“The Living Skeleton” Theatrical Poster
Director: Hiroshi Matsuno
Cast: Kikko Matsuoka, Yasunori Irikawa, Masumi Okada, Nobuo Kaneko, Kō Nishimura
Running Time: 80 min.
By Ian Whittle
In October 1995, I was a young Monster Kid of 9, mainly due to my love of King Kong (1933). That month, I was at a jumble sale at a local church when my eyes fell upon Dennis Gifford’s classic tome A Pictorial History of Horror Movies (1973), which quickly became my bible.
Amidst Gifford’s loving history of classic Hollywood horror (and his notoriously pithy last page putdown of Hammer) were various stills from a variety of films not mentioned in the main text, and some of these were so intense I quickly skipped those pages with my eyes shut tight – charred and blackened bodies (The Sorcerers), a woman with an axe in her head (The 1966 version of The Black Cat), a freakish, blood-encrusted monster with large wolf-like teeth (Beast of Blood)… and a surreal still of a Japanese woman on the deck of a ship being attacked by a strange looking living skeleton in well, The Living Skeleton.
You can imagine my disappointment when I finally got to see the movie in 2007 courtesy of an expensive Japanese import DVD (with no subtitles) and not only does nothing like that still happen in the movie at all, but the skeletons in question only appear twice early on, look more like Halloween swimming pool toys, and don’t appear to be living (or un-living for that matter) at all!
Aww, it’s a gyp!
And yet, the DVD had Living Skeleton in English on its packaging, the prime motif of the DVD menus are these creepy dancing skeletons, and the stills gallery is full of shots of the skeletons taking part in the main action of the story – including the Dennis Gifford still. I know I should be used to fraudulent advertising in horror pictures, but why did the studio publicists and, 35 years later, the DVD producers, go to such lengths to empathise the skeletons where they contribute so little to the film? Other than the obvious fact that skeletons are cool, which explained the then 12 year fascination I had had with this film on the basis of that one still…
But I can’t really blame the actual movie for the actions of the publicity campaign, so in the interest of fairness…
…the movie begins on board the ship Dragon King-Maru (whose name is possibly an intentional reference to the real life Lucky Dragon No.5, which ran into atomic fallout in 1954 and became one of the key influences on the original Godzilla) where the crew and passengers are murdered by pirates, led by a creepy bald and disfigured man in dark glasses. Newlywed Yoriko (Kikko Matsuoka) is sexually assaulted before being killed, and the pirates make off with a fortune in gold bullion, leaving the ship to the elements.
Three years later, Yoriko’s twin sister Saeko (also Matsuoka) is living with a kind-hearted and bespectacled Catholic priest (Masumi Okada) and dating Mocizuki (Yasunori Irikawa), a local café owner. The two lovebirds go scuba-diving and encounter several weird skeletons chained to the ocean floor. Clearly as unimpressed with these goofy ghoulies as I was, Yasunori dismisses the apparition as some seaweed!
Later, in the dead of night, the couple sights the Dragon King-Maru in the fog (looking distinctly like a bath-toy) and goes out to explore it. Saeko appears to fall under the influence of her dead sister (or goes crazy, I’m not entirely sure which) and soon the pirates start getting bumped off one-by-one – one in an especially grisly shower murder that effectively references Psycho, another by getting tangled up in those damn skeletons!
Chintzy bats-on-a-string float around, glasses and a wig somehow hide a hideous facial disfigurement, and in the last 10 minutes we suddenly get a mad scientist, flesh (and boat) eating acid and it feels like Jess Franco and Ed Wood suddenly took over directing the movie from Terence Fisher and started fighting over it!
Taking what should be a fairly simple story and turning it into a corn-beef hash of gothic and pulp should probably be the kiss of death for this movie…but it is so strikingly photographed and directed (and sadly, director Hiroki Matsuno never made another movie) that it is really recommended as a wonderful piece of classic horror…but don’t expect living skeletons in it. Or, to go by the Japanese title, Bloodsucking Skull Ships. Damn, I’d love to see that movie…
Ian Whittle’s Rating: 7/10
