Three films are available on DVD separately (although a box set would be nice) under the rubric Yokai Monsters. The Yokai are Japanese folklore creatures that again illustrate how Japan has a far different culture from the Western nations. One of the more famous beasties is the Umbrella Monster, which indeed looks like an umbrella with an eye, a mouth, and locomotes itself by hopping along on its one ‘leg’.
These are nominally kids’ films, although they contain a level of violence and bloodshed you wouldn’t approach in American children’s fare. Set in the, uhm, samurai period, or whatever, similar to most of these films, the movies bare strong resemblances to other Daiei series like the Daimaijin (the Giant Statue) trilogy or even the long-running Zatoichi the Blind Masseuse series.
The extremely nifty and entertaining Yokai Monsters: Spook Warfare (1968) establishes the various monsters as essentially benign creatures, who at worst only scare the innocent and only punish the guilty. The monsters are further cast into a good light when they band together to battle a (literal) gaijin, or ‘foreign devil,’ who’s wreaking havoc in the immediate area. This plays off Japan’s strong natural xenophobia, and is reminiscent of the way that Godzilla was first nudged into becoming a good guy by joining Rodan and Mothra to repel the space monster Ghidrah.
The monsters return in Yokai Monsters: 100 Monsters (a bit of an exaggeration, although there are several dozen), which moves strongly into Damajin territory—or, again, Zatoichi, if the avenger is non-supernatural—but presenting an evil Yakuza boss and his gang who eventually draw down upon themselves the wrath of the Yokais. The son of one of the villains is retarded, and spends much of the film cavorting with the obvious fan favorite Umbrella Monster. Again, great stuff.
The final film in the trilogy, Yokai Monsters: Along with Ghosts, basically replays the second film, although with (sadly) an entirely new cast of monsters, and an more aggressively scary tone. Presumably the second film didn’t do that well, with the new creatures and the darker tone the result, and it’s a pretty good movie still, but doesn’t fit in with the first two films as well as it might have.
The folklore-based Yokai monsters are also featured in other films, such as the recent The Great Yokai Wars, but the best co-feature for the Daiei trilogy might be the Hellboy animated featured Sword of Storms, which features Hellboy traveling through Japan and meeting several of the creatures encountered here. I’ll write more on that film in a bit.
All in all, these films are well-mounted, and really just a blast. You could certainly do worse if you’re looking for sometime new and unusual to watch this Halloween.
