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  Japan. 1979. Director – Masahiro Shinoda, Screenplay – Haruhiko Mimura & Takeshi Tamura, Based on the Play by Kyaka Izumi, Producers – Kanji Nakagawa, Shigemi Sugisaki & Yukio Tamizawa, Photography – Masao Kosugi & Noritaka Sakamoto, Music – Isao Tomita, Art Direction – Setsu Asakura, Kiyoshi Awazu & Yutaka Yokoyama. Production Company – Shochiku. Cast: Tamasaburo Bando (Yuri/Princess Shirayuki), Go Kato (Akira Hagiwara), Tsutomu Yamazaki (Gakuen Yamazawa), Yatsuko Tanami (Nurse)  

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Plot: Japan in 1933. Schoolteacher Gakuen Yamasawa journeys to a drought-stricken village in the north in search of a missing friend, Akira Hagiwara. He asks food of the beautiful Yuri and she asks of him a story of payment. When he tells about his friend, he realizes that his friend is her husband. Akira has accepted a job as the keeper of the village bell – if the bell is not struck thrice daily the Dragon God imprisoned within the nearby Demon Pond will escapes and the pond will overflow and flood the village. Akira thinks the superstition nonsense but has stayed because of Yuri. Meanwhile inside the Pond, the Dragon God’s current embodiment, the Princess Shirayuki, has received a marriage invitation from the price of another pond and desires to leave so she can marry, but cannot because of the pledge of the bell. Her chance comes when the villagers decide to sacrifice someone to stop the drought and choose Yuri.

This little seen Japanese fantasy is an amazing and quite beautiful work. Based on the traditional fairytale of Yashagaike, the Dragon Princess, it is quite unlike any fantasy film you will have seen before. The film opens as though it is actually a work of Japanese neo-realism. The first half is all mundanely muted and shot on grainy film stock, observing the hero’s travels through the drought-stricken lands. But then the film quite takes one by surprise and opens out in its second half, abandoning all the drab realism for some extraordinary colour scenes as we venture inside the pond. These scenes have been conducted with amazing beauty – it is as though the cantina characters from Star Wars (1977) have decided to play Alice in Wonderland on the glintzy sets from a Busby Berkeley musical. The creatures are amazing – catfish and green slime beings, one that exists just as a mouth, and bizarre experiments with makeup and hair. The film is one that is often quite hauntingly poetic, especially one scene where the ghostly creatures are driven back in slow-motion by the tolling of the bell.

Director Masahiro Shinoda draws from the kabuki tradition, where he has made a number of other films, most notably the classic Double Suicide (1969). Here Tamasuburo Bando gives a performance of quite enchanting beauty as both the wife and the princess. But what most don’t realize is that Bando is actually a male performer who is, in kabuki tradition, an onnagata, a man who appears dressed as a woman. And if you think Japanese special effects begin and end at the cheap rubber suits of Godzilla, King of the Monsters (1954) and Toho, then the stunning almost dream-like end disaster sequence will prove an immense surprise. This is a film that really should be given a wider release.