Evil of Dracula (1974)

Evil of Dracula, released in 1974 by Toho, was the third instalment in Michio Yamamoto’s so-called Bloodthirsty Trilogy.

It begins with Mr Shiraki (Toshio Kurosawa) arriving to take up a post at a small girls’ school in a remote rural locale. Some odd things seem to be happening. A couple of days earlier the principal’s wife was killed in a car crash. She was with another man, not her husband. The principal is keeping her body in the cellar. He assures Mr Shiraki that that is the local custom.

One of the girl has disappeared. Apparently that’s a common occurrence. At least two girls vanish every year. It’s just one of those things. Nobody worries about it.

Mr Shiraki has an encounter with a half-naked woman who tries to attack him. She has fangs. But he thinks it was just a dream. It had to have been a dream.

He knows he shouldn’t but Mr Shiraki sneaks a look at the corpse of the principal’s wife. She bears a striking resemblance to the woman in his dream.

The local doctor, Dr Shimomura (Kunie Tanaka), tells Mr Shiraki about the local legends concerning vampires, dating back to the shipwreck of a European sailor two centuries earlier.

The doctor has his suspicions that the vampire legends might contain some truth. Perhaps the schoolteacher who ended up in the lunatic asylum might know something. Dr Shimomura thinks the teacher had a mental breakdown after finding out something shocking.

One of the girls at the school, Kumi (Mariko Mochizuki), has developed a major crush on Mr Shiraki. And one of her friends was found passed out, with strange puncture marks on her breast. Mr Shiraki is certainly convinced that he is dealing with vampires.

And Kumi and her friends are in danger. This vampire targets schoolgirls. We will eventually find out why.

Mr Shiraki’s only reliable allies are Dr Shimomura and Kumi. They’re not sure how many vampires they are up against. There’s a male vampire and there seem to be several lady vampires. The odds don’t look too good. And nobody is quite sure how to deal with vampires anyway.

The plot is a fairly stock-standard vampire movie plot. Michio Yamamoto is not trying to do anything ground-breaking. He does manage a reasonable amount of spookiness.

Putting vampires into a Japanese setting does provide some interest. There are plenty of suitably gothic visuals, with a Japanese flavour.

The male vampire looks a bit silly but the lady vampires look great - subtle creepy makeup that still makes them look sexy and seductive.

This movie adheres pretty closely to established western vampire lore. Which is a bit disappointing - a few more distinctively Japanese touches would have made things more interesting.

There’s no shortage of attractive women. There’s virtually no nudity (a couple of glimpses of nipples). There’s no gore. This is a rather old-fashioned horror movie for 1974.

The acting is adequate. Michio Yamamoto does not exactly do an inspired job as director but he’s competent.

Evil of Dracula is the weakest film in the trilogy. Vampires were an unusual feature in Japanese gothic horror in the 60s and 70s although they became slightly more common in anime movies and TV in the 80s and 90s.

Arrow have released all three movies in the Bloodthirsty Trilogy in a nice Blu-Ray boxed set with lovely transfers.

Evil of Dracula would not be worth purchasing on its own but it’s maybe worth a look if you’re buying the boxed set anyway.

I’ve reviewed the two earlier movies in the trilogy, The Vampire Doll and Lake of Dracula.

Blood and Roses (1960)

Roger Vadim’s Blood and Roses (Et mourir de plaisir) is an adaptation of one of the greatest (if not the greatest) of all vampire stories, Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu’s 1872 novella Carmilla. It was I think the first Carmilla adaptation. Vadim co-wrote the screenplay. Carmilla would inspire countless 1970s movies about lady vampires.

Sheridan Le Fanu’s Carmilla is often claimed to be the first lesbian vampire tale. While there are such hints in the novella I personally feel that this is a slight over-simplification of a complex story about awakening female sexuality.

Roger Vadim is the most unfairly maligned and misunderstood of all major French film directors. He has also been subjected to a disturbing amount of personal venom. Much of this was undoubtedly inspired by jealousy. He was either married to or lived with a succession of the most beautiful actresses in the world. Vadim really was not just a major director but an extraordinarily interesting one, far more interesting than the New Wave directors on whom critics doted.

Vadim has made major changes to both the plot and the setting. The movie has a contemporary setting.

In the novella Carmilla von Karnstein is an odd young woman who serves as a kind of governess/companion to a young girl named Laura. Laura lives on an isolated estate in Austria with her father.

In the movie Carmilla von Karnstein lives on an estate in Italy with her cousin Leopoldo von Karnstein (Mel Ferrer). They are both von Karnsteins, a family reputed to have a history of vampirism. But that was a long time ago. The vampires in the von Karnstein family were destroyed in the 18th century.

Leopoldo is engaged to marry the charming Georgia Monteverdi (Elsa Martinelli).

Carmilla is just a little obsessed by the von Karnstein family history of vampirism. She seems a bit unwell. The sun bothers her. She seems moody and preoccupied.

There’s a suggestion that when she was a little girl she had a bit of a crush on her cousin Leopoldo.

Carmilla may perhaps be jealous of Georgia.

Then a young housemaid is found dead. An apparent accident. The marks on her neck have no significance. And the gardener sees a strange figure moving through the woods.

Are all the von Karnstein vampires really safely in the past?

A party at the von Karnstein manor climaxes with fireworks, and some additional unexpected explosions. It turns out to be leftover ammunition from the war, which had been hidden in the ruins by the cemetery. Just to be on the safe side the army decides to blow up those ruins. That’s where the von Karnstein vampires were interred.

