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Criterion's latest standard-def box set is a bounty of late-60s Japanese radioactive zombie-creature mania....
Criterion / 336 Minutes / 1967-1968 / Unrated / Street Date: November 20, 2012
Criterion's Eclipse sets can often be tough nuts to crack, but this newest one - When Horror Came to Shochiku - is out there. These four flicks certainly play as being off the beaten track (that's something that Eclipse always provides), and that's part of its charm, yet one gets the feeling while watching these things that they're so odd they're nearly unapproachable.
I mean, anyone searching out for these movies - The X From Outer Space (1967), Goke, Body Snatcher From Hell (1968), The Living Skeleton (1968), and Genocide (1968) - will likely have at least a vague idea of what they're getting into. There are screaming damsels in distress, giant walking insect monsters, alien zombie bounty hunters, space spores with the potential to wipe out mankind: these aren't so much movies as they are Godzilla-fied extended Twilight Zone episodes.
Some of these have been available on Hulu Plus for a while, so folks have been able to get a taste for what When Horror Came to Shochiku has to offer for a few months now, but for Asian sci-fi/horror fans, this Eclipse set provides a deliriously weird standard-def experience. I doubt anyone could legitimately defend any member of this quartet as manifesting classic filmmaking - even diehards might have to refer to them as wondrously crappy - but Criterion nevertheless delivers again here. The curious may only watch them once, but what a long, strange trip it will be....