Aka - A Devilish Homicide

This 1965 Korean horror is amazing - it continues to take you by surprise throughout with jolts and turns. "I let the cat feed on my rotting body". I know absolutely nothing about Korean horror from this period - I think this is the first I have seen - but it was clearly influenced by the work of Japanese director Nobuo Nakagawa with its imagery of ghosts on the ceiling, cats licking blood and brutal revenge. "I am a grudgeful woman". At the same time you can recognize many of the horror elements of more recent Korean films in it. The director Lee Yong-min had studied film in Japan and came away with some great ideas of combining Japanese horror with Korean folklore and Buddha. A few of his other titles feel promising if I ever get a chance to see them - The Gate to Hell, A Bridegroom from a Grave, Hell Has no Vacancy and Revenge of the Snake Woman. Shot in black and white, it creates a consistent creepy atmosphere right from the start and never lets down. Every time you think it has, something will come at you "You are about to die. You have been poisoned. Let me have sex with you before you die". Evil has rarely felt so real. The kind that people can do.




Lee Shi-mak (Lee Ye-chun) is a middle aged businessman who has been invited to an art gallery show. When he arrives though no one is there and only one painting. One of Ae-ja (Do Kum-bong) a woman he knew and who is now dead. He is shocked - especially when the image of her melts off the canvass. He gets taken against his will to an old mansion and the horror begins. A man is killed in front of him and Ae-ja appears and falls at his feet. He takes her to the family doctor and when the doctor takes her blood it is not red, when he puts a stethoscope to her chest he gets that sound that all alien films of the time used. Shi-mak goes home to his wife, grandmother and three children - it all seems like a good family but there is so much evil not seen that begins to percolate. The ghost goes into full rage. Something very bad happened to it but we don't know what. When we do it is horrific.



There are some great scenes - one of the children looks out the window from the second floor and is snatched out by the head, a character licking the sleeping children, a fight to the death between an old lady and one of the other characters. The grandmother (Na Jeong-ok) who initially comes across as a harmless old lady gives a fabulous performance as pure evil. The family dynamics are fascinating as well - the husband Shi-mak is controlled by the women in his home and completely oblivious to the evil within. His passive reaction is almost as scary - even unable to defend his wife when being hurt by the ghost - unable to react when his children all disappear. He just goes on as if nothing has happened. This is up on YouTube in the Korean Archive section with subs. I will have to see if they have any more of the director's films.