Product Details

• Actors: Hinako Saeki, Ayaka Nanami, Bang-ho Cho, Chika Fujimura, Yuki Hagiwara
• Directors: Katsuhito Ueno
• Writers: Kengo Kaji, Kyoichi Nanatsuki, Shinichi Koga, Sôtarô Hayashi
• Producers: Akira Tsuburaya, Hiroki Ôta, Hiroshi Yamaji, Kenichi Itaya
• Format: Color, DVD, Subtitled, NTSC
• Language: Cantonese
• Subtitles: English
• Region: Region 1 (U.S. and Canada only. Read more about DVD formats.)
  
• Aspect Ratio: 1.66:1
• Number of discs: 1
• Rating: R (Restricted)
• Studio: Tokyo Shock
• DVD Release Date: February 27, 2001
• Run Time: 95 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• ASIN: B000055Y0V
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #118,170 in Movies & TV (See Bestsellers in Movies & TV)

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Editorial Reviews

Product Description
Misa Kuroi is a good witch, but wherever she goes, evil follows. When a dying girl appears out of nowhere shouting Misa's name, our heroine goes to work. Following the clues, Misa transfers to the prestigious Saint Salem School for Girls and joins the Drama Club. Soon all the girls depart for a mysterious Drama Camp, deep in the woods.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Schlock horror done in by it's own poor production values., April 8, 2001

By	m.a.r.i.l.y.n (East Coast, USA) - See all my reviews

It had all the makings of an enjoyable schlock horror: Flesh burning demons, high school girls into acting and girl/girl love, and an eccentric coroner who was also uncle to the focus of the story, a teen witch. In other words, all the sorts of things to make you scream in fright on occasion, but mostly start rolling on the floor laughing - something that would keep you highly entertained. So what made this "Sabrina the Teenage Witch" meets "Friday the 13th" much less fun than it could have been?

Well, for starters, most of what was on the screen was barely visible. Misa has some of the darkest film footage known to man. My best guess is that the director was looking for a "noir" look, but instead ended up with indoor scenes that seem as if they were processed in black coffee. At moments where you're supposed to be terrified, you're instead going to be saying "what's going on?" since you can't make out the black shapes moving around on the screen.

Problem two would be the unsteady camera work. While the outdoors scenes were pretty well done - they actually had a kind of dreamy quality, with lots of soft focus and slight overexposure - many times the camera movement detracted from the moment because it was so unsteady. While this may be a desired effect when monsters are giving chase, there's no real reason for it when the girls are simply standing around talking.

The third downfall: audio. The voices on the Japanese track were unintelligable at times. (But it's not a defect of the DVD. It seems to have happened during the actual filming; most likely it's related to the movement of the actresses away from the microphone.) It happens often enough in conjunction with poorly lit scenes to become truly annoying. After all, you don't buy a movie only to read the subtitles. (Which by the way, are hardtitled onto a black bar which takes up the lower quarter of the screen on the subtitled version. Yuck!)

The voices on the dubbed track fared much, much better -they were loud and clear actually - but they were a little too "hyper-americanized-anime" for my taste.

On the plus side, considering the source material, Media Blasters did the best they could with the DVD. Having both versions -English and Japanese- was great (think back to all those "newly" released Jet-Li DVDs which only had the god-awful English tracks!!!) The photo gallery was also pretty nice (though it kind of makes you wish that whoever shot the stills had done the DP work on the movie).

In the end, unless your a real big fan of not-so-scary teenage sorcery horror fests, pass this one up, or if you curiosity is eating away at you, rent it before you buy it.

8 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Mythos Shadows in Japan, April 7, 2003

By A Customer

A young woman collapses on a Tokyo street, muttering the name "Misa Kuroi"-and then dies. At the city morgue, two police detectives discuss Misa Kuroi, a figure they believe to be nothing more than an urban myth, a supposed teen-aged witch who investigates strange cases. As it happens, while they are talking, the real Misa Kuroi slips past them and enters the morgue. She examines the corpse and determines that it has been eaten away by parasites from another dimension.

