Tôkaidô obake dôchû

Yokai Monsters: Along with Ghosts (1969) is a Japanese Samurai Horror picture that I recently watched on Shudder. The storyline follows an old man who protects ancient lands filled with spirits. When a group of hoodlums kill the old man the spirits return to reality for revenge.

This movie is codirected by Yoshiyuki Kuroda (Lone Wolf and Cub: White Heaven in Hell) and Kimiyoshi Yasuda (Zatoichi and the One Armed Swordsman) and stars Kôjirô Hongô (Satan's Swords), Bokuzen Hidari (Seven Samurai), Saburô Date (Bullet Train) and Ryûtarô Gomi (Harakiri).

This movie is outstanding and easily the best of the trilogy. The attire, settings, props and depiction of the era were all perfect. The haunting scenes are very well done with good use of smoke machines and eerie background music. The masks and makeup used are very well done. The fight scene are excellent and entertaining - both the monsters vs humans and the samurai sword fights. The faceless children were a nice touch and I loved the twist at the end.

Overall, this is an underrated addition to the horror genre and a trilogy absolutely worth your time. I would score this picture an 8.5/10 and strongly recommend it.

The first yokai movie, 100 Monsters, didn't have enough monsters for my liking, and the second film, The Great Yokai War, featured a pair of irritating kids and was aimed at a much younger audience. The final film, Yokai Monsters: Along with Ghosts, doesn't feature many monsters AND it features a cute little kid, but I actually found it to be the best in the trilogy, with a much stronger story, better fight scenes and a creepier atmosphere.

When members of the Higuruma crime syndicate ambush men carrying an incriminating document, they also kill Jinbei (Bokuzen Hidari), the elderly guardian of the Onizuka shrine, ignoring his warning that they will be cursed for spilling blood on sacred ground. Witness to the murders is seven year old Miyo (Masami Furukido), granddaughter of Jinbei, who runs into the woods with the document, pursued by the killers. With his dying breath, Jinbei tells Miyo to go to Yui to find her father. Meanwhile, ronin Hyakutaro (Kôjirô Hongô) is out to avenge his master's murder by the Higuruma thugs.

Most of the film revolves around Miyo trying to avoid capture, her search for her father, and Hyakutaro's vendetta, with very little time dedicated to silly spook shenanigans, and to be honest, the film is all the better for it: there's no puerile comedy and the monsters, when they do appear, are far more menacing than before. I still wouldn't go so far as to say that this is an unmissable classic of Japanese cinema, but it is a far more satisfying film than the others in the trilogy, delivering excitement, danger, pathos and a cute child character that isn't annoying.

Like said, it's an ok movie. It's decent and more of story rather then fights. It have a mixture of adventure and humor in it which i didn't mind at all. For being a supernatural/paranormal movie with japanese ghosts and demons it was not that much of it but it had its moments. But the story was ok, it had its twist and it build the characters.

I did enjoy the characters, how they acted and how it ended. The fights was ok, it's not a lot of them but i dont mind that at all when looking at the environments and building feeling of the country of Japan during the samuari ages.

If you want something with a lot of atmosphere, not too much fighting and some ghosts/demons this the movie for you. It's no the best one out there, but it's ok - enjoyable.

I found this to be the weakest in the trilogy because I found this to be pretty plain. The story isn't that impressive with criminals trying to track down a little girl who has some kind of documents that want while she is trying to find her missing father. It gets pretty repetitive with them catching up with her and her getting away from them. I didn't find the plot all that interesting and is predictable on who the girl real father is. As for the yokai, they barely appear in the movie at all, and their actions happen pretty quickly to leave an impact. Also, a lot of the actions aren't suspenseful or intense.

The movie also isn't bizarre or interesting compared to the previous movies because the yokai barely appears, and most of the weird stuff isn't that memorable.

Along with Ghosts is the weakest in the trilogy that I didn't enjoy at all, and the first two movies are more enjoyable than this one.

This is a movie about his an old caretaker of a shrine that gets killed during a gang ambush. His granddaughter that is 7 years old is the witness and may possess something the gang wants. So a hunt for the little girl starts while she travels to another town to try to find her father....

I found this to be an eerie combination of moody hauntings and dark forests, some quite okay fighting scenes, and a quite cute small girl. I found this movie closer to scary than the first two movies, even though you did not see the monsters so much. Camera work and story I found clearly upgraded from the two first movies. Acting was also quite good.

If you wants to see lots of monsters/spirits I would say the 2 first movies are more for you.

Who would I recommend it to? People that like supernatural things combined with some fighting. Though if you do not like 7 years old girls that is sweeter than sugar then it is possible you will hate it. The monsters are for me more scary and better than in the two first, but for our time expecting it to be true horror is maybe expecting too much. But I am happy I saw this movie as I found it much better than expected.