Movie Type: Fairy Tales & Legends, Fantasy Adventure
Themes: Mutants, Heroic Mission, Fantasy Lands
Main Cast: Tamasaburo Bando, Go Kato, Tsutomi Yamasaki, Koji Nanbara
Release Year: 1980
Country: JP
Run Time: 124 minutes
Plot
In the 1930s, a schoolteacher named Gakuen (Tsutomo Yamazaki), while searching for his missing friend Akira (Go Kato), comes upon a mysterious, drought-stricken village beside a pond. After asking for food from a beautiful young woman named Yuri (played by the noted onnagata performer Tamasaburo Bando), Gakuen discovers that she is married to Akira, who is also the keeper of the village bell. Unless it is struck three times a day, a spirit that dwells in the pond, the Dragon Princess (also played by Bando), will flood the town and kill all its inhabitants. When the Dragon Princess receives an offer of marriage from a prince, she offers to leave the pond in exchange for a human sacrifice, and Yuri is chosen as the victim. ~ Tom Vick, All Movie Guide
Review
Throughout long his career, Demon Pond director Masahiro Shinoda has explored the cinematic possibilities of Kabuki theatrical conventions. His 1969 Double Suicide employed the traditional black-clad stagehands of Kabuki performances, and his 1995 Sharaku speculates on the life of the mysterious artist of the same name who made woodblock prints of Kabuki actors. In Demon Pond he makes great use of Tamasaburo Bando, one of the most famous living Kabuki onnagata performers (profiled in Daniel Schmid's The Written Face), in a dual role as the humble villager Yuri and the flamboyant, mercurial Dragon Princess. Onnagatas are men who train for years to perfect the art of performing female roles, and this film gives Bando a chance to display the full range of his talents. The film's visual style also constantly calls attention to its theatrical nature. The Dragon Princess' minions, a retinue of fantastic sea creatures, wear costumes that are intentionally artificial-looking, and the rich, vibrant color scheme of the film in general is wildly, beautifully unnatural. Demon Pond is based on a Japanese fairy tale, and Shinoda's theatrical strategies strike the perfect balance between believability and fantasy to which all fairy tales aspire. ~ Tom Vick, All Movie Guide
