Body Snatches

I had first heard of Goke, Body Snatcher from Hell at Halloween a few years ago: Turner Classic Movies was showing it as part of their horror film marathon, and something about that title just sang to me. Because, let's face it, that's an amazing title. I had had it saved on DVR, but something went wrong, and by the time I finally sat down to watch it, it was no where to be found. Since then, I've checked Netflix fairly regularly to try to see if it had been released, with no luck. I despaired ever even getting the chance to see it.

Then the other day, my roommate and I were fiddling around on Hulu Plus -- he has suddenly decided that he wants to start watching movies on his motion picture bucket list, and a good proportion of those movies are available through the Criterion Collection. So we were just going through the movies, putting all the ones he wanted to see in the queue, as well as a couple for me. Suddenly, what comes up but Goke! "What sort of witchery is this?" quoth I, staring in wonder at what I saw on the TV. Could it be true? Could it have been released by Criterion?

Short answer: yes, but not on DVD or Blue-Ray. It appears to be something that is solely on the Hulu Plus channel, which is a nice bit of added value for those who subscribe. Personally, I think that it probably will be released as a physical product eventually, especially after the success Criterion has had with House. In this blog post, it's mentioned that it had been posted on Hulu the same week that Godzilla and Quadrophenia had been posted: the former is set to be released on disc in January, and I expect that the latter won't follow too far behind. It's an interesting marketing maneuver, especially for films like this which may not have an existing audience yet.

So I watched it. And it was good. The movie I see it compared to the most is Mario Bava's Planet of the Vampires, which I can totally see, both plot-wise, as well is the director's clear indebtedness to Bava's over saturated style. But the horror in this movie is significantly more effective than in the earlier movie. Maybe it's the fact that I didn't watch this movie on the office computer over the course of my lunch hours over a couple days -- such was my online video experience before we hooked a Roku box to the TV -- but this one just worked much better for me.

**HERE THERE BE SPOILERS**

A summary, since it isn't a particularly well-known movie: an Air Japan flight is on it's way from Tokyo to Osaka, when there are some ominous events that begin taking place. The skies are orange and full of lights, and pigeons keep smashing into the windows of the aircraft. As this is going on, we are introduced to the crew and passengers, including one particularly nefarious passenger who then proceeds to hijack the plane, as nefarious passengers are wont to do. The plane is re-routed, but then a UFO flies by, and suddenly nothing works. The plane goes down on what seems to be an uncharted desert island.

On that island, it takes all of 23 seconds for the entire group (with the exception of the hero and heroine) to go full on "Lord of the Flies" mode: seriously, the introduction of the titular monster only hastens a process that by that point is well under way. And the eponymous horror is introduced in an effectively memorable way: the nefarious passenger takes the heroine hostage to try to get away from the rest of the survivors, only to encounter the UFO. The heroine passes out, and nefarious passenger enters the UFO, only to have what can only be described as a vaginal slit open up in his forehead. (Seriously, I'm admittedly not an expert, but take a look at that picture up top and let me know if I'm wrong here.) Then the alien, essentially a metallic-looking slime thing, oozes into the wound and takes over his body. Which, seriously, ew.

Well, for reasons that remain unexplained, it turns out that once the body is snatched, it hungers for human blood, and the Snatched Body Formerly Known As Nefarious Passenger is no exception. He goes around chomping on fellow passengers whenever they haven't been dispatched by one of the other, seemingly non-nefarious survivors. There's a lot of pessimistic metaphors to be found about government corruption and corporations being in bed with politicians, and even some Vietnam War stuff from the sole American on board, a young war widow who constantly talks like she's gasping for air, and never understands Japanese until the other passengers start talking about killing her. Although, in her defense, if you could only understand Japanese in one specific situation, that would really be the situation to go with. One passenger is possessed by the alien and used to explain its goals to the survivors -- namely, to kill all humans and to take over the earth, simple enough -- before she jumps off the cliff and becomes a thoroughly unconvincing dummy in midair. Looks like somebody threw a Raggedy Annie off the cliff and filmed it.

So blah blah blah, everyone's dead except for the body snatcher and the hero and heroine, and the couple finally manage to escape him and stagger back to civilization, where they discover that *GASP* EVERYONE ON EARTH IS ALREADY DEAD. There is some stock footage to suggest that it was a nuclear war that done the deed, although I remain somewhat dubious that nuclear war wouldn't have also killed all the passengers on the plane. But while I'm puzzling this out, there's a shot of the earth from space, showing a huge number of UFOs descending upon it, ready to make it their new home. And the ghost of Rod Serling quietly nods in approval.

**HERE END THE SPOILERS**

So was this movie worth the wait? ABSOLUTELY. It is an incredibly vivid, profoundly pessimistic film that, in a lot of ways, is as relevant as ever. Sure, a lot of it looks kind of crude, but it's effective in a way that a more sophisticated film might not be able to be. I do plan on seeing it again, and might even buy it on disc, if and when Criterion chooses to release it. Do I think this will receive the same amount of attention as House? Not really: House is just completely batshit, and a lot of the word of mouth had to do with people just not believing that a movie like that existed at all. That movie is almost relentlessly singular. Goke , for all of its weirdness, is still a fairly standard horror movie, albeit an entertaining and depressing one.