Japanese culture draws from nearly 2300 years of history. This provides Japanese artists with a rich and diverse palette from which to create art, music, and stories much different from anything in western culture. It also seems to give them the freedom to branch into the uncommon, the unexpected, and the outright bizarre. This film is a perfect example of bizarre.
“Goke, The Body Snatcher From Hell” 1968 is a strange, strange movie. It starts on a plane carrying several very unpleasant people. The plane somehow flies into Hell or something like it. Then things start to get weird. One of the passengers is a hit man and his rifle is found. He takes a stewardess hostage. The plane lands in Hell. Then things start to get bizarre. The hitman may have always been Goke or being in hell may have made him Goke, it’s not really clear. No one actually refers to him as Goke or the location as hell.
The title of the film as listed above is the US release title. The original Japanese title “Kyuketsuki Gokemidoro” translates to “Vampire Gokemidoro”. There are no traditional, that is to say western vampires in the film. There are red blobs that attack by magically causing a person’s forehead to split with a vertical tear that looks too much like a forehead vagina. The blob enters through this fissure and takes over the host. These sequences are pretty much the only real horrific things about the movie. The rest is just different manifestations of bizarre.
This one is tricky to find. The US version is streaming for free on YouTube in an inferior and incomplete version. It’s streaming on the Criterion channel requiring a subscription. The Japanese version is the one you want to see and it’s available on Blu Ray on Amazon but it’s a bit expensive. Ebay may be your best bet here.
Who knows what comes next? I certainly don’t but I can promise it won’t be as strange as this entry.
See you then.
