This film looks much like a painting. It's really a piece of art. I love films with brilliant cinematography and godly colors wich this film has. I bought it on Criterion Collection cheap without knowing anything about it. But I got more and more in to it when I read the user comments here on the internet movie database.

The film is four Japanese horror stories. They are maybe not so frightening when you see them but later on when you think about the film they GET scary. The first one is about a samurai who leaves his wife because of that she are so poor and marries a rich woman. It all ends up in horror. The second story are about two woodcuters that meets a snow woman that kills one of them(the old man) but let the young boy live if he promise to not tell anyone.

The third story which are one of the best things I have ever seen on film. It's a masterful story and even if the three others also are superb this might be the best. And the last story is great. This is a masterful film. A must see

10/10

The words "beautiful", "lyrical" and "evocative" aren't ones that you would normally attribute to a horror movie, but they are precisely the ones that best describe Kwaidan, a quintet of Samurai Gothics based (interestingly enough) on the writings of an American author by the name of Lafcadio Hearn. Shot in gorgeous, sumptuous color way back in 1964 by director Masaki Kobayashi, Kwaidan is an unusual, unique and quite extraordinary entry in the old horror anthology genre best represented by 1945's Dead of Night and Milton Subotsky's Amicus anthology series (i.e. Dr. Terror's House of Horrors, Tales From the Crypt & Asylum).

Kwaidan differentiates itself from the pack in a number of significant ways. To begin with, all of the episodes eschew the usual O. Henry "twist" endings and deliberately telegraph their punches, case in point being "Hoichi the Earless", which gives away its climax with its very title! This film is also missing the compulsory "wrap-around" story normally employed by anthology films to tie all the stories together, and the horror elements are far more low-key than most horror aficianados are used to. Kwaidan is far less concerned with springing shocks and fraying nerves than it is in exploring the whirlwind of conflicting emotions that swirl in the dark night of the human soul.

"The Black Hair" is the tale of an impoverished samurai who abandons his loyal and loving wife to marry the daughter of a wealthy lord in another province, only to discover many years later that he is still in love with his first spouse. He returns to their decaying old house to find her exactly as he left her, affectionate and forgiving as could be. You know something in this household just ain't right. "The Woman in the Snow" concerns an apprentice woodcutter who encounters an eerily beautiful female ice-vampire - called a "Yuki-Onna - who spares his life on the condition that he never tell a soul about their encounter. (If you saw the last episode of the flaccid Tales From the Darkside movie, on which this was based, you have an idea of how this one ends).

"Hoichi the Earless", easily the most powerful of the bunch, regards a blind biwa (a stringed instrument resembling a guitar) player renowned for his moving rendition of the tragic tale of the battle between the Genji and Heiki clans. Each night he is summoned to the nearby graveyard to chant the epic tale for the ghosts of the warriors who fell in that battle, duped by the spirits into believing that he's performing in the home of a wealthy lord. When Hoichi disocvers that he has been decieved by the dead and refuses to perform for them again, the ghosts exact a terrible revenge.

A note of warning to those deterred by long foreign films: this shimmering jewel in Japanese cinema's crown clocks in at nearly three hours of length and is, of course, fully subtitled. Visually bold, rich and color and texture, and atmospherically photographed with a spine-tingling elegance, I can't guarantee that you'll like Kwaidan, but I think that I can safely assure you'll never forget it. Highly recommended, especially for Japanophiles and those with a taste for high class horror.

I knew absolutely NOTHING about this movie before I recently watched it, so I had no idea what to expect. It turned out to consist of four strange tales of the supernatural that have no apparent connection--sort of like four episodes of the Twilight Zone (but much better). Of the four, The Black Hair (about a man who gets rid or his wife but soon regrets it) and The Lady of the Snow (about a man who unknowingly marries a spirit) are probably my two favorites, but all four are excellent.

So why did I give it a "10"? Well, this movie stacks up well against even the best Akira Kurasawa flicks in that it is highly imaginative, has excellent writing, acting, direction and cinematography. It seems to have it all!