This is an original Japanese B2 theatrical poster printed in 1968 to promote a remarkable Shochiku double feature pairing two of the studio’s most distinctive late-1960s genre films: The Living Skeleton (吸血髑髏船), directed by Hiroshi Matsuno, and Genocide (昆虫大戦争), directed by Kazui Nihonmatsu. Both films were released in Japan on 9 November 1968, and this poster was created to advertise them together as a single cinema programme.
Film background
The left side promotes The Living Skeleton, Shochiku’s black-and-white gothic horror tale of a ghost ship, murder, and vampiric dread, starring Kikko Matsuoka, Yasunori Irikawa, Akira Nishimura, Masumi Okada, and Asao Koike. The right side promotes Genocide, an apocalyptic science-fiction panic film about deadly swarming insects, Cold War anxieties, and human folly, starring Keisuke Sonoi, Yūsuke Kawazu, Emi Shindō, and others. Taken together, the pair represents Shochiku’s brief but highly memorable move into darker, more experimental horror and science-fiction territory at the end of the 1960s.
Poster design
This is a superb and highly unusual double-bill design, vertically split to give each film its own visual world while still functioning as a single dramatic sheet. On the left, The Living Skeleton is rendered in deep blacks and stark whites, with its sinister ghostly face, skeletal imagery, and haunted-ship atmosphere creating an unmistakably gothic tone. On the right, Genocide erupts in fiery colour, with monstrous insect imagery, crashing aircraft, terrified figures, and a blazing orange sky conveying full-scale catastrophe. The clash between monochrome horror and colour sci-fi panic gives the poster exceptional visual energy. It is exactly the sort of bold, concept-driven Japanese studio poster that makes late-1960s genre paper so compelling to collectors.
Condition
Very Good / Excellent. Please review the photos—they show the exact poster for sale.
It is over 55 years old!
It is not a reproduction or a reprint.
Certificate of Authenticity included.
