Snake Girl and the Silver Haired Witch (1968)

 

Director: Noriaki Yuasa

Screenplay: Kimiyuki Hasegawa

Cast: Yuko Hamada as Yuko Nanjo; Sachiko Meguro as Shige Kito; Yachie Matsui as Sayuri Nanjo; Mayumi Takahashi as Tamami Nanjo; Sei Hiraizumi as Tatsuya Hayashi; Yoshirô Kitahara as Goro Nanjo

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies) Re-Review

 

Sadly not as well known in the West as other horror manga authors, such as Junji Ito, Kazuo Umezu is however a legendary and prolific author in his homeland. Most of his work, when it was published in English, was only published in the United States and out-of-print, paradoxically contrasting how important he is. That and, when adapted to other mediums, he even had Nobuhiko Obayashi helm a 1987 adaptation of his manga series The Drifting Classroom, an author who has not been adapted to a lot of animation but a lot of live action work. Umezu even sells himself as a persona too, as memorable for being Where's Wally's (Waldo's) cousin, obsessed with the colours of barber shop red and white stripes as he has been in penning ghoulish horror stories since the fifties.

Here, his work is adapted in the late sixties. Already by this point in Japanese genre cinema, we have past the fifties and sixties; in the fifties we have kaiju cinema finding its stride alongside other genre films, and from the multi colour nightmares of Jigoku (1960) to Nikkatsu's gangster films, the sixties were an exceptionally strong decade for Japanese cinema both for art and entertainment already, the strangest of films having as high a technical quality as the artistic minded dramas. This film was directed by Noriaki Yuasa, who helmed a great number of the original Gamera films, a prolific answer by Daiei Film Studios to Godzilla.  

Snake Girl and the Silver Haired Woman is a strange, frankly convoluted piece of delirium, combining two of Umezu's stories into an adolescent horror film with an edge, more so as just under the surface, this is pretty simple in what its message can be read at. With a fairytale quality, a young girl is our lead, which is a very distinct and even progressive choice for this film at this time to have as, alongside her very short hair, Yachie Matsui as our child lead Sayuri is a very distinct and engaging protagonist to have. The narrative wraps itself in knots with what is going on, but beginning with a young girl who grew up in an orphanage being adopted to a family, this really plays to anxieties of family relationships. A disconnected mother, whose amnesia includes mistaking our lead for another daughter. The father, who works with snake venom, which means there are numerous venomous snakes and inexplicably a vat of acid in the basement, has to in Africa for the narrative leaving Sayuri in peril, or the older step sister who, kept a secret at first, hates her and is revealed to be possibly half-snake. The metaphor of alienation as a young girl in a family new to her, whether a viewer is adopted or even is a child of divorce, really makes this narrative more meaningful even if it is over-the-top with secret siblings and opening with a maid having a poisonous snake throw at her.

With a protagonist that is a sweet and likable young girl called Sayuri, adopted back to her real family but finding herself disconnected, she cannot ask her father for help since he is on another continent, the mother is lost in her own haze, and the another maid there eventually believes she is lying all the time about the weird circumstances taking place the moment she is living in her new home. The older sister Tamimi is already jealous of her presence, but possibly has intentions of also eating Sayuri when she has the chance. An older brother metaphor comes in with a male science teacher who, regardless of whether he believes Tamimi is a real snake girl, believes Sayuri is telling the truth of something being amiss and helps her. The film is surprisingly gristly, and from there we have a peculiar blend of a murder mystery drama with horror tropes, enough snakes terrorising Sayuri in her sleep if it is not spiders swarming on her bed to give a viewer the jitters, and enough sinister atmosphere to match. When the silver haired witch comes into the narrative, when the murder mystery turn comes in, this film smashes numerous genres together regardless of whether they should or not.

The plot is able to get away with this because a great deal of the film plays off as a psychodrama. A lot of its tension actually taps into a real human emotion that would appeal to many viewers, hidden in the eccentricity. Even if there was not the threat of her being part snake, Tamimi's contempt for her new younger sister, including forcing Sayuri to sleep in the attic, is effecting by itself, as is the sympathy Sayuri still has for her when you learn Tamimi is probably a psychologically damaged young girl, physically scarred, who is being used. The film is also extremely beautiful to look at, the monochrome adding a grace to it. It has a dream-like tone that literally leads to something special. Things get even weirder as Sayuri's anxieties spill out in dreams she has, dream sequences which raise the bar for this particular film, a conventionally shot and solid genre movie, to something idiosyncratic.

Filmed in a distorted reality, the first immediately raises the bar when the doll Sayuri is given comes to life by way of an actress superimposed to be tiny next to a prone girl, only to grow into life size and take her on a journey. Even when the effects are incredibly dated by today's standards - a snake girl stand-in comes from the same school as the hag in William Castle's House on Haunted Hill (1959) - they add to the weird effect of the dream sequences by them being dreams and the incredible style of the whole film in general in spite of said effects. Their psychological metaphors are not subtle, Sayuri pinned to a wall by throwing knives to be terrorised by a giant snake, but emphasising a metaphor for a child's fears of strange terrors and inexplicable behaviour, the director of the early Gamera films decided spectacle was appropriate, closer to his other work, and with his production crew they made a wise decision.

The quality of Snake Girl and Snake Haired Witch is why it was so watchable, a gleefully odd horror movie which yet has a wonderful sense of aesthetic sadly missing in a lot of modern horror cinema. As someone who still desperately wants to read Kazuo Umezu's original manga, something like this nonetheless feels like a successful adaptation, even if it may have taken extreme liberties. All because of its macabre tone and how it encourages me to want to read those original stories it took inspiration from.