Kyuzo Kobayashi Movies

This freaky Japanese spin on Invasion of the Body Snatchers stars Teru Yoshida as an airline pilot who loses control of his plane after it passes through a strange, ethereal cloud, forcing him to make an emergency desert landing. Though the passengers seem to have emerged unscathed, one of them (Hideo Ko) is revealed as a carrier for a gelatinous alien being -- a kind of energy vampire which enters its host through a grotesque cleft in the forehead -- and begins preying on the life-force of the other travelers. Before long, a vampire plague has spread throughout the craft, with only Yoshida and flight attendant Tomomi Sato escaping the carnage to return to civilization... only to find that the plague has spread throughout the world, thanks to cloud-borne alien spores. This frantic, surreal outing plays much like the earlier Japanese SF/horror film Attack of the Mushroom People, but with a somewhat darker, more apocalyptic edge. Originally titled Goke: Body Snatcher from Hell. ~ Cavett Binion, Rovi

In Paul Schrader's unusual biopic, Ken Ogata stars as Yukio Mishima, perhaps the most celebrated Japanese novelist of the last five decades. The film begins with Mishima's youth, then moves forward in episodic fashion to his 1970 suicide, symbolically committed at a military site. Originally titled Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters, the film is neatly divided into a quartet of acts, and the screenplay does not flinch in its depiction of Mishima's hyperactive sex life. Among the many neat directorial touches is the decision to offer the narrative in black-and-white, while depicting scenes from Mishima's novels in vibrant color. Written off as self-indulgent by those impatient with Schrader's fragmentary technique, Mishima was produced in Japan by Francis Ford Coppola and George Lucas, an offshoot of Coppola's involvement with Japanese director Akira Kurosawa's Kagemusha. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi