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.

It's about protecting a young girl and a precious document. The yokai do their thing. The samurai ronin do their thing. It does not end well for some samurai.

They meet an old man who warns them not to use violence on this path where there are many aspirations aka Yokai. The samurai obviously ignore this and attack the old man for just 'getting in the way'.

This old man is a pivotal component for the rest of the storyline. It's a romantic story and a story with treachery and early special-effects. This is not the most amazing film but it is well-made for the time and the romance of the story makes it interesting. It's part of Arrow Video's Great Yokai Collection.

Worth a watch! 7/10.

The closing instalment of the YOKAI MONSTERS trilogy is a very different beast, much more understated and subtle than the previous movies and more horror than fantasy. The monsters themselves are little seen here apart from in a couple of scare scenes but the rest is an engaging little story of criminal behaviour, treachery, and heroism. Appealing child actors, lots of action and movement and attention to detail make this a fair watch.

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.

Unlike Daiei Film's previous two 'yôkai' films (Yôkai hyaku monogatari (1968) and Yôkai daisensô (1968)), the monsters/ghosts/apparitions are not the central characters in this tale. Instead, we get a reasonably interesting samurai/gangster story about a crime boss trying to recover an incriminating document that was found by a little girl who is trying to find the father who abandoned her when she was born. The boss' henchmen kill an old man at prayer (the girl's grandfather), a desecration that arouses anger in the spirit world. The cursed gang-members are tormented by the yôkai as well as pursued by a rival gangster whose boss was murdered at the shrine. The entire supernatural subtext seems to be an afterthought and certainly is not necessary to the actual story. Lacking the permeating hallucinatory imagery of the first two 'yôkai' films, "Along with Ghosts" (Tôkaidô obake dôchû), while watchable, is not nearly as original or entertaining.