War of the Insects (Cinematic Titanic Live)

Onscreen Title:  "Genocide"

Film Year:  1968

Genre:  Science Fiction, Horror

Director:  Kazui Nihonmatsu

Starring:  Keisuke Sonoi, Yusuke Kawazu, Emi Shindo, Reiko Hitomi, Kathy Horan, Chiko Roland, Ralph Jesser

CT Number:  11

The Movie

Note:  The official title for this movie is  Genocide, and it's even the title of the print featured here.  War of the Insects seems to be a title the US used in the 60's, though I'm not entirely sure why Cinematic Titanic changed that title for promotion, though in cases like The Oozing Skull, Blood of the Vampires, East Meets Watts, and Danger on Tiki Island it was done at the request of the copyright owners.  It's possible there was a similar issue here too.  Or perhaps they thought nobody would want to see a comedy show called "Genocide."

As if Japan didn't have enough bug problems with Mothra on the loose, now a bunch of killer bees want everybody dead too!  An outbreak of killer bugs causes an H-bomb to be lost in transit.  Agents from the US and communists battle over the lost nuke to take back to their country or detonate where they please.  They just have to avoid all the deadly insects with a venom that drives humans and animals insane before dropping dead.

This movie is almost The Happening, only convoluted as fuck and it has a personality.  The film has so many plotlines that it tries to keep relevant that it loses focus on most of them at any given time and it's hard to tell what the primary story is supposed to be.  One would think for a killer critter movie that the insects themselves might be central to the movie but they almost seem to exist by happenstance and are just present while the director makes a spygames movie.

Once we get to the bottom of what is happening with the insects, the movie completely gives up on trying to latch onto any type of coherence.  The finale is a lot of people bumbling around, many things happening at once, before the movie just gives up and says "There.  We're done."  The movie does try to end on a harrowing note with the intended purpose of making the viewer feel uneasy about everything they just saw, but they're more likely to feel unease because everything they've witnessed up until this point was hectic and haphazard.  The movie just collapsing and self-destructing probably was the only way it could have ended.

Of interest to cinephiles, this is one of a fair few riffed films that was released by the Criterion Collection (others include Night of the Living Dead, Carnival of Souls, Armageddon, and the Godzilla films), albeit in one of their Eclipse series box sets grouping movies that they have the rights to but don't want to release individually.  In this case the box was called When Horror Came to Shochiku, which collected genre films by Shochicku studios in the late 60's.

The Live Show

It's pretty easy to get me excited about watching a Japanese genre picture, and if it was featured on Mystery Science Theater, RiffTrax, or, as the case may be this week, Cinematic Titanic, then I'd obviously label it a must-see.  They can get more "out there" than any other film in the industry, and if one wants a hearty experience with craziness, Japan is the best place to look.  For that alone I might be quite biased when it comes to recommending things like War of the Insects because I personally love them so much.  It's possible that not everybody will (Invasion of the Neptune Men is one of my favorite MST episodes, but that's not the case for everyone), so buyer beware on that I suppose.  I do consider War of the Insects to be the best of the live Cinematic Titanic offerings, so make of that what you will.

War of the Insects isn't the most endearing nor the cheesiest Japanese movie any of these riffing projects have tackled.  If anything it's the most dramatic failure at what it's trying to accomplish (yes, I'd argue this movie has more narrative collapse than any given Gamera movie, fight me).  Everything about this movie is nonsense, the movie is so self-serious, and collides various plots in search of something with artistic value.  Cinematic Titanic always seemed to feed of these weird oddities that look and felt they were found under a rock, and War of the Insects fits right in.

The commentary tries to maintain momentum with the film, which is damn near impossible.  They're a bit winded, confused, and curious about this film, and the riffing feels like it's just slightly endeared to it.  They'll make little jabs of intrigue like "Why is the American actor dubbed?" or just playful little humor like dubbing someone "The Japanese Clint Howard."  Most of it is funny because a lot of this movie is noise, and if we don't laugh through the noise we might get overwhelmed by it.  I appreciate their attempts to keep us grounded at least.  As always with Live shows, there is flubbing and lines that they trip over, but this movie is such nonsense that it almost works in its vibe.  In fact, in the heat of the moment it feels natural that we should blame the movie for their screwing up.

While I get a lot of laughs from this offering, one thing I think holds me back from fully saying this is a must-see is that there is so much going on in the movie and it's almost wall-to-wall chaos.  Add in a layer of comedic commentary and audience laughter over it and the experience can be a whirlwind of incoherence.  It's a dangerous game we play and that's just how the cookie crumbles sometimes.  The fact remains that this Live show does have the laughs and entertainment is through the roof.

Good

The DVD

Like all of Cinematic Titanic's offerings, War of the Insects was initially sold through their website with solid audio and video but no bonus features.  Years later, Shout Factory collected all of Cinematic Titanic for a Complete Collection box set, where it shared a disc with Rattlers.  This disc also houses a bonus feature called Between the Riffs showcasing the behind the scenes of Cinematic Titanic.  This bonus feature was originally on Cinematic Titanic's original Danger on Tiki Island disc.