Blind Woman’s Curse
Film Forum’s Japanese Horror Programming
West Village, NYC
3/8/2024
Film Forum just can’t be beat, if I’m being honest. There’s not a week that goes by that they’re not there to provide a fantastic alternative to night in and locked away. Where else is one going to essentially stumble into a late showing of some heretofore unheard of Japanese horror film? Hell, where else is one going to reliably direct their stumbling, where else is one going to trust there would be something worth catching the fall?
As often as I go to screenings with intentions of catching some film-buff seemingly once-in-a-life time show, grabbing tickets weeks in advance against the guarantee of it being sold out, showing up early as to secure the proper five-rows-from-the-screen-dead-center-of-the-row seat, I’m just as likely to snap up a ticket on whim, based solely on the synoptic copy featured on the website.
This is what I did Friday night. Invited a friend last minute, met up moments before lights down, and sank into what was to be a real unexpected treat.
Film Forum’s synopsis of 1970’s Blind Woman’s Curse read about as ominous as anything — yakuza tale meets traditional Japanese ghost story, promises of blood and gore and a heavy bend toward sapphic eroticism. Nothing in the write-up to prepare me and my compatriot for the near slapstick samurai-cum-slasher flick we were in for. The viewing experience was reminiscent of another truly hilarious Japanese splatter-fest, the film-dork favorite House. Nothing too dark here, but a wild ride through and through.
Beneath a convoluted mob narrative — betrayals, family allegiances, and a spider’s web of subterfuge — concerning a former crime-family gone straight, the foundation of the film was cursed revenge plot. Caught up in a sudden and unexpected turf war, the aforementioned pure-of-heart yakuza gang, the Tachibana family, suffers a series of strange disappearances among their ranks. Finding the flayed skins of their missing comrades, swatches of bloody back flesh displaying their dragon tattoos, the leader of the Tachibana gang, a young woman recently released from prison, discloses that in the raid before her arrest she was cursed by a bloodthirsty cat after blinding a gang boss’s sister with a stray swing of her sword. Now, after five years the blinded woman, full of hatred and vengeful dark magic, is on the hunt for all those responsible for the death of her brother, hunting the stinking men down with the aid of an acute sense of smell and the helpfully mischievous cat.
If all that sounds convoluted, confusing, and needlessly complicated — trust me, it is. But this wild, pratfall-ridden narrative is only the vehicle for what we’ve all come to see: splatter, splatter, splatter. And boy did this film deliver!
The finale sword fight — fights, moreover, as they piled like an interstate wreck — left screen red as can be. Bodies sputtering and curse lifted, all for the pureness of a reformed heart. A trite ending almost as funny as the rest of the film.
Japan’s forever held a strange and special place in the history of cinema — whether it’s Kurosawa’s epics, Ozu’s quiet transcendence, the transgressive eroticism of the ‘Pink’ films, their unhinged dalliances with horror, or series like Lone Wolf and Cub —offering always the cure to formulaic ills, a shock to the sensibilities of viewers inured in flaccidly heroic plots and sterile romances. But Film Forum’s fully going for it with this Japanese horror program. Everything from 1954’s O.G. Gojira to rougher fare like Ichi: The Killer. There’s so much to see, and so little time. Get over to the Forum before the 14th! Seats are going fast!
