Hiruko the Goblin

Unlike every other Tsukamoto film I've been able to hunt down (the two TETSUOs, GEMINI, and ROD BOY,) this film seems to be nothing more than a silly popcorn film. Nothing wrong with that, certainly, although it does raise some interesting questions about Tsukamoto's style as a director. The sped up POV running towards a character thing he did in both TETSUOs, for example, looks like an EVIL DEAD rip off here, despite the device having a completely different effect in the Tetsuo films.

This feels less like a Tsukamoto work than anything else he's done, even the slowly paced art film GEMINI. Beyond that, it's basically a straight horror flick: characters find themselves in a bad situation, and spend the entire film's running time trying to get out of it and/or fix it. The elements aren't original by any stretch of the imagination (there's even a crusty, crazy old man who knows more than he's telling,) but Tsukamoto's handling of them still feels new. When someone is attacked by a goblin, the victim flashes to a peaceful, serene, but nonetheless threatening dreamworld, which (as we discover) more often than not leads to suicide.

Much, much fluffier than anything else the man's done, and curious for his fans, although the uninitiated will just see a straight horror flick, albeit one better done than most. Fun stuff.

I decided to purchase the film before seeing it. It was a "blind buy". was it worth it? Yes. That's not to say that the film isn't without it's faults however.

The story (like many people have already said) is somewhat confusing. I'm not going to go into the basic plot of the film, because you can look that up yourself...lol. I'll tell you that the plot IS interesting though, if maybe a tad to complex for it's own good.

I'm just going to point out what i liked and didn't like, so that you'll be able to make a decision on whether or not the film would be worth your time.

The effects were OK. This is obviously a low budget flick. That being said, there were only a couple really cheesy effects. Of course, the main gimmick is the whole "heads with spider legs" thing, and that's pulled off pretty well for the most part. I gotta say, they do look pretty creepy and some of them shoot large tongues out their mouths (reminded me of Uzumaki to a certain degree).

The film doesn't really know if it's serious or slapstick. Now by slapstick, i don't mean there's scenes like you'd see in "the naked gun" or movies of that type however. One of the main characters runs around with quirky inventions made of household items. he carries a can of aerosol spray that evidently the goblins don't like. There's a lot of tongue in cheek events and scenes in this one...but there's some good horror elements as well.

in fact, there's actually quite a few scenes that gave me goosebumps. there was also 2 or 3 moments where i actually jumped a little bit. it's just too bad that it seems like the last 3/4's of the film loses the "horror edge" and makes the film seem like a bad Japanese Indiana Jones ripoff in comparison to what we see earlier in the film.

Oh yeah, there's some pretty violent scenes in this as well. so if you aren't a fan of gore and blood...then this might turn you off. however, the violence isn't "shocking" or anything that would upset the squeamish.

The premise is interesting, but i honestly think this would have been a much better flick if it was straight horror...and dropped the goofy comedic tone found in many scenes. Overall though, it's a pretty fun ride...and there's really not much out there that has the feel the film has. I'm a big time horror fan, and it floats my boat and was worth the blind purchase.

RATING: 7/10

I saw an article titled "Insane Horror Movies You Have To See" and I liked almost all the movies on the list (MANDY, POSSESSION, HOUSE, NIGHTBREED, SOCIETY, etc.) but this film and TITANE were the only two I hadn't seen. I'd heard of TITANE since it won the Palme d'Or, but I'd never heard of this early 90s Japanese horror film. Don't associate this one with the late 90s J-Horror batch of films (RINGU, JU-ON, DARK WATER, etc.). This film shares a spirit much closer to Sam Raimi's EVIL DEAD, mixing outlandish creatures, wild camera movements, and a general level of craziness that gets wilder and wilder as the film goes along. For the first hour or so, the film is a pretty transitional Asian horror film, featuring an evil spirit (a goblin) that's killing students at a private high school, but once a severed head with spider legs begins terrorizing students at around the 45-minute mark, that's when the film starts getting really good, building to a climax that to SOOOOO bonkers, I awarded the film another star. I was laughing out loud it was so outrageous! For fans of 70s and 80s Japanese horror films along the lines of 1977's HOUSE (not the William Katt film), seek this one out!

Mix a typical creature movie with Tsukamoto madness and add cheesy characters and you have Hiruko the Goblin.

Don't watch this movie expecting anything serious like Tetsuo or Tokyo Fist. This Tsukamoto movie was an offbeat comedy with some strange horror effects. The soundtrack seemed as though it doesn't fit with parts of the movie either, and the characters needed more development.

However, the craziness was still there, and Tsukamoto's camera angles, lighting, and color were all there. I'm glad I have this DVD in my collection since I am a big Tsukamoto Shinya fan.

I give it 6.5/10

After opening an ancient tomb discovered beneath their school, teacher Takashi Yabe (Naoto Takenaka) and pretty student Tsukishima (Megumi Ueno) fall victim to the goblins trapped within. With the help of archaeologist Hieda Reijirou (Kenji Sawada), Takashi's son Masao attempts to prevent the goblins from escaping into our world.

Tetsuo, The Iron Man, Shin'ya Tsukamoto's nightmarish cyberpunk cult hit, found its audience with the art-house/obscure horror intelligentsia; I can't imagine the same crowd going quite so gaga for Hiruko the Goblin, which takes a far less visionary approach, borrowing much of it its visual stylings from Sam Raimi's The Evil Dead and John Carpenter's The Thing.

The film's plot is just as incomprehensible as Tetsuo's—I hadn't a clue what was happening for much of the time—but Tsukamoto eschews the surreal for a far more basic, splat-stick style, with plenty of gushing blood, crazy creatures, and chaotic, over-the-top acting. It might not make much sense half the time, but with decapitated heads sprouting legs, a crazy archaeologist armed with homemade goblin-hunting gizmos, and a young hero who develops burns on his back that resemble the goblins' victims, it's hard not to enjoy on the most basic of levels.