AKA, The Legend of a Duel to the Death.
From the director of Yotsuya Kaiden. A Japanese family from Tokyo had to relocate to a rural area during World War Two. The war is coming to its conclusion. A number of local boys had been killed. The family's son, Hideyuki (Go Kato), returns home from the army lucky enough to be discharged due to illness. His sister is engaged to the son of the local mayor who got out of the war after being wounded. Hideyuki tells his sister not to marry him because he was a war criminal---a rapist and a murderer. Naturally, the mayor's son gets his fundoshi in a bunch, begins spreading rumors about the family, destroys their crops and finally tries to rape the girl. Her sister hits him over the head with a rock, accidentally killing him which results in the locals forming a lynch mob.
This one could be remade as a western. They could even use the same soundtrack. People there seem to all own shotguns.
It also made me think of those movies about Northerners who travel into the rural South and end up fighting for their lives, or movies like Diary of a Country Priest where French villages turn out to be full of horrible people.
Available on The Criterion Channel. In color.
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