Woman in the Dunes (1964)

NR02/15/1964Drama, Thriller2h 27m
  • User
    Score

Haunting. Erotic. Unforgettable.

Overview

A vacationing entomologist suffers extreme physical and psychological trauma after being taken captive by the residents of a poor seaside village and made to live with a woman whose life task is shoveling sand for them.

Top Billed Cast

  1. Cast 1

    Eiji Okada

    Entomologist Niki Jumpei

  2. Cast 1

    Kyôko Kishida

    The Woman

  3. Hiroko Itō

    Entomologist's Wife

  4. Cast 1

    Kōji Mitsui

    Village Elder

Yikes, but for a film almost entirely set outdoors it’s remarkably claustrophobic! It’s about the exploring bug hunter “Jumpei” (Eiji Okada) who finds himself a bit lost out in the sand dunes after he misses the last bus of the day. A friendly villager offers him some shelter for the night, buy boy is he ill-prepared for quite what that man, and his entire village, has in store. He is placed with a widow, but when he wakes in the morning discovers that her home is deep within a sand well and the only way out is the ladder he climbed down to enter - and that’s gone! It’s a precarious existence ...