La Femme des neiges

Last year I watched "Kwaidan" from 1964. In Kwaidan there is a short called "The Woman of the Snow" which is also based on the same ghost story as this film.

Coming into this title I somewhat knew what the story would be about. To my surprise I liked this version of the film much better. It was a much more fleshed out story with beautiful sets, awesome natural looking lighting, and great acting.

This film kept me engaged all the way through and had an interesting story line, and dialog until the end. The cinematography was top level and the actress who played the Snow Woman was very beautiful.

I saved this film to watch on a rainy night and the sound and ambience of the rain fit this film just perfect. I loved "The Snow Woman" I can see myself re-watching it more times in the future.

If you're a fan of Japanese culture, classic horror, or ghost stories I strongly recommend "The Snow Woman".

A wonderful story told so well in this adaptation. It is so much more than a horror story. It is a story of love and compassion but with great sadness. It captures the imagination in a way that the Japanese are true masters at.

I want more of these kind of movies!

In a certain area of Japan there was a legend of a powerful ghost living in the mountains known as the "Snow Woman" who would kill those she happened to come upon. One particularly snowy day a master carpenter and his apprentice were traveling in the forest looking for a tree to make into a statue for their local shrine. They found the tree but that night the Snow Woman appeared and killed the master as he slept. His apprentice, "Yosaku" (Akira Ishiham) witnessed the whole thing as he lay there completely horrified. She then uncharacteristically tells him that she will spare him as long as he never mentions her or what happened that night. He swears and she leaves. Not long afterward, a beautiful woman named, "Yuki" (Shiho Fujimura) shows up in his village. Yosaku falls in love with her and they get married. Anyway, rather than spoil the story for those who haven't seen it, I will just say that this was a pretty good ghost story which is very Japanese. As such, those who are able to enjoy films from another culture (with English subtitles) will probably find this movie quite interesting. Others may not. Personally, I thought it was a very good film. I especially liked the makeup and the snowy sets the director (Tokuzô Tanaka) used which enhanced the spooky ambiance and gave the film an artistic touch. An above average movie.

As a big fan of Kwaidan I was really excited to see a new version of this. In Kwaidan the Snow Woman sequence is only about forty minutes, but here it's a full movie! So how does it compare! It blows the sequence away (even though I prefer Kwaidan as a whole) The woodcutters are expanded, and you get to see the Snow woman in more action sequences; sometimes it even resembles a slasher movie. What a fantastic idea! You got a ton of creepy atmosphere in the form of the scares and the Japanese folklore feel. I highly recommend you get Radiance's 4k release of this, a ton of character, alot of spookiness!

After taking refuge from a deadly blizzard, a sculptor (Akira Ishihama) encounters a beautiful yuki-onna (a demonic 'Snow Woman') who spares his life if he promises never to tell anyone about the encounter. Soon after, Yuki, a lovely young woman (Shiho Fujimura), travelling alone and with no family, appears in his village. The sculptor is captivated by the mysterious women and soon marries her, but not before she catches the lecherous eye of a cruel, dishonorable samurai. This is one of several film versions of the frosty fable, others being 'The Woman of the Snow', one story in Masaki Kobayashi's excellent supernatural anthology 'Kwaidan' (1964), another being 'Snow/Woman' (2000) an awful, bargain-basement 'pinkie', worth watching solely for the cute, and occasionally naked, white-witch. Tokuzo Tanaka's 1968 version is creepily surreal at times, especially the scenes where the otherworldly woman with the golden eyes seems to glide over the snow. Shiho Fujimura makes for an enchanting yokai, the story is engaging, the music good (the film was scored by Akira Ifukube, the composer behind many of Toho's great kaiju themes) and the special effects (the witch's demonic eyes and the preternatural 'freezing') are nicely done. Slow moving and subtle by modern horror-film standards but still an excellent candidate for a midnight viewing with a fine bottle of sake or Japanese whisky to keep you warm when the spectral snow starts to fall.