Breakfast in the Ruins considers Seijun Suzuki’s 1973 contribution to the horror anthology series, Unbalanced Horror Theater: “A Mummy’s Love.”

“In terms of its creative ambition and production values, this series seems to have represented something akin to a Japanese take on the BBC’s celebrated Ghost Stories for Christmas, and it also seems to have acted as a bit of a ‘life line’ to other struggling Nikkatsu directors, with Suzuki’s erstwhile colleagues Yasuharu Hasebe and Toshiya Fujita also contributing episodes.

Suzuki’s entry in the series however was the first to be broadcast, and is thus far the only one I’ve been able to track down with English subtitles. And, purely on this basis, I’m inclined to think that ‘Unbalanced Horror Theatre’ was pretty aptly named. To not put too fine a point on it, ‘Miira No Koi’ [roughly, ‘A Mummy’s Love’], first broadcast to the nation on 8th January 1973, is absolutely mental.”