Genocide

An American B-52 is brought down by insects. An operation is launched to recover the nuclear bomb. The sole survivor has gone mad and deadly afraid of bugs. The other crewmen died from mysterious bite-like wounds.

This should be a simple disaster movie with bugs. The title should be Murder Hornets. I do like the one crazy guy driven mad by bugs. Auschwitz comes out of nowhere. I can see that as an idea but it's not executed that well. I could imagine a more compelling story if she's a survivor of a Japanese war camp, but that couldn't be allowed. I don't care about the people. I want more bugs.

All the insects on Earth become wild and attack humans, causing Armageddon.

The film's staff includes Shizuo Hirase as the cinematographer, who also worked on the Shochiku films "The X from Outer Space" and "Goke, Body Snatcher from Hell". Composer Shunsuke Kikuchi, who also worked on "Goke", does the music here; he may be best known today for "Female Convict Scorpion" or perhaps "Dragon Ball Z".

Because this was the last horror film Shochiku would produce, it is suitably ambitious and apocalyptic. This is dark, bleak, and edgy beyond what we typically see from horror of the era, especially in Japan. We (at least Americans) expect men in rubber suits to beat on each other, but this is a far worse menace!

Genocide (1968) is a movie that I recently watched on a random streaming service. The storyline follows a young lady who recently became pregnant and is planning to have an abortion when an insect outbreak occurs. All life becomes at risk as no one knows how to stop the bugs. A diabolical plan to take over the world becomes apparent and will anyone be able to stop the mastermind behind the plot?

This movie is directed by Kazui Nihonmatsu (The X from Outer Space) and stars Eiji Okada (Woman in the Dunes), Hiroshi Fujioka (Kamen Rider), Ryûji Kita (King Kong Escapes) and Reiko Mutô (Arcadia of My Youth).

This is one of those "almost good" movies that had all the ingredients to be fun but somehow falls short. The film starts with a fun model burning airplane crash scene that made me smile. The sets, settings and characters were fun. The villain was a smoking hot blond with a few screws loose...but somehow all the pieces of the puzzle weren't put together well. The storyline was a bit stale, slow and didn't have enough kills for me to get excited. The ending was cool and worked for me.

Overall this is a very average addition to the horror genre that's still a fun watch. I would score this a 4.5-5/10 and only recommend watching it if nothing better is available.

Maybe if the bugs had been big and/or radioactive, we could have had some fun set pieces, but eventually it sets in that maybe this doesn't want to be a fun, silly bug movie.

I mean, the premise of insects wanting to wipe out humanity before humanity wipes them out is absurd, but through this crazy premise, the film gets pretty serious, thematically, while looking at things like the atomic bomb attacks on Japan and the Holocaust, which must given this its title of Genocide.

Not sure I've ever had a B-movie like this go so heavy (especially when at the start it looked like it was going to be very silly), and I don't think it truly works, but it's an admirable effort.

It will surely stick out in my memory the more and more old Japanese horror movies I work through in the future.

Exceptionally convoluted and deliriously nihilistic, Genocide is appropriately harrowing and periodically bonkers if a little middling around the second act. The second of only two movies from director Kazui Nihonmatsu, having previously helmed The X from Outer Space, Genocide is all over the place with enough hair-brained ideas to fill two movies let alone a single 84-minute one, primarily the hallucinogenic bees being bred by an insane holocaust survivor. Nihonmatsu handles the film with considerably more skill than his prior effort, there's a wider variety of shots and a better building of suspense thanks in part to the photography of Shizuo Hirase and the passable score from Shunsuke Kikuchi. It's very much an accident of a film, suitably ambitious and apocalyptic in its finality, ultimately hinging on the potential detonation of a hydrogen bomb and the single mother who may have to single-handedly repopulate a country. Genocide is an exhausting yet very rewarding experience, showcasing so pretty damn good filmmaking for its small budget but, as noted before, has too much plot for its own good.