Living Skeleton (1968)

Troubled young woman Saeko (a fine and touching performance by the lovely Kikko Matsuoka) has a strong psychic bound with her twin sister who was murdered along with several other people on a ship by bloodthirsty pirates. A few years after said massacre the vengeful ghosts of the victims materialize to exact a harsh revenge on the folks who killed them. Director Hiroki Matsuno keeps the absorbing story moving along at a steady pace, maintains a solemn tone throughout, and adroitly crafts a spooky gloom-doom atmosphere. Moreover, the seaside town setting and a dark take-no-prisoners sensibility -- one of the guilty tries to elude detection by passing himself off as a priest! -- further enhance the overall eerie mood. Masayuki Kato's sharp black and white cinematography offers several striking visuals. Only the hokey looking skeletons detract a bit from this otherwise sturdy and satisfying supernatural shocker.

In "Living Skeleton"'s surprisingly brutal opening scenes, we see a group of modern-day pirates indiscriminately massacring a bunch of passengers with machine gun fire - among them a beautiful, Western-looking Japanese woman.Then a title tells us we've jumped ahead a few years, and that woman's identical twin is now spending time among a shadowy Catholic priest.Some people go scuba diving where they find, in one of the movie's more memorable moments, skeletons chained to the ocean floor, presumably of the people who died in the beginning of the movie.The boat the pirates commandeered apparently sunk, but nevertheless seems to return to the shore, and the twin boards it, and some other stuff happens involving unconvincing flying bats. With the film's beginning, its moody black and white cinematography, and the glowering, impassive actors, I thought the stage was set for a disturbing arthouse Japanese flick like "Sword of Doom" or "Woman in the Dunes". However, by the end, which involves a mad scientist in a laboratory with lots of opportunities for gruesome deaths, some of which of course involve acid which burns people up quicker than lava might, I began thinking it's more in line with a Jess Franco flick from about the same time. Kikko Matsuoka, who plays the main character, does look a bit like Soledad Miranda.Problem with this movie was, I had no idea how it got from moody impressionism to full on camp blood-bath. It's pretty confusing, which wouldn't matter so much if the tone was even. It wasn't.

A gang of pirates commandeer a ship and kill everyone on board. Three years later in a seaside village, a Catholic priest (Masumi Okada) has offered shelter to Saeko (Kikko Matsuoka) as her twin sister, Yoriko (also Matsuoka) has disappeared with her new husband at sea.Professor Wheeler Winston Dixon referred to the Criterion Collection's eclipse set, calling the film "the most accomplished and sophisticated of the quartet in terms of its visual structure and narrative" and along with 'Genocide', "easily the most interesting entries".Indeed, the use of shadows and tints reminds me of some of Jacques Tourneur's best work, and accompanied by the music which seems quite atypical of Japanese film, this stands out as quite a one-of-a-kind film. Definitely a must-see, and it was wise of Criterion to single it out for wider inspection.

Made a decade before Carpenter's "The Fog", this is clearly that film's inspiration, and what glorious pulp horror it is.A scar-faced pirate and his cronies gun down a dozen men and several stunningly beautiful women. One woman grips the trouser leg of her killer as she dies, triggering a series of events that will see watery vengeance visited on the miscreants.This has a mysterious fog surrounding a quiet coastal town, a haunted ship of the dead, a local priest who carries a terrible secret and a ghostly, beautiful woman whose appearances strike fear into the hearts of evil men.It is made with incredible affection for its subject matter and total sincerity. Not once does it wink at its audience or betray its genre origins. No, it is proud to be a pulp horror film.Some of the special effects are not exactly believable, but these are part of the key to the film's charm. There is some model work of a ship crossing the ocean shot through clouds that is both incredibly artificial and incredibly beautiful. The "living skeletons" themselves, though not expertly incorporated into the central narrative, are beautiful.Highly recommended for true lovers of fantastique films.