Kaneto Shindô writes and directs this Japanese horror. Set in the ancient Heian era, Yone (Nobuko Otowa) and her 20-year-old daughter-in-law Shige (Kiwako Taichi) are scratching a meagre living in the forest when a band of marauding, depraved samurai rape and slay the two women, leaving their hut in ashes, and the blood-covered bodies splayed nearby. A passing black cat revives the spirits of the fallen women and transforms them into shape-shifting ghosts who proceed to wreak revenge on the samurai class by luring them into the surrounding bamboo groves. But one day the warrior Gintoki (Kichiemon Nakamura) returns home to find his wife and mother gone and is assigned to rid the country of the murderous ghosts.