Onibaba (1964) - I watched this movie for the 1964 movies list. After reading the description of the movie, I was pretty sure that it wasn't my type of movie, but I tried to watch it with an open mind and give it a chance.
The movie is about two women in Japan who were left alone to fend for themselves during a war. After their crops fail, they find a way to fight poverty by killing any soldiers who wander onto their land. They steal their armor and their weapons, and sell them to get money for food. Their neighbor shows up and tells them that the old woman's son, who is also the young woman's husband, was killed in the war. When the young woman tries to go to the neighbor's hut to sleep with him, the old woman does everything she can to keep the two of them apart. They talk about the existence of purgatory and hell, and when a soldier shows up one night with a mask, the old woman uses the mask to trick the young woman into thinking that there is a demon after her.
Unfortunately, I didn't care for this movie at all. The story itself had potential, but it was slow and boring at times, and drawn out way too long. None of the characters were likable, even at the beginning of the movie, so it made it hard to care about what happened to them.
The movie picked up a little bit, about an hour into the movie, when the guy with the creepy mask showed up, but even though the movie was classified as a horror movie, it never really felt like one to me. I didn't find the mask scary at all. It had a bit of a creepy look, but it was mostly goofy-looking with a worried expression on the mask's face.
Plus, some things in the movie just didn't make any sense to me. These soldiers they killed were supposed to be samurai soldiers, but they were able to be killed easily by two weak women. That makes no sense. Aren't samurai soldiers supposed to be "the best of the best"? The women might get lucky once or twice, but this seems to be a normal pattern for them. And when the young woman was running because she was afraid of the demon that was chasing her, she ran into the neighbor in the field, and she stopped to have sex with him. If she's so scared, why would she stop and have sex?
The only part of the movie that I liked was the ending.
WARNING: "SPOILERS ABOUT THE ENDING!!!" spoilers below
At the very end, when the woman jumped over the hole where they've been dumping the dead bodies, it doesn't matter whether or not the old woman makes the jump, or falls into the hole. Either way, she deserves her fate. If she makes the jump, she's already disfigured from the mask, so she basically looks like the demon that she was pretending to be. If she misses the jump, she falls into the hole with the dead bodies and dies, leaving the young woman alone to her own fate.
At the very end, when the woman jumped over the hole where they've been dumping the dead bodies, it doesn't matter whether or not the old woman makes the jump, or falls into the hole. Either way, she deserves her fate. If she makes the jump, she's already disfigured from the mask, so she basically looks like the demon that she was pretending to be. If she misses the jump, she falls into the hole with the dead bodies and dies, leaving the young woman alone to her own fate.
This is a very highly rated movie on IMDB and other sites, so those of you who like foreign films and arthouse films will probably like it, but it just wasn't for me.