When
we think of Japanese or otherwise Asian horror from the 1950s onward, typically
traditional period pieces such as the anthological jidaigeki Kwaidan, the Kabuki play The Ghost of Yotsuya, the macabre
phantasmagorical Jigoku and more
recently the emergence of the Ringu and
Ju-On film series. Stemming from indigenous fears and
superstitions of the supernatural, Japanese horror is distinctive for being
intrinsically linked to the culture with visceral horrors whose primary
influences come from within.
Up
to the late 1960s, the closest the Japanese film industry came towards
depicting the frankly extraterrestrial European concept of vampirism came from
Shochiku’s brief foray into horror with The
Living Skeleton as well as the bizarre and psychedelic space vampire hybrid
Goke, Body Snatcher from Hell. Otherwise anything resembling Bela Lugosi or
Christopher Lee from the Universal or Hammer depictions of Bram Stoker’s infamous
Count Dracula remained outside the Japanese film industry’s vocabulary.
That
is, until Japanese filmmaker Michio Yamamoto made his brief splash onto the
silver screen via Toho with a trilogy of films that couldn’t be more directly
or heavily influenced by the aforementioned Hammer Horror films of the undying
bloodsucking count if they tried.
Initially conceived as standalone pictures before being loosely linked
together as The Bloodthirsty Trilogy,
Yamamoto’s rarely seen, dismissed and initially forgotten Westernized Japanese
vampire films represent an outlier in J-horror.
While
finding their own footing with many hallmarks germane to Japanese culture, it
is undeniable Yamamoto’s film series is a loose riff on Horror of Dracula as well as much of the British Dracula horror
films that followed. Filled with dark
cobweb filled mansions, creepy bats and rats, thunderstorms and of course the
pale faced bloody fanged children of the night themselves, Yamamoto’s Bloodthirsty Trilogy is a curious
footnote in the J-horror genre for being neither fully Japanese nor European,
meeting somewhere in the middle. With
this, let us take a look at Arrow Video’s recently released collection of the
trilogy
The Vampire Doll (1970)
The
first in Yamamoto’s Bloodthirsty Trilogy
is the one least associative with the fanged bloodsuckers seen in the Hammer
Horror series and arguably the most traditionally Japanese of the three despite
being steeped in Western gothic horror. Following
Kazuhiko Sagawa (Atsuo Nakamura) to an isolated mansion in an effort to connect
with his fiancé Yuko Nonomura (Yukiko Kobayashi) residing there, only to vanish
without a trace and prompt his sister Keiko (Kayo Matsuo) and her fiancé Hiroshi
Takagi (Akira Nakao) to investigate.
What they find unravels a sordid and violent familial past including but
not limited to hypnotism, a mute butler ala Boris Karloff from The Old Dark House, a creepy dungeon,
and a doctor who may not more about Yuko and Kazuhiko’s whereabouts than he’s
telling.
The
least compelling and least overtly vampire oriented yet most methodically paced
of the trilogy, The Vampire Doll bears
familiar Japanese iconography such as Yuko’s mother Shidu (Yoko Minakaze)
donning the only kimono seen in the film but largely places it’s characters in
traditionally western garb. Much like
the first entry of the teen slasher Friday
the 13th series, we don’t really get to see the blood dripping
fangs here but are provided with plenty of backstory amid relatively gory
slashing of its own devising, functioning as a loose lead in to what would
follow after in the next picture.
Moreover, it’s more aligned with the anthological Kwaidan for being slower paced and harkening back to horror tales
of vengeful spirits fixing to take out their grudges on those who wronged
them.
Visually
this widescreen effort lensed by Kazutami Hara, who would reunite with Yamamoto
on the eventual third offering Evil of
Dracula, is steeped in deep shadows, dusky blues of night and wide shots of
elongated mansion hallways with blowing curtains and creaky doors. Outside of the cast members, from a distance
you wouldn’t know this was a Japanese horror film purely from the visual look
of the film which more closely resembles the European gothic horror tales which
inspired it. The sound design of howling
winds and soundtrack by Riichiro Manabe with frequent use of the harpsicord as
well as the electronic theremin also elicit a traditionally western soundtrack
both contemporary and ancient, sounding less and less like Kwaidan or Jigoku with
each passing cue.
In
the end, however, The Vampire Doll,
while establishing an atmosphere that’s generally creepy and unnerving, other
than tampering with the undead it never officially declares itself as a vampire
motion picture, making the title and impetus behind it somewhat
misleading. Seen today it could be
characterized as a gothic slow burn in the eyes of modern moviegoers. That said, it’s a fascinating lead in to what
would or would not become The
Bloodthirsty Trilogy and moreover whether or not the Japanese film industry
was ready to make the jump into tackling the now world famous pale faced
eternal bloodsucker tropes the Universal and Hammer Horror films made so instantly
recognizable.
