Goke - Bodysnatcher from hell (1968)

The plot of this fun little Japanese horrorflick is simple, yet brilliant. An airliner on the way to its destination crashlands in the wilderness after almost crashing into something that appears to be a Ufo. Stranded in a desert, the situation is worsened by the fact the the plane contains not only a hunted assassin but also a mad bomber and the situation doesnt get any better by the fact that the Ufo that forced the plane to crash has landed in the vicinity. The assassin escapes from the plane but is taken over by a bloblike alien who enters the mans head through a suspiciously vaginalike crack in his forehead. He is now possessed by a spacevampire whose reason for being here is to invade Earth, now that humanity is busy killing each other in numerous wars all over the world.

Yes, this is actually an horromovie with a message - that war is a horrible thing. As the group of people grow more desperate due to lack of food and water (and that darned spacevampire) they start to squabble internally and everything is paralled (not so subtly) with the horrors of the Vietnam war. The characters are broad in the extreme, even more so when you add the fact that the Japanese tend to behave a bit differently from the stock european or american ones. This means that everything is taken to the extreme - the good guy pilot is a noble and kind person and the politician is a creep who only think of himself and has no qualms about sacrificing someone else to ensure his own safety. It works fine within the context of the story and can actually feel quite refreshing. Alien bodyhorror is almost always fun and the scenes of a silvery blob drooping out of or into a vagina placed in the middle of a characters forehead is always fun to watch. Goke - Bodysnatcher from hell is a fairly lowbudget movie with most of its money spent on a decent airplaneset and a fullscale replica for outside scenes so the action is focused in the plane or outside in the nearby desert/wilderness (well, a fairly obvious quarry. I kept expecting a Dalek to pop up and scream EXTERMINATE!!!). The direction is firm and the cinematography full of nice little touches like a bloodred sky and some decent special effects. It is never really scary, but a fine tension runs through it and it all moves with a nice pace towards an excellently bleak ending. This is fine scifi/horror entertainment. Recommended.