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Japanese advertising poster

Kaidan semushi otoko (怪談せむし男), also known under the English titles The Ghost of the Hunchback and House of Terrors, is a 1965 Japanese horror film produced and released by Toei. It stars Ko Nishimura, Yuko Kusonoki, Kazuo Kitamura and Shinjiro Ehara and was directed by Hajime Sato. The plot concerns a woman, Yoshie Munakata (Kusonoki) who learns upon her terminally ill husband's death that the man led a sort of double life in a remote and luxurious villa, tended by a hunchbacked caretaker.

In 1966, a year after the film was released in its native Japan, Kaidan semushi otoko was picked up for distribution by Filmar, an Italian company. Filmar changed the film's title to Il pozzo di Satana (Satan's Pit) and produced a relatively faithful Italian-language dub, changing some of the principal characters' names. The Italian-language dialogue was written by Franco dal Cer. Filmar also added new titles to the film, giving the cast and primary crew English pseudonyms.

Italian advertising poster

The Filmar version of the film has been released on both VHS and a widely-available DVD. However, the original Japanese version, with Japanese-language dialogue and titles, is not known to have been released on any home video format. It is also not known to have ever aired on television. Nothing is known about whether it survives to this day or not.