In chronological order.
Yokai are a category of supernatural monsters from Japanese folklore. They encompass a wide range of beings, from mischievous spirits to fearsome monsters, and are often associated with strange phenomena and unexplained events. In the late 1960s, Daiei Studios created a trilogy of films with this theme, managing to make each one distinct from the others, much like the yokai themselves.
Yokai Monsters: 100 Monsters (original title: Yōkai Hyaku Monogatari, literally One Hundred Yōkai Tales), released in 1968, is the first in the trilogy. Directed by Kimiyoshi Yasuda (better known for his work on the Zatoichi series), the film combines Edo-period ghost storytelling traditions with practical effects and folkloric imagery, weaving a moralistic parable into a tapestry of the supernatural.
Although it often suffers from tonal inconsistency and dated effects, 100 Monsters holds historical and cultural importance as an early cinematic attempt to visualize Japan’s rich folkloric tradition of yokai through live-action. The film bridges classical kaidan (ghost story) aesthetics with the more commercial jidaigeki (period drama) and tokusatsu (live-action films or tv shows that make heavy use of special effects) traditions of postwar Japanese cinema.
At its core, 100 Monsters is a morality tale disguised as a ghost story. A greedy land developer and a corrupt magistrate team up to destroy a tenement and sacred shrine to build a brothel, disregarding both the law and spiritual taboos. Their actions include disrupting a traditional hyaku monogatari (one hundred tales) ghost-story gathering, in which participants extinguish one candle for every story told.
The narrative progresses slowly, focusing more on human greed, oppression, and sacrilege than on the yokai themselves. In fact, supernatural events are mostly confined to the third act, creating a stark contrast between the mundane and the uncanny. The film uses yokai as agents of karmic justice, as the eventual supernatural vengeance is not just a horror spectacle but a cosmic rebalancing against injustice.
The effects, while primitive by modern standards, rely on a mix of suitmation (actors in costumes), puppetry, and practical trickery. The yokai designs are based on classical emaki (picture scrolls), particularly those by Toriyama Sekien. This dedication to traditional imagery gives the creatures a unique cultural authenticity rarely seen in Western monster films of the same era. Among the yokai we see the classics kasa-obake (the hopping umbrella ghost), rokurokubi (the woman with a stretching neck), and noppera-bō (the faceless ghost).
Akira Ifukube (best known for scoring the first Godzilla) provides a subdued yet ominous score that complements the restrained pace. The use of silence and ambient sound also enhances the tension, particularly in scenes leading up to the yokai appearances.
However, the film struggles to maintain a consistent tone. The slow buildup and excessive focus on corrupt landlords and local politics, while thematically relevant, may test viewers’ patience. This makes the final act, where yokai finally appear, feel both rewarding and too little, too late.
Yokai Monsters: Spook Warfare (original title: Yōkai Daisensō, literally The Great Yokai War), also released in 1968, is the second entry in Daiei Studios’ yokai trilogy. Directed by Yoshiyuki Kuroda and released just months after 100 Monsters, this sequel pivots dramatically in tone, structure, and style. Where 100 Monsters was a slow-burning, moralistic kaidan (ghost story) steeped in atmospheric dread and karmic retribution, Spook Warfare gleefully transforms the yokai into active protagonists in a supernatural adventure. The result is a surreal genre mashup: part horror, part tokusatsu action, part children’s fantasy, and entirely sui generis. While it lacks the moral depth and thematic gravity of its predecessor, Spook Warfare succeeds through sheer visual invention and its unprecedented commitment to yokai spectacle. It’s campy, chaotic, and utterly unique.
The film opens in ancient Babylon, where a demon named Daimon (styled after a Western vampire or necromancer) is awakened from a long slumber. After arriving in feudal Japan via a possessed statue, Daimon promptly kills a magistrate and assumes his form, ruling the town with dark magic and feeding on human blood. The local yokai detect the foreign presence and begin to mobilize in defense of their homeland.
This east-vs-west supernatural conflict propels the plot. Unlike the minimal yokai presence in 100 Monsters, here the yokai are fully active agents with personalities, motivations, and even battle strategies. They unite, squabble, and fight like a supernatural resistance force.
