I am going to do my best to tell you what Blind Woman’s Curse is about, but it’s going to be a struggle. It’s a nonsensical mash-up of horror and yakuza warfare. You take those two elements, toss in a black cat with a taste for blood and mix in a little carnival freak show attraction and you basically come up with the movie that is Blind Woman’s Curse. For the most part it doesn’t make a lick of sense, but that hardly matters.

If you’ve ever given a cat some catnip you know they absolutely love it. They just go crazy for the stuff. They start rolling around, rubbing their face into anything and everything. At that moment in time, when they’re hopped up on the nip, nothing makes sense to them and it doesn’t matter because everything is perfect. Whatever feeling that is that cats experience, that’s what watching Blind Woman’s Curse feels like.

The film opens up pretty straight forward enough. Akemi (Meiko Kaji) and her clan square off to do battle with their rivals. This means the film opens with a bloody fight scene right off the bat. Pretty solid way to pull your audience in and grab their attention early. The fight ends as Akemi attempts to kill the rival gang’s leader but ends up slicing his daughter, Aiko (Hoki Tokuda) across the eyes. As Aiko lay in the ground bleeding from her eyes, a black cat approaches and begins to lick up the blood. Eventually the cat locks eyes with Akemi and attacks her.

Akemi is then tormented by both the black cat and Aiko. As Aiko hunts Akemi down she begins to pick off members of her clan one-by-one. As if this isn’t bad enough, Akemi still has to worry about the other clan who is trying to takeover their territory. Oh, and there may be a double agent working both sides! What?!

Yeah, Blind Woman’s Curse has a lot going on. There are segments here and there that you can piece together and start to build what resembles a cohesive story, but for the most part this is just bloody fun with no real rhyme or reason. Everything centers around Akemi and what’s going on with her but there’s these weird side stories that she’s only loosely involved with. For one you have this crime boss of sorts who walks around wearing what is essentially a thong. He tries to lead his gang to take over territory and mix it up with the big boys, but no one takes him serious and just makes fun of his stench. Then there’s a side show attraction full of strange performers and a room full of body parts. Honestly, everything is just strange and weird. I don’t know how else to describe it.

Aside from weird and strange the next word that comes to mind is beautiful. Blind Woman’s Curse is just a beautiful movie. Everything going on may not add up, but it sure looks stunning. This was my first experience with the work of director Teruo Ishii and for what he lacks in cohesive story telling he more than makes up with a visual style that will blow you away. The opening sequence sets the bar really high with some amazing sword action, almost all of which ends with a healthy (or un-healthy) spray of blood flying across the screen. The red of blood is extremely bright, allowing it to pop and add to the overall beauty. Just gorgeous.

The Blu-ray/DVD combo release from Arrow does a terrific job highlighting the artistic style that is dripping from Blind Woman’s Curse. The special features on this release are actually a little lighter than what we’ve come to expect from Arrow, however. There are a few trailers, which I always appreciate, and a commentary for the film with Japanese cinema expert Jasper Sharp. That’s it as far as what is actually on the disc. Of course Arrow does provide another wonderful booklet with original art, and serving as the real winner for me is the writings on the film by Tom Mes. After watching the movie I was happy to learn that an expert like Mes was just as confused by parts of the plot as I.

So at the end of the day maybe I can’t accurately describe Blind Woman’s Curse. I can say for sure that it’s awesome fun, and isn’t that what really matters?