In "Living Skeleton"'s surprisingly brutal opening scenes, we see a group of modern-day pirates indiscriminately massacring a bunch of passengers with machine gun fire - among them a beautiful, Western-looking Japanese woman.
Then a title tells us we've jumped ahead a few years, and that woman's identical twin is now spending time among a shadowy Catholic priest.
Some people go scuba diving where they find, in one of the movie's more memorable moments, skeletons chained to the ocean floor, presumably of the people who died in the beginning of the movie.
The boat the pirates commandeered apparently sunk, but nevertheless seems to return to the shore, and the twin boards it, and some other stuff happens involving unconvincing flying bats.
With the film's beginning, its moody black and white cinematography, and the glowering, impassive actors, I thought the stage was set for a disturbing arthouse Japanese flick like "Sword of Doom" or "Woman in the Dunes".
However, by the end, which involves a mad scientist in a laboratory with lots of opportunities for gruesome deaths, some of which of course involve acid which burns people up quicker than lava might, I began thinking it's more in line with a Jess Franco flick from about the same time. Kikko Matsuoka, who plays the main character, does look a bit like Soledad Miranda.
Problem with this movie was, I had no idea how it got from moody impressionism to full on camp blood-bath. It's pretty confusing, which wouldn't matter so much if the tone was even. It wasn't.
Then a title tells us we've jumped ahead a few years, and that woman's identical twin is now spending time among a shadowy Catholic priest.
Some people go scuba diving where they find, in one of the movie's more memorable moments, skeletons chained to the ocean floor, presumably of the people who died in the beginning of the movie.
The boat the pirates commandeered apparently sunk, but nevertheless seems to return to the shore, and the twin boards it, and some other stuff happens involving unconvincing flying bats.
With the film's beginning, its moody black and white cinematography, and the glowering, impassive actors, I thought the stage was set for a disturbing arthouse Japanese flick like "Sword of Doom" or "Woman in the Dunes".
However, by the end, which involves a mad scientist in a laboratory with lots of opportunities for gruesome deaths, some of which of course involve acid which burns people up quicker than lava might, I began thinking it's more in line with a Jess Franco flick from about the same time. Kikko Matsuoka, who plays the main character, does look a bit like Soledad Miranda.
Problem with this movie was, I had no idea how it got from moody impressionism to full on camp blood-bath. It's pretty confusing, which wouldn't matter so much if the tone was even. It wasn't.