In his third film, reliable period film director Tanaka Tokuzo gets a budget to work with, granting him not only great color cinematography and competent visual effects, but also three major jidai-geki stars: Haseagawa, Ichikawa AND Katsu. The film is fairly confident that this alone is enough to win the audience to its side.
I recently watched Tanaka's later Kaidan yukijorô (The Snow Woman, 1968), which is the best film I have seen from him to date. Like The Snow Woman, The Demon of Mount Oe is a supernatural tale set in distant centuries. However, the narrative here is more broad and everything is massive. The supernatural elements of the story are interesting enough, but the story doesn't really develop a flow, making this film feel super slow and stand-still.
The narrative has Ichikawa and Katsu fighting against a shape-shifting demon, played by Hasegawa. Though there is romance, action and a bit of horror, this folk tale never chooses an overall tone, which again makes it feel more tedious. There is potential in the scenario just like in the visual effects and the all-star cast, but the film would have needed a more determined visionary to helm it. Paradoxically, it's unlikely that Daiei would have financed the film, had it featured a director capable of turning the material into a lasting masterpiece.