In the village of Edo, a corrupt businessman conspires with the local magistrate to tear down its shrine and tenement house, in order to make way for a brothel.
The word “brothel” aside, you don’t give a flip about any of that, do you? I get it. Because the title of the Japanese film is Yokai Monsters: 100 Monsters, by Buddha, you want monsters! And monsters you certainly get in this decidedly bonkers, bizarro fantasy from the Daimajin creative team of director Kimiyoshi Yasuda and writer Tetsurô Yoshida.
The flick’s structure allows for a mix of monster stories within the story and eventually full immersion of said monsters into our main plot of political machinations. (Uh-oh, did your interest begin to wane again with that phrase? Brothel! Brothel!) No matter the level of narrative Inception, way is made for many supernatural freaks to hit the screen, including a hairy cyclops, a snake-necked woman, a squatty midget caveman, a giant hag face in the sky, a featureless face on some guy and, perhaps most WTFy of all, a one-eyed umbrella creature that hops around on its lone leg and unfurls a tongue of a length that would provoke jealousy in Gene Simmons.
True to the title, dozens more monsters exist. Wonderfully surreal even by today’s seen-it-all standards, the folktale as cautionary tale was followed by two more Yokai Monsters pictures: Spook Warfare later in ’68 and Along with Ghosts the next year. Both play as 100 Monsters does: as if the classic 1964 omnibus Kwaidan had been remade by Sid and Marty Krofft. —Rod Lott