Evengyny Thanks for the memories!

Console best movie i've ever seen.

FuzzyTagz If the ambition is to provide two hours of instantly forgettable, popcorn-munching escapism, it succeeds.

AshUnow This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

Woodyanders Troubled young woman Saeko (a fine and touching performance by the lovely Kikko Matsuoka) has a strong psychic bound with her twin sister who was murdered along with several other people on a ship by bloodthirsty pirates. A few years after said massacre the vengeful ghosts of the victims materialize to exact a harsh revenge on the folks who killed them. Director Hiroki Matsuno keeps the absorbing story moving along at a steady pace, maintains a solemn tone throughout, and adroitly crafts a spooky gloom-doom atmosphere. Moreover, the seaside town setting and a dark take-no-prisoners sensibility -- one of the guilty tries to elude detection by passing himself off as a priest! -- further enhance the overall eerie mood. Masayuki Kato's sharp black and white cinematography offers several striking visuals. Only the hokey looking skeletons detract a bit from this otherwise sturdy and satisfying supernatural shocker.

jadavix 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.

dbborroughs Some times it takes 35 or more years to find the source of a picture thats haunted you since childhood. My Mom got me this illustrated history of horror films back in the early 1970's an in it was a picture of a frightened girl on the deck of ship terrorized by an odd skeleton. Its an odd picture (http://www.trashpalace.com/images/LivingSkeletonDVDR2.jpg) that made me want to know what the film was that went with it. (actually the image is not in the film and is just a publicity photo-possibly the only one since until recently its the only image I've seen, and recently I've only seen screen captures).The problem seeing the film is that apparently its never been released here in the United States. I'm not sure why, though I'm guessing that the film's black and white cinematography was deemed a drawback for US release when most films were being released in color (this would have been released in the US 1969 at the earliest).I finally fund a copy of the film at the Wizard World convention in New York. It was sans subtitles but I could pretty much work out what was going on, and get creeped out by it.The plot has to do with a bunch of pirates who kill everyone on board a ship and steal a treasure. Sometime later a woman, a relative of one of the victims, and her boyfriend end up setting in motion a series of events that begin to bring justice to the pirates, who are now on dry land, and herald the return of the ghostly ship.This is a strange film that was eerily shot in black and white. The film balances light and shadow to fantastic effect. Much of the film seems to be an odd marriage of Japanese sensibilities and Western style images, with skeletons, bats, vampires, and a Christian church. The plot doesn't completely make sense as we are often in a world of dream logic. Images of the massacre haunt the people there as well as those caught in the supernatural web. Things are often not what they seem. The effect is not so much a straight forward film but a cinematic tone poem that gets under your skin.I'm explaining this badly but if you pop this in and turn off the lights I think you'll find that the film will give you a few shivers Now to find a copy with English subtitles...

HumanoidOfFlesh The title of "The Living Skeleton" is actually misleading,because there isn't living skeleton in the film.However the underwater sequence of meeting skeletons is truly unforgettable.The film opens with bang:there is a massacre on board of a ship which predates recent US hit "Ghost Ship".There are striking similarities between Hiroshi Matsuno's film and John Carpenter's famous horror hit "The Fog":a quiet coastal village surrounded by the fog,a local priest with a creepy secret and a ghostly ship with bleached skeletons on board,which haunts villagers on the land.There is also a bit of subtle necrophilia thrown in and a female ghost with long black hair."The Living Skeleton" written by Kyuzo Kobayashi of "Goke Bodysnatcher from Hell" fame surely is delirious experience.It's a crying shame that it's currently out of print.If you liked it be sure to check out obscure Austrian horror film "Dark Echo" from 1977,which may also inspired "The Fog".