, where they seduce them and tear savagely into their necks like jungle cats. In broad strokes, the premise resembles the 1964 Japanese classic Woman In The Dunes and Shindô’s own Onibaba from the same year: deadly women, wayward men, a dominant natural setting, psychosexual themes. Yet Kuroneko develops into a heightened romantic tragedy that takes on a different tone than its predecessors.
