I haven't seen many Lee Yong-min movies but after only two, it already feels safe to say he is one strange director. A Devilish Murder, his mid-'60s, black-and-white ghost story, is a loony mix of spirit possession, sibling rivalry, and Dorian Gray mystery all wrapped up in one delicious package. As you might guess from that last detail, the film does involve a supernatural painting — the Red Portrait [of devoted wife Ae-ja (Do Geum-bong)] done by an artist who assisted in the murder of its subject but then went on to immortalize her in blood. The victim's surviving husband Shi-mak (Lee Ye-chun), who remarried her conniving sister, may be innocent of the crime but he's also criminally passive when it comes to recognizing she'd never commit adultery while his wicked mom would do anything to cover the fact that she herself is sleeping with the family's horny doctor (Nam Kung-won).
Admittedly, A Devilish Murder can get convoluted at times. Does the dead grandma return as a cat or a vampire? Is the maid a force of good or evil? Does midnight happen twice in one night? Furthermore, the one exacting revenge isn't really the spirit of the dead woman so much as it's the shapeshifting cat that drank her blood when she was buried behind a wall. Charmingly dated special effects will remind you of the human-animal bond repeatedly; there's a seduction scene in which the phantom woman has feline paws below the sheets, a fight that finds her injured hand transformed into a claw, and some reveals in a well-placed mirror that shatters defensively. Who the helpful maid remains a mystery but the fun of A Devilish Murder isn't figuring out whodunit so much as keeping up with what the hell is going on.
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