THE TALE OF OIWA'S GHOST (1961) Radiance Films Blu-ray Review

 THE TALE OF OIWA'S GHOST (1961) 

Label: Radiance 

Region Code: A,B

Rating: Unrated 

Duration: 94 Minutes

Audio: Japanese PCM 2.0 Dual-Mono with Optional English Subtitles 

Video: 1080p HD Widescreen (2.39:1) 

Director: Tai Kato

Cast: Tomisaburo Wakayama, Ayuko Fujishiro, Atsushi Watanabe, Sentarô Fushimi, Jûshirô Konoe, Yumiko Mihara, Kikugorô Onoe, Hiroko Sakuramachi, Tosshô Sawamura

The Tale of Oiwa's Ghost (1961), directed Tai Kato (I, the Executioner), is one of over 30 adaptations of the ever-enduring Japanese ghost story Yotsuya Kaidan, a Onryō tale, that of a vengeful female spirit. We not that log ago reviewed an earlier adaptation, 1959's The Ghost of Yatsuya, which was part of Radiance's Daiei Gothic: Japanese Ghost Stories box set, and which is now available as its own standalone. Anyway, back to this adaptation, in it we have a dishonorable ronin named Tamiya Iemon (Tomisaburo Wakayama, Big Time Gambling Boss) who is married to the very pleasant Oiwa (Yoshiko Fujishiro), but she comes from a poor family and he yearns for more power and prosperity. That opportunity arrives when he encounters Oume (Yumiko Mihara), the daughter of the wealthy Lord Ito, who she has fallen madly in love lemon. What transpires is a conspiracy to rid lemon of his wife, which involves poisoning her, which causes hideous boils, hair loss and deformation of her once pretty face, and then forcing his servant Takuetsu (Atsushi Watanabe, Bored Hatamoto: The Cave of the Vampire Bats) to seduce his wife, giving him cause to divorce her. Things don't go quite as planned, and OIwa ends up dying accidentally, with the diabolical lemon dumping her body in the swamp, telling everyone that she was an adulterer who ran off with her lover. lemon does indeed indeed marry Oume, but Oiwa's spirit is out for revenge, coming back to haunt her husband and the other conspirators on his wedding night, all find themselves frequented by her hideous visage. The first two thirds of this one is pretty heavy on the melodrama, it's setting up the entanglements before the ghost story proper kicks in, so expect a bit of a slow-burn going in, but does it ever pick up in the final third! Oiwa's agonizing poisoning and subsequent death is cruel and brutal, and her haunting afterward is hellbent and blood soaked, with plenty of phantasmagoric carnage. 

While it does take a while to get going the finale more than makes up for it, its earned it, plus we get some really gorgeous shots of the nearby river and a mist-shrouded swamp at night where lemon and his diabolical pal ambush and murder Iwa's father, and that finale of lemon driven into a homicidal rage that is pretty breathtaking, offering some carnage filled swordplay that really takes this out on a high note. I thought that this was a terrific adaptation of a classic vengeful ghost story, it took a little bit to get going but once it builds up a head of steam that final third was pretty fantastic. 

Audio/Video: The Blu-ray from Radiance looks terrific, we get a black and white image framed 2.39:1 widescreen, the source is clean and looks terrific, contrast and grayscale is strong throughout, grain appears filmic and unmolested by untoward digital tinkering. Audio comes by way of English PCM 2.0 dual-mono, the track is clean and free of his or distortion, a nicely crisp and well-balanced presentation. 

Extras include a 9-min Introduction with Mari Asato as well as an additional 9-min Interview with Mari Asato (2025), plus a 7-min Visual Essay on tormented female ghosts by Lindsay Nelson (2025) that highlights the similar imagery used in several of the adaptations pointing out how the film was influential on the later j-horror films, including The Ring. 

The single-disc release arrives in a clear, full-height keepcase with a Reversible Sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Time Tomorrow, inside there's a 24-Page Limited Edition Booklet featuring new writing by Tom Mes, plus cast and crew credits and notes about the transfer. 

Special Features: 

- Introduction with Mari Asato (9:19) 

- Interview with Mari Asato (2025) (9:00) 

- Visual essay on tormented female ghosts by Lindsay Nelson (2025) (6:57) 

- Reversible Sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Time Tomorrow

- 24-Page Limited Edition Booklet featuring new writing by Tom Mes

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THE AMAZING MR. X (1948) Film Masters Blu-ray Review

THE AMAZING MR. X (1948) 

aka THE SPIRITUALIST 

Label: Film Maters 

Region Code: Region-Free

Rating: Unrated

Duration: 77 Minutes 54 Seconds 

Audio: English DTS-HD MA 2.0 Dual-Mono with Optional English Subtitles

Video: 1080p HD Full Frame (1.33:1)

Director: Bernard Vorhaus

Cast: Turhan Bey, Lynn Bari, Cathy O'Donnell

From Out of the Surf It Came ... A Familiar Voice ... A Voice That Belonged to the Afterlife!

