Onibaba

Another Criterion Collection member, yes, I'm on a kick. This film is set in feudal Japan and involves a woman and her daughter-in-law trying to eek out a living in a swamp. The husban/son has gone off to war with a friend and was supposedly killed on the way home. The son's friend starts hanging around and soon starts making his move on his buddy's wife. The mother-in-law becomes jealous and afraid that her daughter-in-law will leave her and tries to come up with way to scare her into staying. The two of them have been living by killing worn-out soldiers in the grass fields and selling their armor and weapons for food. Without her daughter-in-law, the old woman won't be able to keep this up by herself. The old woman eventually kills a samurai wearing a mask. She decides to take the mask along with his other possessions and starts wearing the mask to scare her daughter-in-law in the grass fields. The daughter-in-law takes her for a demon and is temporarily scared into staying away from her newfound lover. However, the tables are eventually turned as the old woman finds it hard to remove the mask.