But Spook Warfare takes a sharp turn toward the whimsical. While still set in a historical period, the film eschews the moody austerity of 100 Monsters for a playful, even goofy tone. The yokai are no longer eerie omens of spiritual judgment, they’re now folk heroes. This tonal shift broadens the film’s appeal to younger audiences while also reflecting the growing popularity of yokai in children’s media, particularly through the work of manga artist Shigeru Mizuki. This comes at the cost of emotional depth. Themes like cultural identity, tradition, and collective resistance are hinted at but rarely explored in detail. The film is more about fun than fear, more spectacle than story.
A potentially deeper layer lies in the framing of the villain. Daimon is explicitly foreign: Babylonian, vampiric, with Western-style robes and magic. His invasion of Japan and possession of a magistrate could be read as an allegory for cultural intrusion, colonialism, or postwar Westernization. The yokai’s defense of their native land might represent a kind of folkloric nationalism: Japan’s traditional spirits defending cultural identity against a foreign evil. Yet the film doesn’t explore this with any real nuance. It’s more a structural motif than a fully realized allegory.
Yokai Monsters: Along with Ghosts (original title: Tōkaidō Obake Dōchū, literally The Haunted Journey Along Tōkaidō), released in 1969, is the third and final entry in Daiei Studios’ trilogy. Co-directed by Yoshiyuki Kuroda (Spook Warfare) and Kimiyoshi Yasuda (100 Monsters), the film returns to a more somber, morally grounded tone reminiscent of the first film, diverging sharply from the colorful playfulness of Spook Warfare. It is less of a yokai showcase and more of a traditional jidaigeki (period drama) with supernatural overtones.
This fusion of ghostly folklore with a grim tale of vengeance and redemption makes Along with Ghosts the most narratively serious and dramatically intense of the trilogy, but also the least fantastical. While its yokai elements are used sparingly, they remain thematically integral, acting as both symbolic and literal agents of justice.
The film opens with a treacherous act: an old man witnesses the murder of a courier before he can deliver crucial legal documents meant to stop a criminal gang, and then is he is also murdered. His young granddaughter, Miyo, becomes the target of the villains, and the film follows her perilous journey along the old Tōkaidō Road as she seeks safety and justice. A wandering swordsman with a mysterious past, closer to a ronin archetype than a folkloric figure, comes to her aid.
The yokai in this entry are peripheral but potent. Unlike in Spook Warfare, where they’re protagonists, or in 100 Monsters, where they’re manifestations of spiritual retribution, here they are ghostly echoes that haunt the edges of a brutal human world. Their appearances are minimal and atmospheric, usually connected to locations desecrated by violence or injustice.
The narrative structure is more conventional: a straight revenge-pursuit drama with clear moral stakes punctuated by moments of supernatural intervention. The emotional center is Miyo, whose innocence and suffering lend the film its gravitas. As with the previous two films, Along with Ghosts frames its story around the consequences of moral corruption. The film is a condemnation of human cruelty, particularly that inflicted upon the vulnerable, like women, children, and the elderly. The yokai are not the cause of fear, they are the consequence of wrongdoing.
Stylistically, Along with Ghosts is darker, more violent, and less fantastical than its predecessors. The directors employ a muted color palette and minimal musical scoring to create an oppressive and eerie atmosphere. Much of the film takes place in forests, graveyards, and rural roads, giving it the feel of a ghostly travelogue through haunted Japan.
The adorable child actress playing Miyo (Masami Furukido) delivers a notably moving performance. Her fear, tenacity, and innocence are all convincingly rendered. The ronin protector (Kôjirô Hongô), while archetypal, provides a stoic counterbalance and channels the genre conventions of the silent defender. The villains, as in many jidaigeki of the era, are unambiguously wicked, cowardly, greedy, and contemptuous of tradition. Their downfall, precipitated by ghostly visitations, feels less like plot convenience and more like the fulfillment of cosmic justice.
So 100 Monsters was a folkloric sermon inside a kaidan (ghost story), Spook Warfare was a tokusatsu yokai adventure that played like a Saturday morning cartoon, and Along with Ghosts was a revenge road drama with yokai as haunting punctuation marks. In this sense, the trilogy moves full circle: from dread, to spectacle, back to dread but now filtered through tragedy.
The stop animation of Ray Harryhausen has always fascinated me. That sword fight against skeletons in Jason and the Argonauts (Don Chaffey, 1963) will forever have a place in my heart. So, when I recently had the chance to watch three of his films, I didn’t hesitate. None of these are great movies, but even the worst of them has some good moments.
