A samurai and his wife are deep in debt to a blind acupuncturist named Sojun, who may also be the samurai's father. They enter a deal where Sojun may have his way with the samurai's wife in exchange for crossing off the interest on the debt--never mind that this would be a huge dishonor for her. However, this is a ruse, and as he goes in to rape her, the samurai brutally slashes him to death. As he and his son Shinichiro throw the dying victim into the river, but as he sinks below the cloud of black blood, he spits a curse out at the couple. We slowly learn more of the samurai's lifestyle after his murder of Sojun; he has a mistress, whom he has gotten pregnant, and he has another son named Shinzo from a restaurant girl. Eventually the ghost of Sojun arrives, and tricks the samurai into killing his wife before seemingly killing him.
But this isn't the end. Years later Shinichiro has become a bandit and multiple murderer. We follow him as he continues his spree of deception, seduction, murder, and thievery, until at last his sins catch up with him when he tries to kill and rob his former sensei, an incestuous lech who fakes quadriplegia. After a rooftop showdown with the police, Shinichiro is captured and sentenced to his final fate. We then go even further into the future to follow the life of Shinzo, who is also a criminal. With the aid of his partner-in-crime/lover Ohisa he tries to seduce a wealthy women to rob her in her sleep, but she catches him and forces him to become her lover by insinuating he raped her. Shortly thereafter her face is horribly disfigured, but he is still trapped with her. These plot threads finally weave themselves together in a fucked-up ending that would make Harry Stephen Keeler proud.
With comparatively few sets, actors, and effects, Cruel Ghost Legend attempts to tell a time-spanning story across two generations that is ultimately a fable of bleakness. Not only is the extent of Sojun's curse particularly chilling, but the reasoning behind it makes it all worse: it's a curse cast in revenge, but it's not even revenge we can root for, since the person trying to avenge themselves is an usurer with ambitions of rape! I can't think of a single good thing that happens to anybody in this movie, so if you go in expecting even a hint of optimism you'll be let down. But if you're like me, and you're a fan of Bad Things Getting Worse...
Unlike a lot of movies that go for relentless negativity, Cruel Ghost Legend still makes some choices that good movies make. Visually, it's very impressive, with some of the same excellent lighting decisions as the spooky parts of Face of the Screaming Werewolf, and some comparably creepy makeup. There's a lot of blood, as well, and as we learned with The Flesh Eaters, gore always looks better in black in white. The movie does occasionally step into color, particularly during select scenes where everything becomes psychedelic purple. These are always used to highlight flashbacks to the circumstances that led into the curse. On an auditory level the film also delivers, using a variety of internal monologues to show just how big of scumbags our characters are, and a high screeching soundtrack that is automatic code for pants-shitting terror. The film haunts you as a result of all these different factors piling up on each other.
I haven't seen enough J-horror in my life, but I write this review with the hopes that some of you out there will watch Cruel Ghost Legend for yourselves and recommend similar things to me. Leave a comment below and I'll love you for life.
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