Late to the party as always.... If Ringu was the film that broke the last decade or so's run of Japanese horror films worldwide, would I be right in assuming that it was preceded by five to tens years' of other films that did the groundwork without getting the payoff? Could anyone recommend some interesting (artistically or historically) pre-Ringu J-horrors for me? Ta.

(Just to be clear, I'm talking late-eighties, early nineties.)

I've yet to see it, but how about Sweet Home?

There are a couple of things I can think of, although I haven't seen them myself. To begin with, there was a made-for-TV version of Ring in 1995, three years before the Asmik Ace theatrical version. I have an e-mail address somewhere for a guy who sells a fan-sub version; I'll PM it to you if you want. Also, Hideo Nakata supposedly got the job of directing Ring because the producers liked his earlier ghost movie, Don't Look Up, also known as Ghost Actress. And depending on how you're defining the term, "horror," you might consider both Tetsuo: The Iron Man and its sequel/remake, Tetsuo 2: Body Hammer. The original Tetsuo I have seen, and although it's nominally science fiction, it's so totally irrational and unsettlingly bizarre that I'd feel comfortable counting it as horror, too.

Via a Video Watchdog review, Scary True Stories, a made for tv anthology, seems to have been an important ancestor.

first, I would like to recommend a website that's an official "friend of Choconado.com" in that we've exchanged links way back in the day: Snow Blood Apples, which is a very good review site that exclusively deals with asian extreme films--particularly J-Horror.

Now then... :::Cracks Knuckles::: there's a long history of the Modern Japanese Horror style, and it's evolution. I do think that Sweet Home is a good one to say is an early example. But I would first bring up Evil Dead Trap, made one year earlier as a real precursor to Ringu. Though it doesn't feature the "long-haired-ghost" archetype that Hideo Nakata made popular (seriously, he can't make a movie without having a shot over the protagonist's shoulder of a long-haired possible ghost staring ominously), though it is about a reporter (and her film crew) investigating an urban myth galvanized by a video tape. In this case, it's an apparent snuff tape, only its victim appears to be the reporter herself--which naturally leads her to investigate the abandoned factory the tape is shot in. For the record, imho, it's an unbearably dull film up until the last fifteen minutes or so, heavily influenced by Gialli. Also, it's heavily overrated--a trend that I think started with Oliver Stone raving about it.

Though you can easily keep going back and finding other films that count as j-horror if you look hard. One personal favorite of mine is the completely insane 1977 film Hausu by Nobuhiko Obayashi, which is a haunted house flick that seems to be the perfect mid-point between the delirious Yokai films of the sixties, and the violent teen j-horrors that started in the late eighties and continue today.

Also, Lyz, if you don't have this book, you really ought to consider getting it. It's a decade out of date now (meaning that it doesn't cover the post-Ring J-horror phenomenon at all), but I know of no other comparably useful book if you're looking for Japanese horror movies from before the rise of the stringy-haired ghost girl. There's also a companion volume on pink movies, if you're into that sort of thing.

I'd say Tetsuo is more body horror than sci-fi anyway, as there's no explanation given for the transformation. It's like a Japanese horror movie directed by David Cronenberg inspired by Metamorphosis. But weirder than that. The sequel, on the other hand, has a distinctly sci-fi plot, with the crazy machine people being explained away as some kind of biotech experiment. It still doesn't make a lick of sense, but it's a little less incoherent.

The House Where Evil Dwells was Japanese made, IIRC (American cast though). It's a bit silly, but adheres to some of the "rules" of folkloric Japanese ghosts. It's out on DVD now with a new cover that emulates The Grudge.

The only Japanese "horror" I'd seen pre-Ringu was Urotsukidoji, but I'd assume that is a separate category.

If It's what I think it is, then yes--yes it is an entirely different sort of category.

So, I mean, what about things like Kwaidan? There's quite a few Japanese movies based on traditional ghost tales.

The instruction to concentrate on the 80's and 90's would seem to rule out stuff like Kwaidan, The Tale of Ugetsu, and Black Cat, although modern J-horror clearly does have a few roots that run at least that deep.

Yeah, I knew the original instructions, I just thought that Necrosorrow was trying to say there was no pre-Ringu Japanese horror and that's just flat wrong.

I think he was saying that's all he'd personally seen. And if you see Urotsukidoji, you can't un-see it. Ever.

Yes, I am familiar with much of the material from the fifties and sixties; it's the recent wave of films that have slipped by me.

Thank you all for the suggestions. Sweet Home does sound like the kind of thing I'm looking for, although Hausu could certainly be considered a more remote ancestor of the movement. (For those of you unfamiliar with the film, there's a Teleport City review of it.)

I'm grateful for the book recommendation, too, Santo. I'm badly behind in my reading, since the US scrapped its special book-shipping rate.