Following a clue in the dead female's belongings, Misa goes to a nearby high school for girls. Misa befriends a student named Aya and enrolls in Aya's drama club. Hikaru, the "Chief" of the drama group, assigns Misa a part in the current play, which seems to incorporate many occult elements.

The girls from the drama club use a holiday period for extra practice at an old house that once belonged to Baron Etori, the founder of the high school. During one practice session, while Misa is in another part of the building using the telephone, Hikaru and the other girls fall into a trance and begin to invoke the Seven Angels of Darkness:

·Atorakunakua, god of the spider (Atlach-Nacha);
·Huster, god of the wind (Hastur);
·Tsatugua, god of the underworld (Tsathoggua);
·Nialratohotepu, god of chaos (Nyarlathotep);
·Dagon, god of water;
·Shupunigras, god of the black goat (Shub-Niggurath); and
·Cthulu, the sleeping god (Cthulhu).

Misa returns and interrupts the ceremony before it can be completed, but evil forces, in the form of misshapen cloaked figures, have been unleashed. One by one, the other girls are killed by the creatures of darkness, until only Misa, Aya, and Hikaru remain. Misa attempts to expose the source behind the eldritch events at the house, and this proves to be the long-dead Baron Etori. Etori's spirit claims descent from the Weitly (Whately) family, notorious servants of the demon-god Yog Sototo (Yog-Sothoth).

Etori's spirit informs Misa that the deaths of the other students have been arranged as sacrifices to Yog Sototo. In return, Yog Sototo will give full human life to a Homonculus, an artificially created being. Puzzled by this, Misa banishes Etori's spirit-only to learn that both Aya and Hikaru are Homonculi, created by Etori's magic in years past.

Somehow Aya lost her memory of her unnatural creation, and was raised by foster parents, believing that she was a normal human being. Hikaru, however, is working in consonance with the Baron's plan. She kills Misa, and then begins the final arcane preparations to sacrifice Aya to Yog Sototo. Hikaru feels this will make her completely human.

But Misa's mystical powers enable her to return from death to defend Aya. In the confrontation with Hikaru, Misa blasts Hikaru with sorcerous energies-which also cast Hikaru back through time, where she appears on a Tokyo street, dying as she speaks the words "Misa Kuroi". . . .

The storyline is a bit murky-why Yog Sototo or the Angels of Darkness would care about making a Homonculus fully human is not obvious to me. But I did enjoy the movie, with its modest Cthulhu Mythos references, and its rather somber protagonist. In addition to being an enchantress, Misa is also a Buffy-style fighter; in one sequence, she hikes up her skirt, pulls a dagger out of a thigh sheath, and starts carving up a band of robed zombies.

I found it interesting that whoever did the English-language translation did not recognize the original sources for "Huster" and "Tsatugua" and the other Mythos names, and instead tried to phonetically transcribe the Japanese versions of these names back into English.

I've seen a couple of reviews of Misa that referred to elements of nudity and lesbianism, but none of that appeared in the print I watched. (Although it was clearly implied that some of the girls in the drama group were romantically involved.)

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars New Misa Fan, March 3, 2004

By	J. Kyle (Palo Alto, Ca United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Misa The Dark Angel [VHS] (VHS Tape)

I was initially put off by the gory beginning of this film, which was reminiscent of many low-budget shockers, but once past that I was increasingly intriqued by the characters and impressed by the photography and music of this film. Hinako Saeki is impressive as Misa--very dynamic, and the other actresses are good too, especially Ayaka Nanami as Aya. The film is unusual and creative, and gets better and better as it goes along. I like the wide-screen, subtitled format: with this format you hear the voices of the original actresses, yet the words are always legible. Because of the acting and superior photography, I greatly preferred this film to "Wizard of Darkness" --the first film in the Eko Eko Azarak trilogy (which had a completely different cast). To me, "Misa the Dark Angel" was a real find.