The “Crazy Religious” horror film can be one of the more interesting of the horror sub-genres, because they’re almost always inherently mysterious along with being potentially frightening. It’s either frightening because there are disillusioned people out killing non-crazy people because they think doing so will give birth to demons or the end of the world might happen, or there are enlightened people out killing non-crazy people because they will give birth to demons or the end of the world will happen. Best case scenario only a few people die horribly. Worse case scenario hell will rise and Earth will die horribly.

The horror genre has often been delineated as a genre for the infantile or immature and not usually to be taken seriously. However, in the rare instances where a film breaks free of its genre’s designations and perceived limitations it becomes a treasure, as is the case with spine #90 in the Criterion Collection – Kwaidan.

We already have an entry for today’s 31 Days of Horror, but we couldn’t resist profiling this classic horror film for this week’s Old Ass Movies.