The Amazing Mr. X stars Turhan Bey (The Mummy's Tomb) as a crooked spiritualist medium named Alexis, a man who claims to have the power to communicate with spirits from beyond the grave. He appears one night on a lonely stretch of beach, accompanied by the sounds of a laughing crow,  and charms depressed widow Christine (Lynn Bari, Abbot Costello Meet the Keystone Kops), whose husband Paul (Donald Curtis, It Came from Beneath the Sea) died two year previously in a car accident. She now has a new beau who wants very much to marry her, Richard Carlson (The Valley of Gwangi), but she is still very much in love with her late husband, and often hears his voice calling her name as she overlooks the ocean waves from the veranda of her cliffside mansion. 

When her younger sister Janet  (Cathy O'Donnell, The World Dies Screaming) and Richard find out she has begun frequenting the séance parlor of Alexis they assume, and rightfully so, that he's a scam artist looking to milk her for her fortune. Eventually Janet visits him under false pretenses, but she becomes quite smitten with the charming mystic and lays her worry aside. The clear-eyed Richard however is less willing to do so and sets out to expose the medium for a fraud. 

As the melancholy thriller unfolds a murder plot is revealed with the medium being roped into it by a sinister outside element that presents itself in an unexpected way. Alexis, already established to be a charlatan with many clever parlor tricks to pull off his supernatural conjurings,  is never quite made to be an unrepentant villain, and is portrayed quite romantically, and he even gets a bit of bitter redemption there at the end. Lynn Bari is quite good in her role as tormented widow, she comes across as haunted from the get-go and only spirals deeper into that darkness as the story continues. Cathy O'Donnell as the smitten younger sister is a sparkplug, and then we have Richard Carlson as the stand-up love interest for Christine, with another nice addition being Det. Hoffman, a former magician turned cop who has a real chip on his shoulder to expose the Svengali medium as a fraud.  

The stylish off-kilter cinematography from John Alton (The Big Combo) offers striking angles and deep shadows, that combined with deft direction by Bernard Vorhaus (Bury Me Dead) delivers a truly suspense filled and sinister flick with a melancholic vibe that makes this a gem of a supernatural leaning thriller. If you're a fan of the expressive atmospheric thrillers of producer Val Lewton (Curse of the Cat People, The Seventh Victim) I think you're gonna love this one, definitely check it out. 

Audio/Video: The Amazing Mr. X arrives on region-free MOD Blu-ray, burned not pressed, from Film Masters as part of their 'Archive Series', presented in 1080p HD in the 1.33:1 full frame, it's a handsome presentation, looking to be the same 4K restoration from original 35mm film elements we saw from the Film Detective back in 2021. It's a gorgeously shot film with gauzy, dreamlike cinematography from John Alton (The Big Combo) that adds a dreamy layer to the noir visuals. However, the image on the Blu-ray is a tad soft with anemic black levels and weak contrast on top of that. Not sure if this is a source related with baked in issues, but there's also a few scenes that are snowy with digital noise as well. It's not the strongest 1080p image you will ever see, but it is serviceable, and far superior to previous DVD releases.   

Audio comes by way of both uncompressed English DTS-HD MA 2.0 dual-mono with optional English subtitles. Like the video it is imperfect but adequate, sounding vintage and limited in it's range the higher registers of the Alexander Laszlo (Beast from Haunted Cave) can be a bit shrill, and there's some light noise on the track as well, but dialogue is never a chore to decipher.  

The single-disc Blu-ray arrives in a standard keepcase with a single-sided sleeve of artwork featuring the original illustrated movie poster. 

Unfortunately this release does not carry-over the extras from the 2021 Film Detective release, which was a pressed Blu-ray. Missing are the Audio Commentary from professor and film scholar Jason A. Ney, the 20-min Mysteries Exposed: Inside the Cinematic World of Spiritualism, an original documentary from Ballyhoo Motion Pictures, and the 10-Page Illustrated Collector's Booklet with essay, “The Amazing Mr. Bey,” by Don Stradley. That release is still available for under $20 right now and I would say that's still the version to own, though if that release ever slips out-of-print this is a serviceable alternative that and has the same AV presentation, minus the extras. 

