10 Japanese Horror Movies From the ’60s You Need To Watch Right Now – Screen Rant

When it comes to classic horror, Japan should be recognized for more than generating big monsters like Godzillas. At a time when Western directors like Alfred Hitchcock and Michael Powell were terrifying audiences around the world, a new wave of Japanese filmmakers was revolutionizing the genre by embuing it with their own unique folklore and mythological traditions.

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The '60s was an interesting decade for Japanese cinema, especially horror. It birthed some of the most experimental and terrifying films to date, masterpieces that continue to be studied and replicated to this day. For those who love J-horror, or for those who want to know more about its origins, here are 10 foundational movies to check out right now.

Kaneto Shindo is one of the most prolific 20th-century Japanese filmmakers, and Onibaba is considered one of his horror masterpieces. Filmed in monochromatic black and white, the movie takes place in the midst of a civil war in 14th century Japan. A mother and her daughter-in-law are forced to survive by robbing and killing samurai soldiers who cross their paths.

When a friend of the mother's son and daughter-in-law's husband returns to inform them their beloved third died at war, he soon develops a romance with the young widow. Meanwhile, the overbearing mother-in-law continues to pursue her deadly means of survival.

Kwaidan, a transliteration of Kaidan that translates into English as "ghost stories," is an anthology film directed by Masaki Kobayashi. Each of its four tales is inspired by Japanese folklore. Kwaidan earned the Special Jury Prize at the 1965 Cannes Film Festival, as well as an Oscar nomination for Best Foreign Language Film.

The main source material for the story is Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things, a collection compiled by Lafcadio Hearn. While the film may not provide the jump scares expected from contemporary horror, it's fueled by atmospherics and creepy set designs.

A hip, sea-drenched horror film, The Living Skeleton centers around a coastal village where a young woman named Saeko seeks shelter after her twin sister disappears at sea with her new husband. Saeko investigates and discovers a group of chained human skeletons on the ocean floor while scuba diving.

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Soon, a ghost ship appears offshore, requesting Saeko by name. A solid contribution to Japan's storytelling tradition, The Living Skeleton received a Criterion Collection release in 2012.

Much more graphic than other movies on this list, Jigoku translate into English as "Hell." The movie is directed byNobuo Nakagawa, known for making a series of iconic horror features in the '50s and '60s.

The movie focuses on a young theology student in Toyko who finds himself condemned to the torturous, dark beyond after being implicated in a series of gruesome deaths. The version of perdition depicted in the film is referred to as the Buddhist Eight Realms of Hell, where Lord Enma resides over the sinners, deciding their ultimate fates.

Combining horror and science fiction, Goke is seen as a Japanese reimagining of Invasion of the Body Snatchers. In it, a pilot makes an emergency landing after his passenger airplane flies through an otherworldly cloud. While the passengers seem okay at first, the pilot soon realizes there's an alien hijacker on board.

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This alien form inhabits people through an opening in their foreheads, graphically depicted on screen. As the creatures move from passenger to passenger, the pilot is forced to contend with the fact that the entire world has been overrun by these extraterrestrial invaders.

Based on the novel by Kb Abe, The Face of Another is a prime example of heady, psychological horror. Considered a Japanese New Wave feature, the movie highlights the post-WWII paranoia that swept the world. It stars Tatsuya Nakadai as a wealthy industrialist whose face is scarred in a work accident.

The man, Okuyama, receives a face mask from a renowned plastic surgeon, but his new facial identity soon takes a toll on his mental health. Interwoven within the main story is a secondary tale about a disfigured woman who likely suffered due to the atomic bombing of Japan. This movie has often been compared to both Frankenstein and the French film Eyes Without a Face.

Another feature from Kaneto Shindo, Kuroneko also highlights female characters who are forced to survive in an outside world marked by misogyny and male violence. Moody and surreal, the movie tells the story of two women who are brutally murdered by a group of samurai.

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Their spirits return in the form of shapeshifting cats, intent upon enacting revenge by murdering every samurai they come across. The film's tension amps up when the former husband of one of the ghosts is tasked with killing the bloodthirsty ghosts.

Yasuzo Masumura is responsible for Blind Beast, a gruesome fever dream of a film based on an Edogawa Rampo novel. The movie takes the term tortured artist to the next level, concentrating on a blind artist and his demented mother. The pair decide to kidnap and torture a young woman as an act of artistic expression.

As the woman endures one terrible abuse after another, the mother and son become more and more ferocious toward her. Themes like personal trauma, delusional creativity, and contemporary familial relations are explored in vivid, grotesque ways.

This conceptual tale of erotic horror is also based on a novel by Kobo Abe. When an entomologist visits sand dunes for research, locals offer him sleeping quarters at the bottom of a sandpit. In the pit, he meets a widow who lives there. When he wakes up in the morning, the ladder he used to enter the pit is gone, and he's been condemned by the locals to help the widow perpetually dig sand out of the pit she calls home.

An existential and philosophical tale, The Woman in the Dunes also features a tense love affair between the man and the widow.

There can't be a list of classic Japanese horror movies without one monster flick. The War of the Gargantuas is referred to as a kaiju film, or a horror movie featuring giant monsters. This feature is directed by famed creature feature maker Ishir Honda, a man who shaped the Godzilla franchise in its early days.

The movie focuses on two humanoid monsters, one green and one brown, referred to as Gaira and Sanda. As the pair wreck havoc on Toyko, scientists and military officials try to figure out how to stop them from destroying the city.

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Megan is a public librarian by trade obsessed with the intersections between art, culture, and society. She's a nerd for horror, obscure memes, weird history, graphic novels, and binge-worthy science fiction series.

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10 Japanese Horror Movies From the '60s You Need To Watch Right Now - Screen Rant

Reviewed and Recommended by Erik Baquero