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| Aka: WAR OF THE INSECTS |
“The insects are
singing about destroying humanity.”
GODZILLA spawned
the Kaiju genre which is literally translated as “Giant Beast” and the monsters
quickly grew taller, nastier, campier and rubberier. Director Kazui Nihonmatsu
shrinks the genre to the size of the insect world to complete the destruction
of the human race.
I would like to
write a short plot description but the narrative makes little sense and seems
to be pieced together from disparate films. Or the story was remade each day
before shooting and Nihonmatsu just shot whatever the fuck he felt like;
presumably after ingesting hallucinatory drugs or Kaiju-ish amounts of alcohol.
But this isn’t necessarily a criticism as much as it is a caveat lector so one
doesn’t wander into this warped celluloid reality unprepared!
The film begins
with a stark pronouncement (all in capital letters): THE MOMENT MANKIND
HARNESSED THE POWER OF THE ATOM, HE IMMEDIATELY BEGAN TO FEAR IT. In the background
mushroom clouds blossom and fold their fiery entrails inwards as if devouring
themselves, harnessing their own energy as they grow taller and consume the
heavens. Then the title and opening credits are shown over close-ups of
insects, making these tiny creatures seem disarmingly creepy and savagely
beautiful. The camera then slowly zooms earthward from the heavens and focuses
upon a couple sunning themselves on a rocky shore. Nihonmatsu exploits the
bikini blonde as he begins the point-of-view shot at her feet while it crawls
slowly up her shapely legs, tight skinny waist and buxom chest until it reveals
her full sensuous lips and dark mascara eyes. When the man turns over to
embrace her she pushes him away and turns over on her back. It’s a bit
surprising to see a bi-racial couple especially in a late 60’s Japanese film
but the metaphor becomes exhibition by the final act: the American girl leads
the Japanese protagonist astray in order to destroy the human race! Now the
story gets weird.
The man looks
skyward and we see from his POV a contrail from a jet plane. The camera slowly
zooms in (this quickly becomes the director’s primary visual trait) to a model
of a B-52 Stratofortress. Cut to the interior and five American airmen in
orange jumpsuits and their payload: an H-Bomb. Suddenly, the black airman who
sits at the controls directly in front of the bomb starts acting strangely. As
he begins sweating profusely and rubbing his face and neck, he swats at an
insect and looks towards the porthole: a wasp crawls sluggishly across the
thick glass. Then he violently grabs his head and screams while WWII scenes are
cut into the narrative as hallucinatory flashbacks. As his cohorts attempt to
calm him he screams that he won’t go back to the Front and accidentally hits the
bomb-bay door switch so it opens. Charley, the addled airman, is the only black
man among the crew of five. He begs for drugs because he won’t return to the
Front to fight anymore: he’s obviously lost his mind somehow. One crew-member
gives him an injection (of what?) which he carries in his sleeve (huh?). Soon a
black cloud of swarming insects attacks the plane, their buzzing mass causing
the engines to flame-out and forcing the crew to abandon their airship. The
Stratofortress bursts into flames and explodes in cool miniature effect and we
see four parachutes descending to the island. The Japanese man forgets his
blonde girlfriend and jumps up to investigate…which he will soon regret.
Now the film gets
convoluted and very very strange. We soon learn that Joji, the Japanese man
seen in the opening act, is married to a kindly Japanese girl who is being
molested by an Innkeeper while he is out searching for poisonous insects to
send back to his boss in Tokyo. Of course he’s having an affair with Annabelle,
the voluptuous American blonde seen sunbathing with him. Three American airmen
including Charley survive the crash and make their way to a mysterious cave where
someone has been secretly trapping insects in bottles. There are some skulls
and other human detritus cast about. Joji goes looking for the airmen but
Charley goes berserk and stumbles off a cliff. Joji is arrested for murdering
the other two Americans and injuring Charley since Joji was discovered trying
to sell a watch belonging to one of them. As Joji is held in custody his wife
and boss come to visit vowing to find evidence to free him. And it soon learned
that Annabelle is a Russian agent who sells her poisonous venom (hence the
bottles in the cave) to the Eastern Block but is also much more: she is a
survivor of Auschwitz and seeks the destruction of the entire human race!!
