The Ghosts of Yotsuya

Masaki Mori’s Tokaido Yotsuya kaidan (1956) features Tomisaburo Wakayama, best known as Itto Ogami of the Babycart movies. Wakayama stars as the haunted samurai Iyemon, & Chieko Soma is the hideous ghostly wife, against whom Iyeomon’s mother conspired, so that her son could marry Ume of a wealthy family. The depth of Iyemon’s madness is intensified in this version, as he ends up driven to psychosis & hunted down by village peasants like a rabid animal (or like the Frankenstein monster). Wakayama drew on exaggerated kabuki traditions to make the Ieyomon rather over-the-top by the end.