Two from 1968 nestled in the middle of the WhenHorror Came to Shochiku boxed set, Goke, Body Snatcher from Hell and The Living Skeleton couldn’t be more
different. One is a color sci-fi mash-up that sits right alongside any flying
saucer schlock to be found in an American drive-in; another is a
black-and-white ghost story more in the tradition of Val Lewton. Both narratives
stem from a horrible accident on a travel vessel--a crashing airplane, a
massacre on a boat--but there the similarities end.
Goke, Body Snatcher from Hell was
directed by Hajime Sato. It has many of the hallmarks of a smart B-movie
production in that it makes do with a limited budget by isolating the events.
In this case, a commercial airplane is stranded in the middle of nowhere after
being knocked from the storm-torn sky of an alien invasion. Once the craft is
on the ground, surviving crew and passengers must wait out the storm and each
other’s dwindling patience. Things were tense even before the crash. An
anonymous tip told the crew there was a terrorist bomber on board, and while
the hunt for him didn’t uncover any explosives, it did expose a hijacker (Hideo
Ko) who had smuggled a gun in his luggage. Rather than be detained after the
accident, the bad guy takes the stewardess (Tomomi Sato) hostage. His flight
from justice only leads him to the alien craft, however, and the gelatinous
ooze that has come to Earth looking for a host.
The image would not be out of place in a horror manga. The
hijacker’s face splits open and the alien goo crawls inside. Once possessed,
the hijacker starts hunting down the other passengers, sucking out their life
force like a vampire. One by one, the crew falls, but not before their class
positions and particular sins are exposed. It’s like Kurosawa’s TheLower Depths crossed with Hitchcock’s Lifeboat
[review]. Amongst the passengers are a corrupt politician (Eizo Kitamura), a
feckless arms dealer (Nobuo Kaneko, The Human Condition
[review]), and an American widow (Kathy Horan) grieving for the husband she
lost in the Vietnam War. The original bomber, as it turns out, was only faking,
looking to have some kicks in a world he finds boring, using violence as his
own private stimulus.
There is a fairly clear anti-war message here. The aliens,
it is theorized, have managed to infiltrate humanity because everyone is so
busy fighting each other, they can’t see the threat from beyond the stars.
Thus, the bickering fliers are a microcosm of the macro problem. They can’t agree
on anything, so they all die. Goke seems sadly prescient.
Many of its horrors are relevant to today. Terrorism, privacy, disagreements
about science, birds mysteriously falling from the sky--or, committing suicide,
as it were. It could just as well be our own timeline the plane is hurtling
threw. Albeit, minus the aliens, plastic special effects, and silly plot
machinations. Hopefully our world will be absent the bleak ending, as well.
There is some influence of the French New Wave evident in
how the scenes of war are cut into the sci-fi monster narrative: random flashes
of overexposed violence doused in red flash across the screen at the mere
mention of Vietnam. Actually, that’s another element Goke
has in common with The Living Skeleton. Sketchy memories of
the inciting massacre reappear throughout, just quick splices to remind us of
the bloody horror that set all the later spookiness in motion.
Directed by Hiroshi Matsuno, The Living
Skelton seems more serious minded than the Shochiku films viewed
previously, though with no bigger budget and no better special effects. Hell,
there isn’t really a living skeleton, just a lot of fake skeletons anchored to
the bottom of the ocean. And they look no more real than the bats that serve as
bad omens for the evil men whose greed kicked everything off.
In the opening scenes, a gang of opportunistic pirates
attack a sailing vessel and kill everyone on board. Jump ahead three years
later, and Saeko (Kikko Matsuoka), the twin sister of one of the murdered,
accidentally stumbles on the ship’s ghostly wreckage while scuba diving. She
communicates with her lost twin through whatever dimension separates the living
from the dead and learns all about the crime. Now having seen the faces of the
men responsible, the surviving girl starts posing as the ghost of her sibling,
scaring the crooks into their own untimely deaths.
Though essentially a ghost story, its criminal underworld
setting adds a touch of noir to The Living Skeleton before
eventually careening off into mad scientist territory and even a little
tragedy. There are also Christian overtones throughout. The living twin spends
much of her time at church commiserating with the priest (Masumi Okada,
Crazed Fruit). And, of course, the chaste Saeko only finds
the underwater skeletons after having sex with her boyfriend (Yasunori Irikawa,
Samurai Spy). Some tropes don’t just transcend genre, but
international borders.
The Living Skeleton doesn’t ever really
get scary, though credit to cinematographer Masayuki Kato for getting the look
just right. The moody photography creates an otherworldly atmosphere. Like the
rocky terrain of Goke, Body Snatcher from Hell), the foggy
seaside of The Living Skeleton could be everywhere and
nowhere. It is of no real origin, of no real time. Kato and Matsuno get
inventive with some of the underwater shots, placing the characters in a kind
of netherworld. It could be under the ocean, or it could be outer space, or
perhaps this is just where we go when we die.
Which, again, sort of encapsulates what is going on in the
When Horror Came to Shochiku set. Whether from above or
below, from within or without, the threats are indescribable, boundless, and
ultimately deadly. Yet, even with the body count, they’re also grand fun.
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