Assistance in identifying a film--There Are Three of Them!

[Aaron Gerow]

On 2006.6.10, at 10:02  AM, Michael McCaskey wrote:

> I plan to use at least a few clips from one or more of these in class, 
> as examples of late 1960s horror, to compare with Juon 2, etc.

Having seen the first two of the three films, I should stress that they 
are quite different from "horror" films (which in some ways reinforces 
my qualms about overusing the term). While there are a few scary 
moments, Daiei made them primarily for kids and thus the monsters are 
often cute and friendly. Miike remade one of them recently with Yokai 
daisenso and the appearance of Mizuki Shigeru in that film reinforces 
how the original films were aiming for the kids who liked his manga. 
Since I would hesitate to call Mizuki Shigeru's Gegege no Kitaro manga 
"horror manga" (unlike, say, Umezu Kazuo's work), comparing these films 
with Juon can be like comparing apples and oranges. The presence of 
Yasuda, Kuroda and Yoshida is telling since they were all involved in 
the Daimajin films, something that brings these yokai films closer to 
"monster" series at Daiei like Daimajin and Gamera than to more 
"horror" like films such as Kyuketsuki Gekemidoro, which was made about 
the same time. (A big question for those studying "horror" in Japanese 
cinema is where to fit kaiju eiga.)

While I do understand the flexibility of genre terms, that can also be 
their danger and we must be careful of their use. There is a need to 
also think of kaidanmono or yokaimono within different perspectives.

Aaron Gerow
Director of Undergraduate Studies, Film Studies Program
Assistant Professor
Film Studies Program/East Asian Languages and Literatures
Yale University
53 Wall Street, Room 316
PO Box 208363
New Haven, CT 06520-8363
USA
Phone: 1-203-432-7082
Fax: 1-203-432-6764
e-mail: aaron.gerow at yale.edu