Brrrr. Count Cult here, kids. Hope you’re ready for some scary stuff. You might think you already know scary stuff, ‘cause of these new Japanese horror movies popping up all over the place, but, let me tell you, this one here is really scary. I’m talking about Tokaido Yotsuya Kaidan. (For the sake of localization, let’s just call it New Jersey Turnpike Ghost Story.) It’s from 1959 and was directed by Nobuo Nakagawa — who may as well as be the czar of Japanese scary movies. 

Let’s skip the plot for now and FF straight into the juicy stuff, towards the end of Yotsuya Kaidan: a vengeful ghost-woman has started wreaking havoc on the husband who murdered her. Now, this is one ugly ghost. Big clumps of her hair have fallen out, and most of the right side of her face has been burned off. What’s really scary is she used to be a beautiful young woman named Oiwa. Now, thanks to her no-goodnik husband Iuemon (who had Oiwa poisoned to death with the aid of a Buddhist monk — and then nailed them both to a set of sliding doors), she’s a revenge-seeking ghoul from beyond.

Or is she? It’s possible this haunting is only taking place in Iuemon’s tortured guilt-ridden mind. Other film adaptations of the Yotsuya story — a classic whose written origins go back a good three centuries, and which has seen a continuous cycle of cinematic remakes — have played up this angle. In director Tai Kato’s 1961 version (Kaidan Oiwa no borei), a bellowing Tomisaburo Wakayama (Gokudo, Lone Wolf and Cub) verily goes bananas from psychological torment. At the other extreme, “real” or not, the frightening visuals in Nakagawa’s version come across as pretty literal. The thick bald head of the Buddhist monk — sliced down the middle by a masterless samurai’s sword — pops out of nowhere. Grabbing hands reach out from the grave. And there are snakes. Lots of snakes.

The original preview hyperbole shouted, “This is the real picture of hell!” Sweet Christmas, they weren’t kidding. On the basis of in-your-face shocks alone, Nakagawa was Japan’s one-man Hammer Studios and Herschel Gordon Lewis, hauling buckets of blood into the early cinema and never thinking twice about spilling them. He went about his grim deeds contracting for Shin Toho Studios, who were formed from the ranks of pissed-off directors and technicians who’d deserted old Toho (Godzilla’s stomping grounds) proper. 

Before you mark Nakagawa as another amoral gorehound, some kind of Lucio Fulci before his time, realize that Nakagawa’s films always depict universes governed by strict moral laws. Cause and effect. Karma, baby, karma. Every bad turn deserves another, and Iuemon (played to weak-kneed nimae perfection by Shigeru Amachi) sure deserved his. A dirt-poor ex-samurai stranded in rough times, Iuemon — egged on by his ratlike instigator buddy Naosuke — decides to kill his loving, devoted wife with some disfiguring poison. Iuemon figures that if he’s going to move into a better sphere of influence, it’d be a good business move to get hitched to someone richer, younger, and better-looking. Of course, such a greedy, dumb-ass plan only succeeds in unleashing the wrath of supernatural forces. And that’s what were here for, isn’t it? 

There’s some stylish Kabuki-style construction. The movie begins with a curtain opening and a narrator setting the stage. But the director doesn’t allow himself to be trapped by formal constraints. By the end, we’ve traveled through psychedelic realms of twisted imagery, bringing to mind both to the ghoulish ukiyo-e prints of the Edo period and horror cinema’s grue-soaked, unsavory future. Hollywood Home Theater released Tokaido Yotsuya Kaidan under the title The Ghost of Yotsuya way back in the ‘80s. The tape looks like hell, since it’s taken from a film print that’s gone to red, and it’s crudely shorn of its original Scope presentation. Track it down anyway and watch it. Suffer a little. It could be worse. You could be dead straight-up.