It's an all-puppet short film about a samurai and a severed head. What's not to love?

As a rule, we tend not to cover Kickstarter projects here at Birth.Movies.Death., but every once in a while one comes along that seems particularly interesting, and in those cases we like to shed a little light on a project we think the BMD readership might be into.

Kevin McTurk's The Haunted Swordsman, for instance. Described as a "handcrafted epic puppet film" (!!!), the short seeks to tell the tale of "a lone samurai and his odd companion, a cursed severed head" who are "seeking vengeance in a haunted world." That's a whole bunch of words we can get onboard with.

Here's a more detailed plot description, if you're not already intrigued:

"Lost in a bamboo forest, his Shogun murdered by an evil supernatural force, a lone samurai collapses to his knees with an anguished cry. Disgraced and humiliated at having failed to save his Master, the Samurai prepares to commit seppuku. But a voice stops him. A voice emanating from a cursed severed head who offers to guide the Samurai on a quest for vengeance. Thus begins the tale of...The Haunted Swordsman."

And here's a further description of the project itself, via the short's Kickstarter campaign page:

"From Kevin McTurk, the director of the award-winning Kickstarter funded short film The Mill at Calder's End, comes a gothic horror adventure told with groundbreaking puppetry and innovative practical effects. The Haunted Swordsman is a live action samurai tale set in a world of demons and ghosts that will utilize 36 inch tall bunraku puppets, traditional in-camera effects and good old-fashioned smoke and mirrors trickery."

If you head over to The Haunted Swordsman's Kickstarter page, you can see a number of pieces of pre-production art, concept sketches, and learn more about the project itself, but McTurk and company were kind enough to send along some exceptionally cool images for BMD's readership, and we definitely like the looks of this thing.

Here, check 'em out:

Pretty cool, right? You can read more about The Haunted Swordsman over at its Kickstarter campaign page. Head on over there and give it a look, and if you like what you see, consider throwing 'em a few bucks!