is a 1968 Japanese

tokusatsu is a Japanese term for live action film or television drama that makes heavy use of practical special effects. ''Tokusatsu'' entertainment mainly refers to science fiction, war, fantasy, or horror media featuring such technology but is som ...

science fiction Science fiction (sometimes shortened to Sci-Fi or SF) is a genre of speculative fiction which typically deals with imaginative and futuristic concepts such as advanced science and technology, space exploration, time travel, parallel uni ...

horror film directed by

Kazui Nihonmatsu is a Japanese film director. Biography After graduating in Business at the Waseda University, Nihonmatsu was hired at the Shochiku Ofuna Photographic Office in 1948 and later became assistant director to filmmakers such as Akira Kurosawa, Kei ...

Cast

Production

''Genocide'' was co-written by Susumu Takaku, an

anime is hand-drawn and computer-generated animation originating from Japan. Outside of Japan and in English, ''anime'' refers specifically to animation produced in Japan. However, in Japan and in Japanese, (a term derived from a shortening of ...

and live-action screenwriter. The films staff includes Shizuo Hirase as the cinematographer who also worked on the Shochiku films ''

The X from Outer Space is a 1967 Japanese science fiction '' kaiju'' film that was directed by Kazui Nihonmatsu and stars Eiji Okada and Toshiya Wazaki. Guilala returned in a 2008 Shochiku sequel of sorts called '' Monster X Strikes Back: Attack the G8 Summit''. Plot ...

'' and '' Goké, Body Snatcher from Hell''.

Release

''Genocide'' was released in Japan on 9 November 1968. It was released as a double feature with '' The Living Skeleton''. The film was released in the United States by Shochiku Films of America in 1969. The film was promoted under the title ''War of the Insects'' on this release.

The Criterion Collection The Criterion Collection, Inc. (or simply Criterion) is an American home video, home-video distribution company that focuses on licensing, restoring and distributing "important classic and contemporary films." Criterion serves film and media scho ...

released ''Genocide'' on DVD in a compilation set titled ''When Horror Came to Shochiku'' through their Eclipse label. The box set was released on November 20, 2012.

Reception

Slant Magazine described the film as "appropriately harrowing" and one where women "come under the most direct indictment". The review opined that Nihonmatsu "handles with considerably more skill than his prior Shochiku effort" and that "Genre films don't often cover as much ground stylistically or thematically as Genocide, let alone get more bleak (the film ultimately hinges on the potential detonation of a hydrogen bomb and the single mother who may have to single-handedly repopulate a country), but as the last horror film Shochiku would produce, it's suitably ambitious and apocalyptic in its finality." ''

Sight & Sound ''Sight and Sound'' (also spelled ''Sight & Sound'') is a British monthly film magazine published by the British Film Institute (BFI). It conducts the well-known, once-a-decade ''Sight and Sound'' Poll of the Greatest Films of All Time, ongoing ...

'' described ''Genocide'' as an "accident of a film" that "plays mostly as a national symptom, in a legacy of scenarios devised both to make sense of, and to reduce to pulp the memories of nuclear heat-death".

References

Footnotes

Sources

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External links

* {{IMDb title, 0063195, Genocide 1968 films 1968 horror films 1960s science fiction horror films 1960s Japanese-language films Japanese science fiction horror films Shochiku films Films scored by Shunsuke Kikuchi Films about insects Films set on airplanes African-American horror films Mad scientist films 1960s American films 1960s Japanese films