Word: demonically
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...call the Mundele ya Mwinda, the White Man with the Lantern. The Mundele superstition goes back to the time when Belgian officials would come into a village at night to round up Congolese males for forced labor. Gradually, the blacks began to see these officials as one all-powerful demon, whose lantern cast an evil spell. Though no one knows exactly who brought the legend of the evil White Man back to life, thousands of Congolese are today convinced that he is once again stalking the land to hypnotize blacks with his lantern and then grind them up into corned...
There are some better performances among the seven stars. As Shotover's indescribable daughter Hesione, Diana Wynward is splendid, and Pamela Brown is at least intriguing as her sister Ariadne, Lady Utterword. (They are not the "demon women" Hector describes, but that is Shaw's fault more than theirs.) Ellie Dunn, who begins as a romantic ingenue and becomes one of the quietly scary, hard-as-nails young women only Shaw could create, is played well enough by Diane Cilento...
Perhaps the only mistake which the makers of Golden Demon made was in the title, which suggests violence and Oriental supernaturalism like that in Ugestu and Gate of Hell. Lest anyone be driven away by visions of gibbering 16th century warriors and otherworldly music, it should be explained that the "golden demon" is money and the film is about love and pride in Japan of the 1890's. It contains the striking color photography of Michio Takahashi, with its scrupulous attention to mood and detail, a high level of emotional excitement sustained throughout an uncomplicated plot, and fine acting...
...Golden Demon unfolds in a series of tableaux; transitions are sharp, symbolism through color contrasts more than obvious. To fill in some of the larger gaps, a narrator quotes (?) Japanese poetry as the camera sweeps over the landscape and the background music swells...
Playing with Golden Demon are History of the Cinema and Tara the Stonecutter, both above-average cartoons. "Tara," based on a Japanese legend about a man who desired to be the most powerful thing on earth, suffers from an "Ah, so" third person narrator, but is very well drawn...