YÔKAI HYAKU MONOGATARI - Michiaki Watanabe - "100 Monsters" (1968)

What could be more prefect on this post Easter, or as also referred to by some, pre Rondo night, than one of the best films I've seen lately, the 1968 classic, and first in the series of three, "Yôkai Hyaku Monogatari," or "Yokai Monsters - 100 Monsters"! The music was composed by one of the masters, Michiaki Watanabe, or the name he used on this film, Chemei Watanabe. You should recognize Mr. Watanabe's name by now, as he composed the soundtracks for "Invasion Of The Neptune Men," "Attack From Space," "Space Rulers" and "Evil Brain From Outer Space," just to name a few!

So where do you start with a movie like this, there's only one place, and that's at the beginning, I guess!

If this opening sequence doesn't get your attention, and pique your interest, then you might want to check your pulse rate!

The "Yokai Monsters" have deep roots in traditional Japanese folklore, but the line of logic is not difficult to follow!

The sub-titles make my job easy, as they readily explain a lot of what's happening!! Yes, that's right, the opening sequence was only just a story!!

So, let's get on with the story; as I was saying, it can be kind of self-explanatory!!!

Okay, this dude is warning these guys straight-out-point-blank that if they continue to do what they are doing, something very bad is going to happen!

But as you can see, these gay blades are probably not the sharpest knives in the drawer, and I sure as Hell wouldn't want one of them doing brain surgery on me with one of those dull machetes!!

So they catch an ugly fish and take it home, and the one guy tells his wife to cook it for him and his buddy while they hang out and drink some sake!! Ugh, kinda chewy!! "It's good. Have some!" Sure, right!!!

So just exactly what part of the "Horrifying Curse" were they too ignorant to understand?

Sure, that's exactly what happened, Lightning! Right!! You might want to have a talk with that one guy's widow, you know the one with the Mrs. Fantastic neck!!

When you hear the goofy music start up, you'll know that's when the Umbrella Monster comes into the scene. The Umbrella Monster or Kasa Obake, is a Japanese Spirit that becomes animated when it reaches it's 100 birthday, so be careful hanging onto that stuff for too long!

More self-explantory dialogue!!!

There is another story going on as well. Despite a lot of opposition, these evil businessmen bastards destroy the peoples digs, because they want to build a whorehouse!! Well, you can only guess what they've got coming to them!!!

What's that, indeed? Evil is what evil does, and it's coming around again!

You can run, but you can't hide when the creature with no eyes sees where you are going!

Yeah, I wonder what happened too?? Gee, suddenly it really is awfully quiet!

You saw a monster? You must be kidding, why would something like that be happening?

The super gigantic green screen witch scares the eggs right out of these evildoers!!

A lot of the Yokai Monsters appear to be like Yokai Muppets, but even though I've seen big monster muppets eat smaller muppets, I've never seen them kill any humans!!

Yep, you got that right, this is my new wallpaper!!

They got the whole Yokai gang riled up now; they're going for the jugular and yes, this one spectre can even spit fire!!

The Yokai's have got the stupid evil dirty rotten lousy boss right where they want him now, and that's all she wrote!! Story over!!

Yokai Monsters are fun, scary and unpredictable as all get out, so stick with the basics, just pay attention when you are warned, and don't piss them off!