When Horror Came to Shochiku

While early Japanese films from serious-minded directors such as Ozu and Kurosawa won worldwide accolades from critics, often those “artistic” adventures were bought and paid for by money earned the old-fashioned way: genre movies. Horror, fantasy and science fiction were a big international market. And Japanese studios discovered that their product translated well to the burgeoning drive-in crowd of the ‘50s and ‘60s. Of course, Godzilla and his oversized friends are the most recognizable export, but the new Eclipse set – When Horror Came to Shochiku – unearths a few more sci-fi shockers that have been all but impossible to find.

By the late ‘60s, Shochiku was desperate to get a piece of the action rival studios Toho and Daiei were enjoying. The most obvious route was to stick a guy in a suit and let him smash things! The X from Outer Space (1967) is almost pre-packaged for mockery. The monster – Guilala – is space chicken hatched from a smuggled spore that grows into a mechano-lizard hybrid and proceeds to suck all the Earth’s natural resources. It’s as if the creature was designed with leftover monster suits found in the Toho dumpster.

And yet the movie itself plays out perfectly as an unintentional spoof, full of bad acting and pregnant pauses that leave plenty of room to insert your own sarcastic remarks. Crises arise and are forgotten…often in the same scene. Giulala grows from hatchling to 40-story mutant in one edit. And the effects are several rungs below the Godzilla films. But The X from Outer Space is still irresistibly entertaining for anyone still immature enough to enjoy it.

Goke, Body Snatcher from Hell (1968) is another “Quentin Tarantino Approved” title that got a bit of mileage from the director’s attention, but is still all but unknown to North American audiences (it showed up on Turner Classic Movies, of all places, a few years back). A bomb threat, bird strike and UFO attack force a plane to crash land in an isolated valley. The bickering passengers then find themselves under attack by a body-swapping alien with plans to conquer the earth – and suck some blood when the mood strikes him.

Comparisons to certain Twilight Zone episodes are valid since the passengers each seem to represent some aspect of humanity in general (a theme Rod Serling seemed to favor). And they’re as much a threat to each other as the alien menace lurking in the hills. Goke’s most memorable aspect – besides that hallucinogenic opening scene – is probably the alien make-up design, which splits open the actor’s face to resemble a certain part of the female anatomy. Director Hajime Sato hits the ground running, cranks up the tension and delivers a sweaty, delirious and all-around bizarre invasion movie on the cheap.

Swinging to the supernatural side of things, The Living Skeleton (1968) is a ghost story not unlike the later wave of J-Horror that would peak in the ‘90s. Modern-day pirates who left the passengers and crew of a freighter for dead wind up facing death themselves in the form of ghostly vengeance. The twin sister of one of their victims seem possessed with otherworldly powers just as the freighter floats off-shore to signal their doom.

The Living Skeleton is the most artistic and cinematic of the Shochiku titles included in the set. It has a remarkably eerie tone and takes full advantage of the black and white photography to emphasize the darkness waiting just at the edge of the screen. Yet it’s also jumbled and more than a bit non-sensical – with a particularly “WTF” ending - relying on the poetic power of image and composition.

By 1968, we were only a few years away from an overload of “when nature attacks” movies like The Swarm. But Genocide got there first with a crazy plot involving nuclear bombs, international spies, killer bugs and Vietnam flashbacks. It makes sense, in a “you-had-to-be-there” sort of way, but it’s easier to let director Kazui Nihonmatsu’s jumbled genre picture just wash over you.

When an American bomber goes down over some Japanese islands, the hunt is one for the survivors and their million-dollar nuclear payload. But an outbreak of genetically altered killer bees whose sting causes hallucinations followed by pain and death wreaks havoc with everyone’s plans. Sub-plots and characters criss-cross and intersect in annoyingly random fashion until the film charges towards an unexpectedly apocalyptic conclusion.

Again, decidedly bizarre and often amateurish. But that’s the appeal of the set itself, released as part of the Criterion Collection but in a more affordable package (you can find it for just over $40 bucks) with no extras except for some helpful liner notes.