Classic Horrors Club

The third “Yokai Monsters” movie, Along with Ghosts (1969) is the strangest, not because of its content, but because of its lack of content. It has a decent story: When her grandfather is killed by the equivalent of gangsters, a little girl named Miyo ventures toward the city to find her father. However, there are hardly any ghosts, or monsters for that matter.

During the early scene in which the old man is murdered, he warns the bad guys that if they draw blood on this spot, a frightening curse will fall upon them. Not only that, but that very night is when apparitions from all over Japan gather. The former comes much later, and not in this location. Plus, all the spirits do at this point is playfully steal an incriminating document.

You know the curse has to be coming. That’s what these movies are about. While the ghosts do ultimately provide some truly spooky moments, the means of executing their punishment is limited to appearing and frightening those who deserve it. There are no creative or gory deaths like there are in 100 Monsters or The Great Yokai War. On the other hand, the people murders are pretty gruesome.

For every scene with ghosts, such as the “Place of Eight Graves,” there seems to be a longer one that has nothing to do with the supernatural. For example, the big bad challenges Miyo to a game of dice. When he keeps losing, he calls the games warm-ups or two out of three. This is an important piece of the story for the little girl, but doesn’t provide many thrills or chills.

Worse, there’s a repeating and unfunny attempt at comic relief with a short woman who is mistaken for the little girl. Her irritation at such a mistake pushes her, literally, and the movie, figuratively, toward slapstick. It could be forgiven, number one, if there was anything from which we needed comic relieve and, number two, if she didn’t reappear after the first time.

Now, when the ghosts do appear, they’re expectedly spectacular. They’re mostly the variety of headless creatures, sometimes with oversized heads that emerge from a spinning ring of fire. They mostly create illusion for humans rather than use a hands-on approach. For example, the bad guys see people with no faces, or see each other as ghosts, causing them to sword fight with each other.

None of them are familiar from the other movies. I’m sure they belong in another class of Yokai, but I’m not interested enough in what they do here to perform any subsequent research. Let’s compare Along with Ghosts to Superman III. After two terrific features, the third has some good moments, but is ultimately infuriating. They both could have been so much better.