Long before the modern female revenge genre came into existence, there was The Spider Tattoo, Masumura’s mysterious, ferocious Edo-era fable. Ayako Wakao is Otsuya, the daughter of a wealthy merchant who gets kidnapped and forced into prostitution. A demented tattoo artist engraves a large, black, human-faced spider on her back that turns her into a murderess, hell-bent on annihilating the men who abused her. A star-studded collaboration adapted from renowned author Jun’ichirō Tanizaki's novel by writer-director Kaneto Shindô (The Naked Island, Onibaba) and photographed by the legendary Kazuo Miyagawa (Rashomon, Ugetsu) in entrancing, sumptuous Eastmancolor, The Spider Tattoo is Masumura’s most visually striking film.