Goke, Body-Snatcher from Hell (1968): written by Kyuzu Kobayashi and Susumu Takaku; directed by Hajime Sato: Fun though often somber and horrifying Japanese scifi/monster movie. 'Goke' isn't so much from Hell as it is from space, the vanguard of a supposed invasion.
Goke, Body-Snatcher from Hell uses the always-reliable Stagecoach template here, with a limited number of characters randomly brought together by shared transportation (an airplane here, not a stagecoach, lifeboat, or spaceship).
That airplane soon crashes thanks to Goke's flying saucer. And the survivors are soon beset by problems from within and from without, way without, as Goke has landed on their island to tease and torment them with some Dope alien powers.
The whole thing makes for an effective horror ride with out-dated but often extremely effective visual and special effects. There's more than a hint of allegory as well, with the violence and confusion of the world of 1968 portrayed through assassinations, bomb threats, corrupt politicians, corrupt arms dealers, and an American woman recently widowed by the Viet Nam War.
Goke, Body-Snatcher from Hell is rumoured to be a favourite of Quentin Tarantino. At the very least, he included a Goke-like scene in Kill Bill 1 that involved a jet flight and a lurid orange sky right out of Goke. Fun stuff. And a special award goes to the grotesque visualization of Goke entering and leaving a victim's body, along with a terrific ending. Recommended.
Dagon (1968) by Fred Chappell: Chappell has long been a respected Southern writer with academic ties. But he's also been a periodic contributor to the vast shared universe inspired by the writings of H.P. Lovecraft. Dagon is his one novel-length foray into Lovecraftiana. And boy, it is not what one expects, not hardly!
Dagon begins by looking like one of those Lovecraft homages (think Stephen King's "Jerusalem's Lot") in which a man returns to his ancestral home to discover that he has some family tie to horrifying secrets. The HPL Ur-text for this is "The Rats In the Walls." Our preacher-protagonist returns to the family farm in the American South to work on a theology text. His luminous, often sarcastic wife accompanies him.
Almost immediately, our protagonist begins to be haunted by strange dreams and visions and compulsions, all tied to the tenant family also living on the rural property. They're vaguely fishy looking. Literally.
Someone familiar with HPL's universe will almost immediately think, "Oh oh. They've got the Innsmouth Look!" Yes. Yes they do. And this will indeed prefigure what comes, though not in any 'normal' way when it comes to stories that nod to HPL's Deep Ones.
About a third of the way through this short novel, things make a dramatic and unexpected shift into something startling and horrible. I did not see it coming. Probably, neither will you. What follows is something that still seems radical for a Cthulhu Mythos text, if a Cthulhu Mythos text this is. Certainly the eponymous Lovecraftian water god, borrowed from the Babylonians by HPL, is involved, as are mentions of Lovecraftian texts and deities. And an early HPL tale bears the same title.
What occupies Chappell in the last two-thirds of Dagon is an exploration of the aberrant psychology of someone trapped by an ancestral association with non-traditional Evil, gradually stripped of all free will and agency, gradually broken down into a sacrificial victim. But what kind of sacrifice? Telling more would be telling too much. It may not even be Objective Evil -- it may just be Subjective Evil and Objective Other.
Dagon is not for everyone. It is excruciating, depressing, and horrifying. It takes some of its inspiration from the mental transmogrifications we see in the narrator at the end of "The Shadow Over Innsmouth" and then goes far beyond that, beyond even the dismal mental destruction of the narrator of the aforementioned "The Rats In the Walls."
Throughout this dark descent, we're guided by third-person narration, not the first-person narration of the above two stories. Chappell maintains a bit of narrative distance so as to allow for a more clinical observation of a mind in the midst of destruction and debasement. And when the ending comes -- well, it too is unexpected and very much both a nod to HPL and a sort of perfection of the ruthless cosmicism of some of HPL's works.
This is a brilliant, disturbing, exhausting novel. Rewarding to the extreme, but I couldn't blame anyone for throwing it into the fireplace without finishing it. This is about as dark as it gets. Highly recommended.
Night of the Living Dead (1968): written by John Russo and George Romero; directed by George Romero; starring Duane Jones (Ben), Judith O'Dea (Barbra), Karl Hardman (Harry Cooper), Marilyn Eastman (Helen Cooper), Keith Wayne (Tom), Judith Ridley (Judy), Kyra Schon (Karen Cooper), George Kosana (Sheriff): George Romero's witty, gritty, subversive zombie film pretty much kicked off the entire genre of the walking, eating dead.
The restored print used by TCM is a revelation. Romero's low-budget film now looks and acts more like an art-house classic than a drive-in staple. It's amazing how good the movie is, and how eccentric -- an African-American hero, a protagonist (Barbra) who slips into near-catatonia 20 minutes into the movie and pretty much stays there to the end, and those rapidly evolving zombies who quickly learn how to use tools.
Night of the Living Dead is better than every walking dead movie or TV show that followed with one exception -- Romero's own sequel, Dawn of the Dead. Brilliant film-making, and acting by amateurs and local actors that works beautifully, none more beautifully than Duane Jones as Ben. Highly recommended.
The Devil's Bride (a.k.a. The Devil Rides Out): adapted by Richard Matheson from the Dennis Wheatley novel The Devil Rides Out; directed by Terence Fisher; starring Christopher Lee (Duc de Richleau), Charles Gray (Mocata), Nike Arrighi (Tanith), Leon Greene (Rex), and Patrick Mower (Simon) (1968): Fun, tightly plotted period piece (it's set in England in the 1920's) pits Christopher Lee in a rare heroic turn against the forces of Satan himself as conjured up by Aleister Crowley-esque black magician Mocata.
The great Richard Matheson does solid work turning a novel by the often clunky Dennis Wheatley into a crisply executed occult thriller that clocks in at barely 100 minutes. Lee commands the screen as a reluctant, learning-on-the-fly white magician who must battle the powerful Mocata (a terrifically oily, ingratiating Charles Gray) for the souls of two people who have been pulled into Satanic worship.
The rites and spells sometimes sound so odd that you'd swear they were lifted from H.P. Lovecraft or William Hope Hodgson's Carnacki the Ghost-Finder series and not from actual occult sources. This Hammer film has a fairly low budget, as Hammer films always did, but the cinematography, direction, and set design mostly make up for it. There are a couple of goofy moments involving visual effects, but a couple of things also work quite well.
The film is at its creepiest when it keeps its demons off-stage, but that's true of virtually all horror movies. Wait for the moment in which a crucifix operates pretty much like the Holy Hand-grenade of Antioch. Reportedly this was Christopher Lee's favourite of his many Hammer Horror Films, partially because he himself suggested they make it and partially, I assume, because he got to be a commanding good guy for once. Recommended.