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CLASS OF '74 (1972) Film Masters Blu-ray Review + Screenshots

CLASS OF '74 (1972) 

Label: Film Masters

Region Code: Region-Free 

Rating: R 

Duration: 80 Minutes 53 Seconds 

Audio: English DTS-HD MA 2.0 Dual-Mono with Optional English Subtitles 

Video: 1080p HD Widescreen (1.85:1)

Director: Mack Bing, Arthur Marks

Cast: Pat Woodell, Marki Bey, Sandra Currie, Barbara Mills

Drama, Romance

The Class of '74 (1972) is a light-hearted softcore sex-romp wrapped in hippy idealism and second wave feminism , a kinky pastiche flick that combined footage from the counterculture sexploitation film Gabriella, Gabriella (1970), directed by TV director Mack Bling, starring Barbara Mills as the titular Gabriella, a young woman who experiences a sexual odyssey. That film was purchased by director Arthur Marks (JD's Revenge, Friday Foster, Detroit 9000, Bucktown) and re-shaped into the drive-in flick we get here, re-shaping it into a mildly wild and sexy patchwork of somewhat dubious progressive sexual politics and entertaining sexploitation with some occasionally fun surreal and psychedelic touches that give it a smutty arthouse feel. In its Class of '74 form we have Gabriella (Barbara Mills, The Suckers), a somewhat inexperienced college co-ed who is taken in under the wings of three older students; Heather (Pat Woodell, The Big Dollhouse), Carla (Marki Bey, Sugar Hill), and Maggie (Sandra Currie, The Hangover Trilogy, and the sister of The Runaways vocalist Cherie Currie) who teach her how a woman can use her sexuality to empower herself. The film utilizes rampant flashbacks, even flashbacks within flashback during once scene with a scene where a gay character recalls how he was molested by his highschool gym teacher!

It's a wildly uneven and near plotless endeavor, mostly told in small vignettes as each of the young women recall their past sexual exploits which have lead them to their current views on sexual politics and feminism. it's a fun enough watch, not a great flick, but entertaining for the controversial-for-its-era monologues about sexuality, female empowerment and feminism, and for the early '70s time capsule it is, with images of freeways full on now vintage cars, hippie-ish and loud 70s fashions, and the seedy nighttime scenes of the neon-lot Sunset Strip and the USC campus. We also get a trip to an "EROS: Eternal Rights of Sexuality" seminar, and various sexual encounters including with a photographer, and a ménage trois, and a finale with Gabriella's encountering a swinging couple (Phillip Terry, The Leech Woman, Lynn Cartwright, Queen of Outer Space) on a yacht, with the wife propositions Gabriella into becoming a kept woman for her husband's pleasure. My favorite segment is the story of one of the girl's lecherous father's cruising the Sunset Strip looking for young girls before ending up at a titty bar, along the way passing Tower Records, and a movie marquee advertising Fellini's Satyricon!

The mix of forward thinking but pretty dubious sexual empowerment and sexploitation is fun stuff, a bit head-scratching at times, but totally entertaining and quite charming to be honest, very light and breezy witht he exception of the very odd insertion of the gay character who was molested. It is not a great film, but it's certainly a fun travelogue of sunny California peppered with free-loving sexual exploits, it's choppy for sure and feels every inch like the cut-up of two films that it is, but if you;re a fan of kinky drive-in fare from the early '70s there's a lot to enjoy about it. 

Audio/Video: The Class of '74 (1971) arrives on region-free Blu-ray from Film Masters as pat of their Limited Edition Archive Collection, advertised as being "Newly Restored from Archival Film Elements". The Arthur Marks footage looks solid with nice texture and colors throughout, bit the omage looks DNR'd and very digital looking with blocky grain structures, the incorporated Gabriella, Gabriella footage tends to look even less stellar, more contrasty and thick looking, skin tones have a much more unnatural copper patina to them, and occasionally it dips into murky standard definition territory. That said, I found it very watchable. Audio comes by way of English DT-HD MA 2.0 dual-mono with optional English subtitles. Dialogue sounds fine and the groovy score sound solid as well, there's some light noise in spots, but nothing that put me off my viewing. 

Extras include a new Audio Commentary with Heath Holland from the Cereal At Midnight YouTube channel that was a solid listen, flowed real nice, ge gets into the second wave of feminism as portrayed in the film, and how this is sort of after the hippy movement, the score, how it's quite arty and psychedelic in spots, the marriage of sexploitation and more mainstream drive-in aesthetics, highlighting the careers of the actors, directors and producers, and pointing out footage that was originally shot for Gabriela, Gabriela and the new footage. We also get a 12-Page Illustrated Booklet with writing by Amanda Reyes that gets into how the film explores both the sexual revolution, demism and is still a slice of exploitation. This release arrives in a standard keepcase with a single-sided sleeve of artwork, plus a Limited Edition (First Pressing Only) Slipcover featuring the same artwork as the wrap with a cool Yellow/Purple motif. 

Special Features:

- Audio Commentary with Heath Holland from Cereal At Midnight 

- 12-Page Illustrated Booklet with writing by Amanda Reyes 

- Limited Edition Slipcover (First Pressing Only) 

Screenshots from the Film Masters Blu-ray: 

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