Kyûketsu dokuro-sen

Being the only film directed by Hiroshi Matsuno, The Living Skeleton has often been described as the love child of David Lynch's Twin Peaks and John Carpenter's The Fog. An atmospheric tale of revenge from beyond the watery grave, mixing elements of ghost stories, doppelgänger thrillers and mad-scientist flicks, married only by its unconventional direction, editing and beautiful black-and-white photography. From Matsuno's direction to Noburo Nishiyama's Morricone-esque music, it's an engagingly haunting, wild and eerie work, interspersed with bouts of violence and grim murder, all led by Kikko Matsuoka's incredible performance. Representing the peak of Shochiku's dalliance with horror convention, The Living Skeleton is a chilling and genuinely unnerving black-and-white update of the bygone Kaidan tradition.

Mostly of the reviewers posted here that movie was an inspiration to Carpenter's The Fog, I would go beyond including the picture Alvin Rakoff's Death Ship released in 1980 starring by George Kennedy and Richard Crenna, approaching the same premise as The Fog too, this one a low budge Japanese presentation with old fashionable special effects and ghost ship miniature clearly noticed.

The plot is about a Ship called Dragon King that carries a huge cargo of gold from Japan to China, but during the journey five crew members settle a mutiny killing the captain, cabin crew and the whole passengers, letting alive just a young girl, which his husband was a Ship's doctor, she was raped and killed by them afterwards as well, this girl actually is twin of a girl who lives under the protection of a priest on a catholic church in Japanese spot shore,

Three years later strangest things begin to happen, those five criminals that stolen the gold one by one are being killed by countless ways, always a female ghost appears on those place whereby the murders took place and whenever it happened the ghost ship suddenly appears on the fog nearby,

However just two members still alive weren't recognized the female ghost, the first one is owner of a nightclub and the unknown is uncovered by him, thus instead to wanting for the unavoidable death, they decide be back at dead ship to clarify the mystery.

Docked in fine black & white photography that underpins the creepy atmosphere to such an extent that further strengthens the picture, it explains how it stablished a patten to western filmmakers!!

Thanks for reading.

Resume: First watch: 2022 / Source: DVD / How many: 1 / Rating: 7.5.

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.

This low-budget horror movie very much benefits from the typically excellent craftsmanship expended even on such low-end efforts by major studios in Japan at the time. I can't concur with others that it reminded me at all of "The Fog," apart from liekwise involving ghostly vengeance for death at sea. The script is a bit confused, particularly once we get towards the end, when in addition to the supernatural element it turns out there's a sort of mad-scientist thing going on--making for a narrative agenda rather sillier and more overloaded than this movie can pull off.

Still, that doesn't matter so much, because the atmospherics are very effective in their widescreen B&W handsomeness, despite the fairly cheap FX. (Particularly the kind of tank miniatures more familiar from Godzilla-type films, with "stormy seas" clearly not much more than bathtub splashing in slo-mo.) The performances are decent enough, and while the story isn't terribly scary, there's a nice mood of creeping dread--you can almost feel the ocean air permeating inland, bringing ghosts and violent death with it.

The title of "The Living Skeleton" is actually misleading,because there isn't living skeleton in the film.However the underwater sequence of meeting skeletons is truly unforgettable.The film opens with bang:there is a massacre on board of a ship which predates recent US hit "Ghost Ship".There are striking similarities between Hiroshi Matsuno's film and John Carpenter's famous horror hit "The Fog":a quiet coastal village surrounded by the fog,a local priest with a creepy secret and a ghostly ship with bleached skeletons on board,which haunts villagers on the land.There is also a bit of subtle necrophilia thrown in and a female ghost with long black hair."The Living Skeleton" written by Kyuzo Kobayashi of "Goke Bodysnatcher from Hell" fame surely is delirious experience.It's a crying shame that it's currently out of print.If you liked it be sure to check out obscure Austrian horror film "Dark Echo" from 1977,which may also inspired "The Fog".