Ghost-Cat of Arima Palace (1953)

Original title: 怪猫有馬御殿

Being a mere greengrocer’s daughter, young and beautiful Otaki has few friends in the inner chambers of the titular Arami Palace. Add to this classism their Lord’s main concubine’s fear of being replaced by a younger model, and Otaki’s life is a sheer nightmare.

The other women hound her to her death with measures of increasing cruelty (since they start with pressing her into giving away her pet cat, you can imagine how bad it gets). Before you can say “bakeneko”, Otaki’s little cat – returned for the occasion like a proper pal - drinks her dying blood. The resulting cat demon goes on a bit of a rampage of vengeance, as is tradition.

At least here in the West, this short – 49 minutes – piece of Daiei bakeneko horror directed by Ryohei Arai is more than a little obscure, as is much of the horror output of Japanese studios of this decade beyond some core texts, so I’m not really able to put the film into the context of other movies from the second row of the genre.

What I can say is that this is a lovely little thing. Otaki’s suffering is properly upsetting, the human villain’s are deeply hissable in their nasty, grabbing ways, and the film goes out of its way to dispose of the Otaki cat after she has gotten her full and proper vengeance (something not all ghost cat movies I’ve seen do).

Once the film starts in on the supernatural shenanigans, they are rather wonderful – there’s a great scene during which the ghost cat uses her powers to puppet her victims into supernatural acrobatics like a poltergeist on steroids, and there’s some impressive and creative business with flying heads of the sort that’s bound to make the right viewer – that’s me – gleefully happy.

There are other, perhaps slightly more high-brow, aspects here as well: apart from the Lord, the film is very female-centric, so much so, we get to see the female part of the inner chambers is guarded by armed women, and we do even see them fighting against our cat hero/villain with what look like naginata to me. Earlier, the film also puts emphasis on being taught to fight as part of the proper kind of education the lower class Otaki lacks. This isn’t something you see in many jidai-geki – at least not that I’ve seen.

I also found the emphasis on class hatred surprisingly clear and direct for a film of its time and place.

All of which adds up to lovely hidden gem of a film, the sort of thing I’d hope some boutique Blu-ray level can pick up, package with two or three other films of its style, and make me very happy indeed.