Kyuketsuki Gokemidoro (1968)

Directed by Hajime Satô [Other horror films: Kaidan semushi otoko (1965), Kaitei daisensô (1966)]

Commonly known under the catchy title Goke, Body Snatcher from Hell, this Japanese film is a vibrant and occasionally interesting movie. It has solid anti-wars themes, and a fantastic ending, but it’s also not the most engaging film out there.

I’ve seen this one twice now, and I guess one of my main issues with the film isn’t even entirely with the film itself. The production company, Shochiku, have certainly made worse films (X from Outer Space) and less coherent films (The Living Skeleton), so this one is certainly a palatable movie. Comparing it to other Japanese movies from the time, though, such as Matango from just five years earlier, and even The H-Man from ten years earlier, and it just doesn’t hold up.

No doubt the story has some strong elements, but I don’t think one of them is the space vampire. The special effects around the silvery slime using human beings as hosts is great, and the way to get into the body (via a vertical slit in the forehead) is classy, but that was really the least interesting portion of the film.

More so, the movie’s about what people will do when placed in an exceptionally stressful situation. To be sure, it was stressful before the alien – people on an airplane have to deal with both a hostage takeover and an unrelated bomb threat (talk about getting on the wrong flight), and that was all during the ten minute cold open before we even get the movie’s title. And so we have this group of people from different walks of life trying to survive from threats on multiple sides.

Of course, some of these individuals are more antagonistic, such as the hijacker (Hideo Kô) and this asshole of a politician (Eizô Kitamura), and others are more the generic hero, such as co-pilot (Teruo Yoshida). Others are the flies in the ointment, such as the psychiatrist (Kazuo Katô) who is more interested in seeing how people react to the situation than anything else.

Performances all around are pretty decent. Like I said, Teruo Yoshida tends to be a bit on the generic side, but there’s others, such as Kazuo Katô, Hideo Kô, Masaya Takahashi, Nobuo Kaneko, and Kathy Horan who bring plenty of flavor to the film.

What’s more striking is the somewhat heavy-handed anti-war message the film carries. There’s an American woman who is going to pick up her dead husband from Vietnam, and she does occasionally get emotional about the stupidity of war. Another suggests that because of mankind’s tendencies to fight unnecessary wars, it’ll attract the attention of alien lifeforms, making us an easier target (reminding me of the Nine Inch Nails song ‘The Warning’, which is a banger).

At the same time, I like to think that most people would be against war. I mean, obviously not those who support capitalism – capitalism without war is untenable – but most people, I think, wouldn’t have a problem saying that war is a negative thing, and if it can be avoided, it should be. I suspect few knew that better than Japan, as they were still recovering from the devastation the USA caused their country with the atomic bombs in Nagasaki and Hiroshima.

I also want to add that, without giving anything away, I loved the hell out of the conclusion. I’ve seen this before, as I said, but I honestly didn’t remember much in the way of details, and so the finale here really hit the right spot in about three different ways (none of which I can fairly expand on). It was the finale that kept on giving, and the final shots were A+.

Goke, Body Snatcher from Hell is a nice-looking movie. The color schemes, especially during the opening (an airplane flying in a blood-red sky is rather striking). It’s just that, funnily, the so-called “Body Snatcher from Hell” is the least-interesting portion of the film, and while there’s enough here to keep things going at an okay pace, and the message is a solid one, when I think of other Japanese horror films, it’s just not quite as good or as memorable.

7/10