Sightlines · a viewing thread

Tales of the Restless Dead

Watch these when you want ghost stories in the old sense, with folk tales, premonitions and the dead walking unnoticed among the living, moving from Kobayashi's painted Japan and King Hu's mountain to Bava's anthology, an Ealing dream loop and a church organist who can't shake a pale man.

Mostly film-school canon and treasured cult titles, with one huge crowd favourite as the door in; several are slow and stately, Kwaidan and Legend of the Mountain run close to three hours, and they reward patience more than they deliver jolts.