Onibaba is a Japanese horror film based on a Buddhist parable. Directed by Kaneto Shindo, the film is set in rural Japan in the fourteenth century and features Nobuko Otowa and Jitsuko Yoshimura as a woman and her daughter-in-law who kill passing samurai and steal their possessions. In a time of civil war, a woman and her daughter-in-law live in a small hut in a susuki grass swamp. They live by killing samurai, disposing of their bodies in a deep pit and selling their armor and weapons. A neighbor named Hachi , who went to war with the woman's son, returns. He reports that the son was... killed. Hachi starts to help the two women to kill. Hachi lusts after the daughter-in-law, who quickly is seduced and starts to sneak out of her hut every night to have sex with him. The mother-in-law learns of the relationship. She first tries to sleep with Hachi and then pleads with him to not take the daughter-in-law away since she cannot kill without her help. One night, while Hachi and the daughter-in-law are together, a lost samurai in a frightening demon mask forces the woman to guide him out of the swamp.
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| Release date: | 1964 |
| Directed by: | Kaneto Shindo |
| Runtime: | 103 Minutes |
| Producer: | Toshio Konya |
| Editor: | Toshio Enoki |
| Music by: | Tetsuya Ohashi, Hikaru Hayashi |
| Cinematography: | Kiyomi Kuroda |
| Screenplay by: | Kaneto Shindo |