Goke, Body Snatcher from Hell has very definite claims to being both science fiction and horror. It features both flying saucers and vampires.

It opens with a commercial airliner in trouble. There’s been a bomb threat. There’s a crazed gunman aboard. The sky has turned blood-red. Birds are committing suicide by deliberately flying into the airplane. They’re being shadowed by a UFO. And all this before the opening titles!

The plane crashes in a remote desolate area. There are quite a few survivors but how long they can hold out without any food or water is an open question. There’s also still the problem that there may be one or more murderous crazies among the survivors.

Not surprisingly the survivors do not cope very well.

Then the airliner’s pretty stewardess sees something so weird and terrifying that she can’t even describe it. We, the audience, saw it too and we can understand why she freaked out.

The passengers and crew are being stalked by someone (or something) but while they know they’re up against something sinister they have no idea what it is.

You won’t be surprised to hear that it’s not long before one of the passengers meets an unpleasant end. There’s more terror to come. While they really do face a deadly threat their own fears make things much worse.

The basic plot holds few surprises. What makes this movie interesting is that the survivors are such a weird bunch of people and the interactions between them get a bit bizarre. There’s an obsessed space biologist who is convinced that aliens really exist. There’s a psychiatrist and he’s really enjoying himself – he’s fascinated by the spectacle of people being unable to cope with stress and turning on each other and destroying each other. He’s a rather disturbing guy.

And then there’s a very creepy trio. There’s Mr Mano, a corrupt politician, and there’s crooked defence contractor Mr Tokuyasu and his wife Noriko. Tokuyasu is trying to bribe Mano into awarding his company a huge defence contract. He’s prepared to do anything to get that contract, including offering Noriko’s sexual favours to Mano. Mr Mano makes enthusiastic use of this offer, right there on the plane.

There’s also the pilot. There’s the stewardess, Miss Asakura. And finally there’s a pretty blonde American woman whose husband has just been killed in Vietnam.

Some of the visual effects are a bit crude but some are genuinely striking and creepy, with a definite late 60s psychedelic vibe. Some of the makeup effects work, some don’t. The blood-red sky really does look sinister and unsettling.

This is very much a late 60s movie, which is both a good thing and a bad thing. The bad part is some clumsy political messaging. The attempt to link the Vietnam War with the alien invasion theme is a bit cringe-inducing. The stuff about political corruption is exaggerated to the point of parody.

I did mention vampires, and there are vampires. Of a sort. I suspect the vampire angle may have been included in the hope of making the movie easier to sell in international markets.

There are a couple of moments that are vaguely similar in tone to American sci-fi and horror movies of that era such as Night of the Living Dead (although Goke, Body Snatcher from Hell is much more interesting and imaginative). This is also a movie that at times plays out with a nightmare feel except that it’s real.

Goke, Body Snatcher from Hell manages to be genuinely weird, off-kilter and at times creepy. Recommended.

The 16:9 enhanced DVD transfer is excellent. The film was shot in colour and colour is used very effectively throughout.