What hope does humanity have against invisible invaders? The undead here aren't looking to eat brains, but they're still a threat to be reckoned with as their bodies are those of loved ones, and even if you destroy one, the invisible alien simply moves on to another corpse. The premise is filled with originality as it blends the alien invasion setup with a zombie army a decade before zombies would break through into pop culture with George Romero's Night of the Living Dead (1968). Yeah yeah, this slice of 1950s sci-fi/horror isn't all that great, but I'm here to argue that it's fast-moving and creative fun anyway. Should that matter when the victims have all been stabbed? I don't know, I'm not an entomologist, but I have to respect how thorough the police are in their investigation. The cops work to narrow down suspects and look for connections between the targets, and even the fly theory goes through some detective work as they look at poisonous flies from around the world. Part of the film's fun is that it's essentially a straight-forward police procedural even as this bonkers business is unfolding all around. A businessman seeking revenge, an invisibility ray that also causes cancer, saucy dancers at a club of ill repute, multiple murders, a cop willing to sacrifice himself, exploding miniature trains, invisible hijinks with a banana, attempted theft, an act of terrorism with triple-digit body count.and a human fly a full year before Vincent Price encountered and crushed a far more famous one. This Japanese crime picture is an ambitious blend of genre ideas, and all of it is played deadly straight.
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