SCIENCE FICTION DOUBLE FEATURE: So I’ve recently sampled two sci-fi/horror works: the first volume of Junji Ito’s killer-fish manga Gyo, and the ’60s French b&w; film “Eyes without a Face.” Both were effectively creepy, but neither really captivated me.

Gyo begins with an intriguing sequence between a young couple on vacation at Okinawa. The girlfriend is repelled by the boyfriend’s bad breath; they fight about money, and she complains of the worsening smell. But the smell turns out to emanate not from the boyfriend, but from these utterly creepy fish on insectlike stilts.

These walking fish (and squid and sharks and manta rays) are severely spooky. They’re the kind of blunt, blank-faced horror image that seems to be Ito’s specialty. Perhaps the most effective and frightening thing about Gyo is the sound effects. That’s a tough trick to pull off in a comic, but Ito manages it: Every scene has an eerie shaaaaaaaa, a deceptively quiet plish plish plish, or a hideous gashunk. The fonts (not quite the right word since the sound effects are drawn, not typeset) add to the menace.

But the rest of the comic–everything that isn’t the walking fish–really didn’t work for me. The relationship between Kaori and Tadashi gets exactly no development (unlike the characters’ relationships in Ito’s killer-spiral manga Uzumaki). And whereas the killer spirals in Uzumaki seemed to have too many meanings and resonances–a scary and intellectually exciting approach–the walking fish don’t really seem to mean much at all.

“Eyes without a Face” has a much more coherent underlying intellectual picture. It’s about the terrible things we’ll do for those we love; it’s about how the scientific quest for an end to suffering can lead to human sacrifice and a loss of personal identity. I’m really attracted to both those themes. Plus the movie has a lot of very haunting images: the face mask, the operating room, the pearl necklace, the masked girl comforting the dogs, the masked girl releasing the doves, the car traveling through the woods.

My problem with “Eyes” is the same as one of my problems with Gyo: I really don’t respond to narrative horror unless there’s a strong element of characterization. This is sort of like how I find it very hard to follow music unless there’s a human voice. It’s the reason I love The Shining (the book), which relies on characterization for its horror (the slow revelation of Jack Torrance’s secrets and his descent into evil), but was left cold by “The Shining” (the movie), which relies on imagery for its horror. People who don’t have this need for characterization in their horror should definitely check out “Eyes,” though, as I expect they’ll get much more from it than I did.