Goke, Body Snatcher from Hell
Entry updated 22 August 2022. Tagged: Film.
Japanese film (1968); original title Kyuketsuki Gokemidoro; vt Goke, the Vampire; vt Bodysnatcher from Hell; vt Body-Snatcher Goke. Shochiku. Directed by Hajime Sato. Written by Kyuzo Kobayashi and Susumu Takaku. Cast includes Kathy Horan, Nobuo Kaneko, Kazuo Kato, Eizo Kitamura, Hideo Ko, Yuko Kusunoki, Keiichi Noda, Tomomi Sato, Masaya Takahashi and Teruo Yoshida. 84 minutes. Colour.
On a Japanese airliner the politician Mr Mano (Kitamura) and industrialist Mr Tokuyasu (Kaneko), bemoan the state of the world: how their country is becoming like America, the rise in terrorism, the assassination of the British Ambassador to Japan. Outside the entire sky is an ominous red and terrified birds start crashing bloodily into the plane's windows. Meanwhile, the crew are notified a bomb might have been stowed aboard, so start to turn back – but a white-suited passenger (Ko) hijacks the plane. The radio now reports a UFO has been seen in Japanese airspace – and indeed, it passes close by the airliner, forcing it to crash land.
The hijacker was the ambassador's assassin, and is knocked unconscious in the crash. Aside from Mano and Tokuyasu, the other survivors are the co-pilot Ei Sugisaka (Yoshida); flight attendant Kuzumi Asakura (Sato); a "researcher in space biology" (see Xenobiology), Professor Sagai (Takahashi); a psychiatrist (see Psychology), Dr Momotake (Kato); Mrs Tokuyasu (Kusunoki); an American Vietnam war widow, Mrs Neal (Horan), and the young man who had made the bomb threat. They become fractious over the lack of food and water – the psychiatrist observes "I should benefit a great deal from what happens next ... everybody wants to live, so we shed our civilized veneer ... we become beasts ... everybody dies". The hijacker awakens and flees the plane ... only to find the flying saucer. He tries to retreat but becomes possessed and walks inside: a wound opens in his forehead and a blob-like creature (see Aliens) crawls inside (see Parasitism and Symbiosis).
Disagreements among the survivors continue: we learn Tokuyasu had been bribing Mano to win government weapon contracts, even throwing in his wife to sweeten the deal. However, one by one they are picked off: usually bitten in the neck and drained of blood by the hijacker (see Vampires), but also possessed – such as Mrs Tokuyasu, who announces the aliens are the Gokemidoro and will annihilate humanity, then jumps off a cliff. Professor Sagai concludes the aliens have seen how humanity is warring amongst itself (his speech is spliced with scenes from the Vietnam War) and so will be easily conquered. Mano scoffs: "Intellectuals have always tried to mislead people by talking loads of rubbish" (see Anti-Intellectualism in SF); he will only believe in bloodsucking aliens when he sees one. Professor Sagai is happy with this: as a Scientist he would like to study some aliens sucking blood – they only need to select a sacrifice, excusing this with "Science and government make progress at the cost of many lives." The politician suggests Mrs Neal, as she is a foreigner – but she grabs a gun and says the young man should go: so he instead is pushed out and drained.
The hijacker is set alight with plane fuel, but the blob simply leaves his body: a wound opens in Professor Sagai's forehead and it crawls inside. Eventually only Sugisaka and Asakura are left: a serendipitous rockfall enables them to escape the alien and they make it back to civilization ... only to find everyone dead. A Gokemidoro voiceover (Nodo) says: "We are going to destroy your entire world. You are through. You have arrived at your final day of judgement. Meet Your doom, for not one of you shall survive." Then, over red-stained scenes of war dead and an atom bomb exploding, "It is too late to wish you had lived differently." (See End of the World.) The final scene is of the Gokemidoro spaceship armada arriving (see Invasion).
Though the performances are on the melodramatic side – Kitamura and Horan bite sizeable chunks out of the scenery – it does leaven a story that is otherwise exceeding bleak. Politics, industry, science, psychiatry, Americans and the young are directly targeted, but clearly society as a whole is despaired of, and – as the final speech makes clear – treated as if receiving its just desserts: a few good people, represented by Sugisaka and Asakura, are not enough. The plot has its flaws (including not one but two timely rockfalls out of nowhere) and the special effects budget was clearly small – though some scenes are effective (others less so). Taken as a whole, this is a notable B-Movie, reflecting the insecurities of its era (see Paranoia).
Goke, Body Snatcher from Hell was loosely based on a screenplay by Tomio Sagisu for the proposed Kaiju tv series Gokemidoro, where a good alien could transfer its mind into humans in order to fight the evil alien monster Gokemidoro. The alien eventually used in the film was partially influenced by Frederic Brown's The Mind Thing (1961). [SP]
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