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| Kikko Matsuoka in The Living Skeleton |
Cast: Kikko Matsuoka, Yasunori Irikawa, Masumi Okada, Asao Uchida, Asao Koike, Keijiro Kikiyo, Kaori Taniguchi, Kaiko Yanagawa, Nobuo Kaneko, Ko Nishimura. Screenplay: Kikuma Shimoiizaka, Kuzo Kobayashi. Cinematography: Masayuki Kato. Production design: Kyohei Morita. Film editing: Kazuo Ota. Music: Naboru Nishiyama.
Hiroki Matsuno's The Living Skeleton is a potpourri of horror movie tropes. In addition to skeletons, there are bats, thunderstorms, a ghost ship, an elaborate disguise, an ill-fated romance, a mad doctor, a quest for revenge, and even a body hidden in a suit of armor. It begins with the gunning down of the shackled crew of a ship being raided by modern-day pirates, and continues three years later as the events on that ship begin to resurface, largely because of the interest of Saeko (Kikko Matsuoka) in what happened to her twin, Yoriko (also Matsuoka), on board the ship. She's aided by her boyfriend, Mochizuki (Yasunori Irikawa), and to some extent by a Catholic priest (Masumi Okada), for whom she works. The print shown on the Criterion Channel hasn't aged well: the gray tones have faded into black so much that in some scenes the action amounts to little blobs of light moving around in the darkness. Following the plot sometimes feels like that too, but the creep factor of the story remains high. We've seen it all before, of course, but never quite in this configuration.
