It seems like pirates always have to worry about the undead. A particularly strange instance can be observed in 1968's Kyuketsu Dokurosen (吸血髑髏船, "The Blood Sucking Skull Ship"), released in English speaking countries under the inferior title of The Living Skeleton. Obviously filmed on a low budget, the film manages to be effective with its heavy shadows and oddly groovy score.
The film opens with a bunch of people being shot on a passenger liner. The gang of pirates doing the shooting is led by a mysterious man with massive burn scares on half his face. A woman pleads with him to spare he husband but, of course, he spares neither her nor her husband.
Three years pass and the woman's twin sister, Saeko (both are played by the lovely Kikko Matsuoka), is staying with a Catholic priest (Masumi Okada) in a seaside town. She and her boyfriend (Yasunori Irikawa) go scuba diving one day and are startled to find a group of skeletons chained to the sea floor.
I don't know why they couldn't make the skulls on these things look like skulls. These look like sugar skulls and it's Day of the Dead, which does have its charm. There are a few moments like this that make the film a bit campy but it's much too weird to go full camp.
Somehow, Saeko ends up alone on the ghost ship where her sister was killed. What happens next remains nicely unclear. Saeko disappears and the pirates, in their various current situations, start to catch glimpses of her sister before dying in mysterious, bloody ways.
The film gets more and more dreamlike which helps prevent some of the plot turns from being too ridiculous.
The Blood Sucking Skull Ship/The Living Skeleton is available on The Criterion Channel.
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