The 7th Voyage of Sinbad (Nathan Juran, 1958) is a classic in the realm of fantasy cinema. At that point, it was a significant leap forward in visual effects, establishing itself as a milestone for stop-motion animation and popularizing the genre of mythological fantasy adventures.
The true standout of The 7th Voyage of Sinbad is Ray Harryhausen’s stop-motion animation, which brought to life some of the most iconic creatures in cinematic history. From the menacing cyclops to the serpentine dragon and the sword-fighting skeleton, Harryhausen’s work elevated the film far beyond its contemporaries. His unique Dynamation process, which combined live-action and stop-motion animation, allowed fantastical creatures to interact with the human characters in a way that felt groundbreaking at the time. The battle between Sinbad and the skeleton is particularly memorable, later influencing fantasy films like Jason and the Argonauts and even contemporary blockbusters. While the monsters may look dated by today’s standards of computer-generated imagery, they still hold a certain charm and sense of wonder. The tactile, handcrafted nature of Harryhausen’s animation gives the creatures a weight and physical presence that CGI often lacks. In fact, modern audiences may appreciate the artistry and patience required to bring these creatures to life frame by frame.
The film follows the basic structure of a classic adventure tale, with Sinbad and his crew embarking on a perilous journey to the island of Colossa in order to find a way to reverse the curse placed on Princess Parisa, who has been shrunk by the evil sorcerer Sokurah. The plot is simple, but it effectively serves as a vehicle for the fantastical encounters and adventures that unfold. This Sinbad (Kerwin Mathews), however, strays significantly from the original character from the Arabian Nights tales. Rather than focusing on Sinbad as a seasoned sailor, the film presents him more as a heroic adventurer, imbuing him with qualities of both a swashbuckling action hero and a chivalrous knight. This transformation aligns with mid-20th-century Hollywood’s tendency to simplify and romanticize complex source material for mainstream audiences, packaging it as family-friendly entertainment. The result is, unfortunately, largely one-dimensional, serving as the archetypal hero figure without much complexity.
The mythological elements also don’t conform with the original Middle Eastern tales and instead offer a blend with Greek mythology, perhaps in an attempt to have a broader, more universal appeal. However, this fusion sometimes lacks cohesion, feeling more like a showcase of Harryhausen’s creatures than a unified narrative. At some points, we wonder whether this is Sinbad or Ulysses.
The villain Sokurah (Torin Thatcher) ends up being a more interesting character, despite the over-the-top performance. Driven by ambition and greed, he is a classic antagonist in the tradition of mythological evil-doers, though he too remains somewhat shallow. The princess Parisa (Kathryn Grant) is given little to do besides being the damsel in distress. Her character, like many female roles in adventure films of the era, is underdeveloped and primarily serves as a plot device rather than an active participant in the story.
The rousing musical score, by no other than Bernard Herrmann, with its use of exotic instruments and bold, sweeping melodies, enhances the film’s mythical atmosphere and adds to the excitement of Sinbad’s various encounters. Yes, that’s the man who created the soundtrack for Orson Welles’s Citizen Kane and Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo, North by Northwest, Psycho, among many others.
It’s also worth noting that The 7th Voyage of Sinbad reflects the cultural attitudes of the 1950s, particularly in its portrayal of Middle Eastern characters and settings. Like many films of its era, it relies on Westernized interpretations of non-Western cultures, resulting in some problematic depictions and a lack of authenticity. Sinbad, for instance, is portrayed by a white actor, and the film’s version of the Middle East is filtered through an exotic, orientalist lens that flattens the culture into a fantasy world for Western audiences.
The Golden Voyage of Sinbad (Gordon Hessler, 1973), tries to repeat the success of The 7th Voyage of Sinbad using the same blend of mythological ambience, swashbuckling action, and groundbreaking stop-motion animation. But, for an adventure movie, it has a very slow pace. Some sequences, particularly in the middle portion of the film, feel sedate and lack the urgency needed to maintain momentum. The episodic structure of Sinbad’s journey can also make the film feel somewhat disjointed at times, with the plot sometimes pausing for the next creature encounter rather than unfolding organically.
