That was pretty freaky. Is it horror? Maybe, or perhaps not quite... but it's still disturbing as hell. Its protagonist is a ten-year-old girl (Sayuri) and she's discovered that her "sister" is an ever-more hostile reptile girl (Tamami) who throws poisonous snakes at people. Sayuri's lovely. It's a shame that the child actress only made this and a single TV series, because she carries this movie just by being herself and she could easily have had a proper acting career if she'd wanted one.

Sayuri gets rescued from an orphanage and brought to live with her birth parents... and Tamami, who apparently has to be kept secret from their father. You wouldn't want a sister like this. She glowers, she seems to hate Sayuri on sight and she makes increasingly unreasonable demands that their amnesiac mother seems incapable of refusing. (Mum had a car accident six months ago. Dad studies poisonous animals and gets called away to Africa, leaving the ladies alone in the house.) Tamami knows she's less pretty than Sayuri, especially given the scales, facial scarring and Predator-like fangs. (She covers all those up.)

Sayuri happily and conscientiously does what she's told... but she's in a film with acid that dissolves flesh in under half a minute, a shocking moment with a toad, flying puppet spiders and detachable hands. There's also a silver-haired witch who cuts ropes and stabs people to death. Sayuri's defenceless. You'll be itching to jump into the film and protect her yourself. Her only allies are people she knows from the orphanage (a friendly bloke on a motorbike and the surprisingly broad-minded nun in charge).

The film's other characters include a housekeeper (Shige) who doesn't believe Sayuri's story of a snake on her pillow and searches the bedroom for all of five seconds before deciding Sayuri was dreaming. She doesn't look under the bed. She doesn't check the floor at all. If I'd been her employer, I'd have sacked her on the spot. 1. Japan has plenty of snakes, including three poisonous varieties that between them bite thousands of people a year. 2. this house is full of glass tanks full of poisonous snakes for Dad's research... and snakes are the ultimate escape artists. (After reporting two further incidents to the increasingly unhelpful Shige and getting called a liar for her troubles, Sayuri decides never to tell her anything again. Quite right too.)

This film is sort of borderline horror. If you're looking to have the life scared out of you, go elsewhere. It is, though, unsettling and disturbing to see Sayuri face these ordeals almost alone and unprotected. The film's capable of being almost surreal (e.g. the helpful magic fairy in one of the dream sequences) and you definitely shouldn't watch it on drugs. That would be dangerous. Your mind would flip. Is this a children's film? Maybe, sort of, technically, since it has a child protagonist, a partial Scooby Doo reveal and an ending that's surprisingly positive, but I'd feel more comfortable showing my children James Cameron's Aliens. (Theme of motherhood and a stand-up-and-cheer heroine who protects Newt from the scariest monsters ever. What's not to love?)

That reveal I mentioned makes sense, incidentally, and made me go "ah, of course!"

I'd recommend this film. Sayuri's a great protagonist. She's innocent, but tough. I supported all her decisions and was never screaming "no no no!" at the screen. The film's pretty alarming... and in black-and-white, which adds to the atmosphere. Good pace. A hard-to-watch bit at the end. Hammer would have been proud to have made this.