Think FLIGHT OF THE PHOENIX meets INVASION OF THE BODY
SNATCHERS in an irresistible 1968 horror-fest from Japan’s Shochiku studios and director Hajime Sato (THE GOLDEN BAT). GOKE, BODY SNATCHER FROM HELL (Kyuketsuki Gokemidoro) won’t make anybody’s Great Cinema listing, but the film, which was released in English dubbed form as BODY SNATCHER FROM HELL before being digitized as part of Criterion’s WHEN HORROR CAME TO SHOCHIKU collection, delivers exactly what you’d expect. This means if you find that poster art interesting you’ll likely enjoy the film it advertises.
For starters it moves very fast. In the opening three minutes a plane flying over a blood-red sky (an image replicated in KILL BILL: Vol. 1’s airplane scene) is afflicted by squabbling among its passengers, birds slamming into windows and a bomb threat made by an onboard terrorist (Hideo Ko), who later claims his actions were because “the world’s a boring place.” The plane also has one of its wings sheared off by a downed UFO and crashes.
Stuck in a mountainous region, the surviving passengers and crewmembers, whose ranks include the upstanding First Officer Sugisaka (Teruo Yoshida), an English speaking American woman named Mrs. Neal (Kathy Horan), the politically connected Gozo Mano (Michael Kaye) and Professor Saga (Masaya Takahashi), a scientist and resident know-it-all, quickly succumb to infighting. During this time the flight attendant Kazumi Asakura (Tomomi Sato) is dragged off by the terrorist, and witnesses him being lured to the site of the crashed UFO. There the man’s forehead is split open and a mass of gelatinous goo oozes into the opening, turning him into a zombified vampire who pursues his fellow passengers and drinks their blood.
He also leads one of the more attractive passengers, Noriko Tokuyasu (Yuko Kusunoki), to the UFO, where she undergoes the split forehead treatment and becomes the aliens’ unofficial spokesperson. Speaking through Noriko, a deep-voiced alien (the prolific voice-over artist Keiichi Noda) reveals that his race is known as Gokemidoro, which hail from a distant planet and bear a very pointed objective: “to exterminate the human race.”
The proceedings, with their histrionic performances and dated special effects, are more than a little campy, although that camp is a crucial part of the fun. Further charm is provided by an element that shouldn’t work but somehow does: the audacious mix of genres (science fiction, vampire horror, survival drama, political screed) and disparate elements, such as a hypnosis session, references to the ten-raging Vietnam War (represented by red-tinted still photos of that conflict) and a notably bleak climax that takes the film’s orientation from the intimate to the global, and does so without losing its footing.
Also striking are the special effects, which despite (or perhaps because of) their dated nature work smashingly well. As anyone who’s ever seen a GODZILLA movie well knows, whatever flaws Japanese FX might have, audacity isn’t one of them. GOKE’s effects, accomplished by Michio Mikami (INFRA-MAN), are very much in keeping with those of the Godzilla flicks, but with an added element: physical grotesquerie. The head splittings on display were quite graphic for 1968, and the addition of a blob-like mass renders them even more disgusting—yes, that is intended as a recommendation.
Vital Statistics
GOKE, BODY SNATCHER FROM HELL (Kyuketsuki Gokemidoro)
Shochiku
Director: Hajime Sato
Producer: Akira Inomata
Screenplay: Susumu Takaku, Kyuzo Kobyashi
Cinematography: Shizuo Hirase
Editing: Akimitsu Terada
Cast: Teruo Yoshida, Tomomi Sato, Hideo Ko, Masaya Takahashi, Nobuo Kaneko, Eizo Kitamura, Yuko Kusunoki, Kazuo Kato, Hiroyuki Nishimoto, Norihiko Yamamoto, Kathy Horan