This Sinbad (John Phillip Law) is a bit more charismatic than his predecessor, but once again doesn’t have the same screen presence as the villain Koura (Tom Baker, who would later achieve fame as the Fourth Doctor in Doctor Who), an evil magician (it’s always an evil magician, isn’t it?). Baker imbues Koura with a menacing presence and a deeper motivation than many fantasy villains of the time. His desperation to regain his youth and power adds a layer of pathos to his character, making him more than just a stock villain. Koura is cunning and relentless, using dark magic at great personal cost, which slowly drains his life force. This adds an intriguing dynamic between the hero and villain, as Koura becomes increasingly desperate and physically weakened as the story progresses, making him a tragic antagonist. In contrast, Sinbad’s love interest, Margiana (Caroline Munro) seems to be there just to display her cleavage, the only thing preventing her from disappearing in the background.
There are also some anachronisms. The original Sinbad from One Thousand and One Nights is supposed to have lived between the 8th and the 9th centuries. However, here he decides to travel to Lemuria, a lost continent hypothesized only in the 19th century by zoologist Philip Sclater. But this is a fantasy movie with magic and mythological creatures, so it may not matter.
Once again, the true star of The Golden Voyage of Sinbad is Ray Harryhausen’s stop-motion work. Among his extraordinary creatures, this time we have a centaur and a griffin in a deadly battle, and the fascinating six-armed goddess Kali, a statue brought to life. As always, Harryhausen’s work retains a sense of wonder even in a modern context, because the craftsmanship behind the animation feels tangible. The creatures possess a surreal quality that sets them apart from today’s computer-generated monsters, making the action sequences feel dreamlike and otherworldly.
Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger (Sam Wanamaker, 1977), is the weakest in the Sinbad trilogy brought to life by producer Charles H. Schneer by Ray Harryhausen. It follows the same idea of having a Sinbad detached from the original Arabian Nights tales and mixed with elements from Greek mythology. At this point, however, there’s a sense of formulaic repetition.
This Sinbad (Patrick Wayne, the son of legendary actor John Wayne), is quite bland. He lacks the charisma and gravitas needed to make Sinbad a compelling figure, leaving the character as little more than a stoic action hero. The great villain this time is reduced to a yelling caricature, Zenobia (Margaret Whiting, the British actress, not the American country singer). Her transformation into various animals and her pursuit of Sinbad create some tension, but the character lacks the depth and tragic elements of Koura from The Golden Voyage of Sinbad. And all that yelling leaves you wondering if that is supposed to be funny or is just the result of overacting and poor directing skills. There’s also Melanthius (Patrick Troughton, known for his role as the Second Doctor in Doctor Who), introduced as a wise man and eccentric scientist, but his wisdom is highly doubtful. He manages to interrogate someone and give her more information than he is able to extract. Then, in the same scene, he acquires a potion that enlarges creatures and decides to test it on a poisonous wasp, creating a lethal monster that endangers everyone on the ship. Lastly, as expected, we have Princess Farah (Jane Seymour, who would later win two Golden Globes and one Emmy) largely relegated to a passive role, as is the fate of all of Sinbad’s love interests in this series.
Once more, Ray Harryhausen’s stop-motion creations are the most significant highlight of the film. There’s a mechanical minotaur (creatively named Minoton), a massive saber-toothed tiger, a giant troglodyte (which reminds us of the cyclops from the first movie), and a menacing baboon that houses the spirit of a cursed prince. Unfortunately, though, while impressive in its own right, the stop-motion animation feels less fluid and polished than in previous films, which may reflect both the demands of the increasing complexity of the creatures and the potential limitations of the budget or production schedule.
The quest structure (traveling from one mystical location to the next while overcoming a series of obstacles) follows the formula established in the previous films. However, it feels more mechanical here, with little sense of novelty or innovation. There are some anachronisms here too. Again, the original Sinbad from One Thousand and One Nights is supposed to have lived between the 8th and the 9th centuries. But Melanthius refers to Archimedes of Syracuse, who lived in the 3rd century BCE, as if they were contemporaries. Anyone cares about these inconsistencies?
If you have to choose just one of these movies, get the first one. The 7th Voyage of Sinbad remains a landmark film in the fantasy genre, particularly for its groundbreaking use of stop-motion animation. While its narrative and characters are somewhat shallow, the film succeeds in creating a world of wonder and adventure that continues to captivate audiences. Its influence on the genre is undeniable, paving the way for later films that embraced the fantastical and the mythological.
© 2026 Zander Dulac
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