A mystical, sensual and visually astounding Art-Horror masterpiece from Kaneto Shindo. There are Evil times in 16th century Nippon
and Darkness reigns when Lords are in war and panic stricken soldiers are trying to flee the mayhem and return home.
We get to know two poor peasant women, one middle-aged (Nobuko Otowa) and her daughter in law (Jitsuko Yoshimura) who are
fiercely determined to survive. They live in a hut in a big grass field and they survive by killing lost soldiers and selling their armour
to a fence for food, and they dump the bodies down into a hole in the field.

When their neighbour, the soldier Hachi (Kei Sato) returns from the war he tells them that Otowa's son and Yoshimura's husband
has been killed. When a sexual relationship starts between the younger woman and Hachi as they are young and horny, the old woman
don't like it all. She don't want Hachi to take her daughter in law from her. She needs her help with the killings and she don't want to be
alone when getting older, and she tries to scare the young woman away from Hachis straw hut by putting on a nasty face mask.
The Demon mask taken from a Samurai she lured to fall down into the hole in the grassfield.
Masterful about people turning into predators, animals, due to the Evils of War.

The Old US Criterion DVD release

I found the Criterion DVD to be better than this Nordic blu-ray. Not impressed at all with the blu-ray.
Both releases presents the film in widescreen 2.35:1 black & white and the bluray has swedish subtitles and no extras at all.
The old Criterion DVD had an interviewe with the then 91 year old Kaneto Shindo (21 minutes), Private Super-8 footage from the
film shoot, a trailer, a picture gallery, an information sheet with an essay by Chuck Stevens and a text by Kaneto Shindo and a
translation of the Buddhistic original fable