Let us think
about this for a moment. It’s bad enough that Charley is a WWII veteran with a
drug habit as he looks to be in his thirties and still in the Air Force (which
didn’t exist during WWII). The story is set in 1968 and the War ended in 1945
which is 23 years prior: Charley would have been a teenager during the War! Annabelle
curses all humanity because she suffered terrible abuses while a prisoner of
the Nazi Death Camp Auschwitz. She even shows her ID number which is
tattooed…on her breast. Now that seems strange but Soviet prisoners were indeed
tattooed on the upper part of their left breast in Auschwitz (a new fact I just
learned researching this review!). But Annabelle is obviously American (blonde,
dark eyes, curvaceous like an American movie star) but could she possibly be
Russian? She is working for the Eastern Block. Well, the film never explains
and she is out to betray mankind anyway! If Annabelle was indeed in the Death
Camp 23 years prior she must have been a little child…but it’s possible. So
because she is full of hate she is on the side of the insects and orders them
to destroy the world. She must be some kind of Insect Whisperer because it’s
never explained how the insects know this! And her proclamation comes out of
left field as we’re only expecting her to be the “other girl” Joji is seeing.
And the thought of casually using the Holocaust as a plot device in a cheapo
horror movie is quite interesting because that would never be written off so
easily in an American or European production. Even to this day it is not a
topic for minor genre films.
In one of the
strangest scenes in cinematic history, as Charley lays recuperating in the
hospital he is interrogated by Joji’s boss who is looking for answers as to who
(or what) really killed the other airmen to prove Joji’s innocence. And he does
this by showing films of insects devouring one another! It’s fucking bizarre
but played perfectly straight, as if this type of questioning is within normal
parameters of any interrogation protocol. Poor Charley is mentally unbalanced
and suffering greatly to begin with but he is able to remember that they were
attacked in the cave by a buzzing mass of insects! Joji’s Boss leaves to search
the cave for further clues and the American Officers, who have been hanging
around looking confused, then slap and assault Charley because he doesn’t know
where the bomb landed! How’s that for Patriotism.
So the bomb is
discovered and the insects are taking control of it by crawling over its
surface. To scare the creepy crawlies away, one of the guys fires his gun at
the H-bomb! Yes, the story just gets more insane. Joji’s boss also injects
himself with a small amount of the venom because he was working on a cure at
the time of this disaster, and can suddenly understand all of the insects
chanting GENOCIDE! at the top of their…ummm…little crickety legs (since they
don’t have lungs). He survives and they track down Annabelle and her gang (whom
she also betrayed) as the Americans wander around in a somnambulist daze
totally incompetent, and want to drop a bomb on the island to kill the intelligent
insects. We are occasionally shown stock footage of insects chewing on what
looks like human flesh with their clacking mandibles. Joji’s wife jumps in a
boat and rows out to sea to save herself and, yes you guessed it, her unborn
baby belonging to Joji! The Japanese argue against the use of the bomb (again)
because the fallout will destroy Tokyo but too late: the H-bomb is detonated by
the Americans. We see a growing mushroom cloud reflective of the opening
credits as the island is annihilated…and supposedly the insects too. The film
ends with a white hot sun rising in a blood red sky; the inverse of the
Japanese flag.
Director
Nihonmatsu has made an anti-war, anti-American, anti-Capitalist, anti-human and
eco-terrorist diatribe against the World that we have razed and spoiled in our
quest for atomic fire. It’s an interesting concoction of seemingly disparate
elements that creates a sometimes enjoyable but altogether insane science
fiction film with faux-political sentiments. We end up feeling more sorry for
the insects than the human race.
Final Grade: (B-)