Lake of Dracula (1971)
Following
in the footsteps of The Vampire Doll
while making the connection to Bram Stoker’s creature of the night more
visible, Lake of Dracula opens on
what appears to be a terrifying nightmare about little girl Akiko Kashiwagi who
follows her escaped dog into an old mansion to confront a golden eyed vampire…or
is it? Eighteen years pass Akiko (Midori
Fujita) into adulthood with the same recurring nightmare until one day a
mysterious package containing a coffin appears at the lakeside by Akiko’s home. Soon her sister Natsuko (Sanae Emi) and the
local motorboat operator begin behaving strangely and the body count rises as
Akiko and her boyfriend Dr. Takashi Saeki (Choei Takahashi) try to unravel the
mystery and connection to her recurring nightmares before it is too late.
More
briskly paced this time around with the vampirism promised in the first film
finally making his presence known thanks to the pale skinned and fanged Shin
Kishida’s frank imitation of Christopher Lee, Lake of Dracula takes on the form of an energetic suspense thriller
with elements of horror as well as far more blood and gore than the previous
entry. Though it switches
cinematographers this time around to Rokuro Nishigaki, the visual schema of
dark nighttime blues and deep shadows from the first film is ever present. Where it differs greatly is the editing
thanks to Hisashi Kondo, both formal in approach for the narrative and
experimental in psychedelic flashbacks cut together in a series of rapid fire
subliminal edits.
Unlike
The Vampire Doll which moved slowly
and seemed to depict one mysterious creature of the night, Lake of Dracula runs fast and presents many of the undead with once
former allies of Akiko slowly falling prey to the vampire’s demonic spell. As aforementioned, Lake of Dracula is significantly more gruesome than the previous
film, including a grisly death clearly channeling the infamous vampiric demise
closing Horror of Dracula. It also has its footing grounded in the past,
going back and forth between it and the present as the missing pieces in the
long unresolved mystery plaguing Akiko’s dreams gradually come together.
Two
films into The Bloodthirsty Trilogy,
one gets the sense the series is moving even closer towards becoming an
imitation of the Hammer Horror Dracula film series with many of the European
tropes overlapping Japanese horror traditions.
While an effective and frequently haunting action thriller entry, it was
only a matter of time before the loose connective tissue linking Yamamoto’s Bloodthirsty Trilogy to the British
horror films which inspired it became far more overt with the final entry in
the series, Evil of Dracula.
Evil of Dracula (1974)
Saving
the best for last and not holding back on wearing influences proudly on its
sleeve, Evil of Dracula being the
third and final entry into Yamamoto’s loose Bloodthirsty
Trilogy goes for broke as the most naked imitation of the Hammer Horror
films, notably Lust for a Vampire. Upon the arrival of young Professor Shiraki
(Toshio Kurosawa) in a remote all-girls school, our hero senses something
strange almost immediately upon meeting the pale faced Principal (Shin Kishida
from Lake of Dracula) before bumping
into more than one of his mercurial wives.
As he unveils his coursework to the students, more and more of them
either begin fainting or become sickly as bite marks appear on their
breasts. It doesn’t take long for the
strange phenomenon to erupt into a full blown epidemic with the Professor in a
race against time to locate the source before its too late.
Evil of Dracula bears
the distinction of being the most Hammer Horror influenced while also managing to
conjure up tropes of Japanese horror both modern and steeped in the past. In a way it brings the connective tissue
linking the East to the West full circle, with Riichiro Manabe’s soundtrack
ranging freely from contemporary somber Jazz to jidaigeki instrumentation for
the first time in the trilogy. The film
also bears the trademark of being the one and only entry to feature an English
speaking actor. Seen briefly in a
flashback as a priest washed ashore who is tortured into apostasy while
bringing along with him a far more dastardly disease, serving a meta-commentary
on where the foreign vampire myth originated.
Significantly more carnal and graphically violent this time around,
including nudity, exposed breasts with bite marks, facial transplantation and
rapid physical decrepitude, Evil of
Dracula is easily the most adult oriented entry of the series yet.
If
Lake of Dracula tried to let more
than one bloodsucker loose on the unsuspecting populous, Evil of Dracula unleashes an army as fellow colleagues and students
of the Professor fall prey to the bloodsucker’s spell before coming him
seemingly from all sides. Wherein the
first two films bore an easy distinction between who was human and who was of
the undead, you’re not really sure how far the infectious vampire disease has
spread here which gives the picture and the events in it a sense of
vastness. Moreover, Evil of Dracula in addition to being a horror film manages to sneak
in social commentary regarding the ease with which a schoolmaster in a position
of power can seduce and/or sexually abuse his student body.
Bringing
the Bloodthirsty Trilogy to a close, Evil of Dracula despite being criticized
at the time as a mere ripoff of Lust for
a Vampire stands out as the loudest, most energetic and finally the most
Japanese entry of the trilogy. Coming
full circle and managing to deliver distinctly East Asian chills not heard
since Toho’s own release of Kwaidan
in the years prior, Evil of Dracula
represents the pinnacle of the series for taking the influences of Hammer
Horror all the way with relish before bringing it back to Japan. In that sense Evil of Dracula is the most artistically successful film of the
trilogy, functioning as a Western influenced horror film while also being a
commentary on how such influences shaped the face of Japanese horror.
- Andrew Kotwicki