Product Description
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Following years of a certain radioactive rubber beast’s
domination of the box office, many Japanese studios tried to
replicate the formula with their own brands of monster movies.
One of the most fascinating dives into that fiendish deep end was
the short-lived one from Shochiku, a studio better known for its
elegant dramas by the likes of Kenji Mizoguchi and Yasujiro Ozu.
In 1967 and 1968, the company created four certifiably batty,
low-budget fantasies, tales haunted by watery ghosts, plagued by
angry insects, and stalked by aliens—including one in the form of
a giant chicken-lizard. Shochiku’s outrageous and oozy horror
period shows a studio leaping into the unknown, even if only for
one brief, bloody moment.
Four-DVD Box Set Includes:
The X from Outer Space When a scientist crew returns from Mars
with some space spores that contaminated their ship, they
inadvertently bring about a nightmarish Earth invasion—after the
spores are analyzed in a lab, one escapes, eventually growing
into an enormous, rampaging beaked beast. An intergalactic
monster movie from longtime Shochiku stable director Kazui
Nihonmatsu, The X from Outer Space was the first in the studio’s
short but memorable cycle of horror pictures.
1967
* 88 minutes
* Color
* Monaural
* In Japanese with English subtitles
* 2.35:1 aspect ratioGoke, Body Snatcher from Hell After an
airplane is forced to c-land in a remote area, its passengers
find themselves face-to-face with an alien force that wants to
possess their bodies and souls—and perhaps take over the entire
human race. Filled with creatively repulsive effects—including a
very invasive bloblike life-form—Hajime Sato’s Goke, Body
Snatcher from Hell is a pulpy, apocalyptic gross-out.
1968
* 84 minutes
* Color
* Monaural
* In Japanese with English subtitles
* 2.35:1 aspect ratioThe Living Skeleton In this atmospheric tale
of revenge from beyond the watery grave, a pirate-ransacked
freighter’s violent past comes back to haunt a young woman living
in a seaside town. Mixing elements of kaidan (ghost stories),
doppelganger thrillers, and mad-scientist movies, Hiroshi
Matsuno’s The Living Skeleton is a wild and eerie work, with
beautiful widescreen, black-and-white cinematography.
1968
* 80 minutes
* Black & White
* Monaural
* In Japanese with English subtitles
* 2.35:1 aspect ratioGenocide The insects are taking over in this
nasty piece of disaster horror directed by Kazui Nihonmatsu. A
group of personnel transporting a hydrogen bomb are left
to figure out how and why swarms of killer bugs took down their
plane; the answer is more deliriously nihilistic—and
convoluted—than you could imagine. Also known as War of the
Insects, Genocide enacts a cracked doomsday scenario like no
other.
1968
* 84 minutes
* Color
* Monaural
* In Japanese with English subtitles
* 2.35:1 aspect ratio
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This quartet of '60s-era features from Japan's highly regarded
Shochiku Company offers a panoply of low-budget genre pictures
that range from the sublime to the ridiculous, often within the
same movie. Best known for their art-house efforts by legendary
directors like Yasujiro Ozu and Kenji Mizoguchi, Shochiku also
delved briefly into horror and science fiction in the late '60s,
undoubtedly spurred by the significant box-office returns enjoyed
by Toho and Daiei with their giant-monster movies. Shochiku's
effort in the kaiju field, The X from Outer Space (1967), is a
deliriously weird but naively charming blend of suit-mation
mayhem (in the ungainly form of bug-lizard-chicken hybrid
Guilala, who returned four decades later in Minoru Kawasaki's
even stranger Attack the G8 Summit) and pulp rocket ship thrills.
Its harmless camp appeal offers a brief respite before the
back-to-back chills of Goke, Body Snatcher from Hell and The
Living Skeleton (both 1968); the former is an unsettling survivor
story about a group of plane-c survivors preyed upon by a
sluglike alien with world-domination plans, while Skeleton is an
atmospheric black-and-white ghost story about the restless
spirits of a freighter's murdered crew who seek vengeance on the
pirates that attacked their ship. Drenched in pop art color
schemes (and costumes), Goke also rivals Ishiro Honda's Matango
for its downbeat conclusion, while Skeleton--arguably the best
film in the set, and probably least known to American
audiences--unfolds like a languid nightmare with its striking,
expressionist set pieces and surprising flashes of grisly
violence. Apocalyptic freakout Genocide (also known as War of the
Insects, 1968) is an unrestrained mélange of atomic and
ecological terrors with heavy-handed political overtones and a
dash of mad science in its story of the search for an American
plane carrying the H-bomb that was brought down by a swarm of
mutant insects. The film has a simmering dash of the tensions
that existed between the United States and Japan in the postwar
years, but it's largely trampled by over-the-top performances and
the out-to-lunch premise. Fans of vintage Japanese science
fiction and horror will mostly delight in this lesser-known
foursome from the Criterion Collection's budget-minded Eclipse
Series, which also includes informative liner notes by writer
Chuck Stephens. --Paul Gaita