The Curses of Kazuo Umezu
Who is Kazuo Umezu?
While you may not know the name, you’ve been touched by his legacy. By combining gruesome and shocking horror imagery with the dominant style of shojo manga in the 1960s, the “god of horror manga” changed the visual language of the form and inspired such celebrated creators as Hideshi Hino and Junji Ito.
He also inspired more than a few cinematic adaptations of his work and all September long, at the Stray Cat Film Center, Elijah LaFollette of Magnetic Magic Rentals and I will be paying homage to the master with a month-long series of mysterious, bizarre, and bewildering adaptations of his work, from theatrically-released feature films to direct-to-video animation and everything in between. You won’t know what you’ll be watching until you’re seated, but we guarantee that it’ll be like nothing you’ve ever seen before.
Welcome to Kazuo Umezu’s Horror Theater!
The fun begins on Tuesday, September 2 at 7pm and runs not-quite every Tuesday night for the whole month (we skip September 9 and come back on the 16th, 23rd, and 30th). I can’t tell you what all we’ll be showing, but you’ll get some hints, and it includes some oddities that have never been commercially available in the States, not to mention the very earliest cinematic adaptation of Umezu’s work, from the director of Gamera! And tickets are only $1!
This is a project that’s been in the works for almost a year. Kazuo Umezu passed away in 2024 at the age of 88, and Eli and I cooked up the idea of a film series celebrating his life and works. We chose September because September 3 would have been his 89th birthday.
For fans of Kazuo Umezu, we think you’ll see some stuff that you’ve never seen before. For newcomers, we hope that we’ll turn you on to the works of one of our favorite horror creators.
Umezu was born in 1936, and started his career in the ’50s. He became as famous for his distinctive red-and-white striped shirts as for his macabre creations, and many of his best-known manga are available in deluxe English translations from Viz, including Orochi, Cat-Eyed Boy, and the epic weird masterpiece The Drifting Classroom, which won him the Shogakukan Manga Award in 1974.
From scary stories told at sleepovers to brain-swapping experiments, from snake girls to dolls with a life of their own, Kazuo Umezu has created some of the most indelible images in the history of horror manga – and we can’t wait to share them with you!
