(1968)
Dir - Kimiyoshi Yasuda
Overall: MEH
The first in Daiei Film's Yokai Monsters trilogy, Yokai Monsters: 100 Monsters, (Yōkai Hyaku Monogatari, One Hundred Yōkai Tales), unfortunately features too little of its title folklore spirits to be of much interest. Tetsurō Yoshida's screenplay is straightforward enough involving greedy landowners who intend to tear down a local shrine in order to set up a brothel; said landowner and his goons disrespecting a Hyakumonogatari Kaidankai ceremony and inadvertently unleashing a swarm of yōkai entities who drive them to madness and death. The Kasa-obake umbrella ghost, a long-necked rokurokubi apparition, and a giant, cackling witch lady face in the sky all make memorable, startling appearances that are equal parts creepy, strange, and humorous, particularly the umbrella creature who appears as both an adorable puppet and an animated drawing interacting with the physical scenery. Human character wise, they are one-note and less interesting with a smirking, noble samurai, a dim-witted man-child, melodramatic women and old men, and cold, gangster-like villains.
(1968)
Dir - Yoshiyuki Kuroda
Overall: GOOD
Following the success of the previous Yokai Monsters: 100 Monsters which was released earlier in the same year, Daiei Films made Yokai Monsters: Spook Warfare, (Yōkai Daisensō, The Great Yokai War), which is an overall better installment while adhering to a more family-friendly tone. That said, there is still a fair amount of bright red bloodshed and things like vampire neck bites and eyeballs getting punctured which will appease those who are not fully on board with a purely watered-down tone. Yoshiyuki Kuroda steps in as director and keeps up an agreeable pace which is benefited by a narrative emphasis on the actual folkoric monsters of the title as opposed to the plight of the human characters, though both are present. A few of the creatures from the first film make an appearance as well as a slew of others, all of whom have speaking roles save for famous Kasa-obake; a creature who Chewbacas its dialog with licky noises on account of its prolonged tongue. The main drive is the antagonistic relationship between the Babylonian entity Daimon and Japan's mythical immortals, the latter of which team up in greater numbers to ultimately defeat their nasty adversary who is like a cross between Doctor Who's Ice Warriors and a vampire.
(1969)
Dir - Kimiyoshi Yasuda/Yoshiyuki Kuroda
Overall: MEH
Daiei Film's Yokai Monsters trilogy ended on a lackluster note with Yokai Monsters: Along with Ghosts, (Tōkaidō Obake Dōchū, The Haunted Journey Along Tokaido), the most strikingly different and uninteresting one of the lot. Returning screenwriter Tetsurō Yoshida joins both of the previous movie's directors Kimiyoshi Yasuda and Yoshiyuki Kuroda sharing duties here, each of whom were behind the lens on one of the previous installments by themselves. Their powers combined are unequipped to elevate the material itself which avoids redundancy at the cost of limiting the supernatural entity's appearances to a scant few in place of a monotonous story involving a seven year old girl on the run from bandits in search of her father. As is common with other Edo period-set Japanese films, this has the feel of American and Italian Westerns, featuring a musical score and plot that would fit right at home with such movies. None of the familiar yokai folklore spirits make an appearance here and the ones that do emerge show up in an arbitrary fashion and lack the combined weirdness and spooky nature that fans of 100 Monsters and Spook Warefare has come to expect. Well, even if one of them is a heap of rocks with an eyeball and another has a Ray Stanz via Vigo the Carpathian head.
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