Halloween Film Screening: ‘Onibaba (1964)’

The Performance and Visual Studies Program will host its annual Halloween film screening featuring the 1964 Japanese horror film “Onibaba” at 6 p.m. in Geren Auditorium (ARCB 101). A pizza dinner will follow the screening.

Set in the sweltering marshlands of medieval Japan, “Onibaba” tells the story of two women who survive by murdering lost samurai and selling their armor — until the arrival of a soldier and a demonic mask disrupts their fragile existence. Shot in stark black and white, the film blends elements of folk tale, horror and postwar existentialism, elevated by Hikaru Hayashi’s acclaimed avant-garde jazz score.

Daniel Humphrey, academic undergraduate director for Performance and Visual Studies, and Martin Regan, a professor in the Music Performance program, will introduce the film. Humphrey will discuss its cinematic and historical context, while Regan will focus on Hayashi’s modernist score.

For students, “Onibaba” offers a mesmerizing mix of folk horror, feminist critique and experimental cinema. For scholars, it provides fertile ground for discussions on class, postwar trauma and the aesthetics of the 1960s Japanese New Wave.