A loose adaptation of a Japanese ghost tale, Kuroneko returns to the war torn medieval Japan of Onibaba to offer a mesmerizing and unnerving revenge story that follows two peasant women transformed by occult forces into bewitching feline demons hunting down the samurai rogues who destroyed their lives and livelihood. Shindo’s extraordinary black-and-white widescreen cinematography gives a strange beauty to the ruthless acts of cruelty exacted by the women. An only recently rediscovered classic of Sixties Japanese genre cinema, Kuroneko can be read as a radical feminist response to the samurai film. – HG