It's like a black-and-white Euro-horror that happens to be Japanese. I've seen people compare it with Robert Wise's The Haunting, although its script doesn't compare with Shirley Jackson. You don't watch this film for its plot. You watch it for atmosphere, a haunted house and the occasional suspicion that the film's throwing in stuff for effect rather than because it has meaning.

It has a crow going nuts indoors, a bulging door, weird laughing shadows and a hunchback who looks a bit like Christopher Lee. There's a cool old mansion that's shot in luscious black-and-white. When we first see it, the filmmakers used so much dry ice that it looks as if the ground's evaporating. Doors slam by themselves. An old woman gets possessed and talks with a man's voice. There's a ghost who hates... well, everyone, so he doesn't want anyone to leave his house alive. Had this film been in colour, it would have been silly and lurid, but the black-and-white cinematography makes it classier. Monochrome's just better.

Our heroes are here because the house was bought by someone who then went mad and died. You'd think that might be a reason to steer clear of it, but no. The deceased had a wife (Kusunoki Yuuko), a father who'd like to shag his own son's widow and a few other associates who seem nice enough... plus that hunchback (Nishimura Kou).

There isn't really much to analyse on a script level, but the film's gothic and looks cool. The acting's solid. It's a fevered little piece in which the most important characters are probably the house and the cinematographer. You could put a lot of these scenes into a 1930s Universal horror and not notice the difference, except in the murder scenes where women get their clothes pulled off but retain their underwear. (Those feel like an early attempt at 1970s Euro-schlock.) I certainly don't dislike this wholehearted, creepy, stylish little piece, but I don't imagine I'll ever rewatch it.