Product Description

A crooked Shrine Magistrate and a greedy developer scheme to evict residents from an apartment building and demolish the adjoining shrine, forcing the townspeople into submission. When the apartment owner attempts to reclaim the property, he is murdered, and a masterless samurai with deep secrets steps into the fray. The situation in the human world is definitely awry, and as in the past, the Yokai (Spirit Monsters) must take action to correct the wrongs. Divine justice is coming! Yokai Monsters: many legends, but only one message: Heed the spirits, or face their wrath!

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #67345 in DVD
• Brand: ADV Films
• Released on: 2003-07-15
• Rating: Unrated
• Aspect ratio: 1.78:1
• Formats: Anamorphic, Color, NTSC, Subtitled, Widescreen
• Original language: Japanese
• Subtitled in: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 90 minutes

Customer Reviews

bizarre stuff
I've always wanted to see this film ever since I saw a still of the rubber-necked geisha sequence in an old film book. This is a very strange, quirky fantasy with some truly unusual and nightmarish imagery - particularly the aforementioned scene with the geisha.
The story is a little confused at times but stick with it and you'll be rewarded with a viewing experience that's miles away from the stuff Hollywood pumps out. From another planet in fact.

Weakest entry in the "Yokai Monsters" series
100 MONSTERS is one of a trilogy of "yokai" films made in 1968-69 that focused on "Japanese apparitions," ghosts and demon characters out of Japanese folklore that include a woman with a long, snake-like neck and a one-legged umbrella with a long tongue. This is the least interesting film in the series, which also includes SPOOK WARFARE and ALONG WITH GHOSTS. It's got a simple plot about a landlord in feudal Japan who decides to tear down a revered shrine in his village and the block of "tenement houses" next to it, a group of connected one-story wooden houses occupied by struggling peasant families. The local demons are upset by these actions and begin harassing the landlord, his family and his men. One amusing encounter involves the landlord's grown, mentally handicapped son who finds the umbrella ghost to be a valued and fun companion.

There are no real heroes in this, just a group of tenants who band together to protest the landlord's action. Not much happens, there's not a lot of action, and there's virtually no suspense. A lot of time is spent on the "100 Stories" ceremony and we see a flashback to a famous ghost story about two men who catch a fish in a sacred river despite warnings against it and the fate that befalls them. There's also a "curse eliminating" ritual that needs to be done in order to avoid harassment by the demons, but the landlord is above such things and lives to regret it. All this seems like padding for a story that has difficulty filling out its already short 78-minute running time.

ALONG WITH GHOSTS has a better storyline, but the best of the three is SPOOK WARFARE, also reviewed on this site, which makes good dramatic use of its demon characters and actually has a suspenseful showdown between the good demons and an evil demon invading from afar.

This series was made by the Daiei Studio, home of Gamera, and it's a lot lower-budgeted than a similar effort would have been at Toho, Toei, or Shochiku.

Yokai Monsters -100 Monsters
This is a great movie, lots of laughs and interesting special effects. The service was great, very speedy I will purchase again. Thanks