Le Fanu’s novella has a number of levels of ambiguity. This film has its own levels of ambiguity, which are not necessarily the same as those of the novella. The Carmilla of the film is troubled. She may be troubled by sexual feelings or by her emotions or by her obsession with the past.

Of course she might in fact be a vampire. There does seem to be a vampire active in the present day. You’ll have to watch the movie to find out if the ambiguity of Carmilla’s nature is resolved.

Elsa Martinelli is a fine actress and she’s very good here. Mel Ferrer is excellent as Leopoldo. But this movie belongs to Annette Vadim who plays Carmilla. Cynics might suggest that she landed the role because she was married to Vadim. In fact she’s perfectly cast and she’s superb. The role needed an actress who could look equally convincing and stunning dressed in the mode of the 18th century or in the style of 1960. Carmilla is a woman of the 18th century, an age of elegance, but she is also a child of 1960 - a world of rock’n’roll and sports cars.

Carmilla is also a woman of mystery. We have to believe that she might be an ordinary young woman or a dangerous seductive vampire. Annette Vadim manages all of this with style.

There’s a nice atmosphere of suppressed eroticism, Annette Vadim is magnificent and this is an excellent movie superbly directed by Roger Vadim. This is subtle erotic horror and it’s very highly recommended.

For many years Blood and Roses was only available in English-friendly versions in a savagely cut version. Many of the online reviews you may across appear to be written by people who have only seen the cut version. The cut version of course makes very little sense. That’s what happens when censors butcher a movie. The version I have is the German DVD which is uncut and in the correct aspect ratio and it’s 16:9 enhanced. And it looks terrific. It includes the French-language track with English subtitles.

Incidentally the screencaps used here are not from the German DVD which has much much better image quality.

I’ve reviewed Sheridan le Fanu’s novella Carmilla. Hammer’s excellent 1970 The Vampire Lovers is a more faithful adaptation and it’s fascinating to see two such wildly different approaches to the same material.

Blood: The Last Vampire (2000)

Blood: The Last Vampire is a fascinating anime film that, with its running time of 48 minutes, is not quite a feature film.

It was shot in a mixture of Japanese and English. The Japanese characters speak Japanese and sometimes English, the American characters speak English. There’s also a mixture of traditional animation techniques and CG and you’ll either like that blending or you won’t depending on personal taste. Overall I found the visuals to be effective and atmospheric.

It starts in a wonderfully enigmatic fashion. It is Japan in the 1960s. A young Japanese girl (we will later learn that her name is Saya) slaughters a passenger on a train with a samurai sword. Then she is joined by a couple of American guys. David might be Saya’s boss. He might work for the Japanese Government or the US Government or for some shady outfit like the CIA or he might work for some private organisation. Whoever or whatever he is he is in the same line of work as Saya - killing chiropterans. We don’t yet know what chiropterans are.

There’s some tension between Saya and David but there’s obviously some trust as well. Maybe they’re uneasy allies but they’re definitely allies.

Then Saya goes undercover as a student at the school for the children of American military personnel at a U.S. Air Force base in Japan. For some reason she wears a Japanese schoolgirl uniform although it’s an American school. Saya looks rather weird dressed that way - she doesn’t look like a cute teenager, she looks like a stone-cold killer.

She has an uneasy encounter with the school nurse. The school nurse gets very disturbed when Saya whips out her sword and slices up another girl student in front of her. The nurse is horrified but she’s even more horrified when she gets a good look at her first chiropteran. They’re horrifying demon monsters.

We then get a rollercoaster ride of action and mayhem.

What I love most about this film is the thing that a lot of people dislike. It gives us nothing but tantalising hints at the backstory. You expect a Van Helsing-like character or a scientist to pop up to explain what is going on. But that doesn’t happen. We have to figure things out for ourselves.

We find out a few things about Saya but they raise more questions than they answer. The very short running time means there’s no time for detailed explanations. We are plunged straight into very strange and frightening events and we really don’t know much more than the unfortunate school teacher caught in the middle.

Which makes things much scarier. We don’t know the full extent or the exact nature of the threat. We don’t know how heavily the odds are stacked against Saya.

This is a very stripped-down very minimalist story. There are no subplots. Virtually no exposition. It hits the ground running and the pace remains frenetic. I like that. I’m told there was a later live-action version with double the running time that ruined the story by adding the backstory that was very deliberately and wisely left out of the original.

Right at the end we find out something very important about Saya but once again we don’t get a full explanation. It answers some of our questions but it adds further puzzles.

There was clearly a reason for choosing the mid-60s as the time setting and for including Vietnam War footage. Presumably the point was that we humans are every bit as bloodthirsty as the chiropterans. Fortunately this stuff isn’t intrusive and it does add to the atmosphere of paranoia.

Saya reappears as a character in the 2011 TV series Blood-C.

Hiroyuki Kitakubo directed. Blood: The Last Vampire was made by Production I.G. and originated in a study group set up by Mamoru Oshii (director of Ghost in the Shell) to explore ideas for future films. Kenji Kamiyama wrote the screenplay. He went on to be director and chief writer for the excellent Ghost in the Shell Stand Alone Complex TV series.

Blood: The Last Vampire is very much about style. That style is very harsh, dark and brooding. This may be the least cutesy anime ever made. Very entertaining movie. Highly recommended.

The Manga DVD (they’ve now released in on Blu-Ray as well) looks very good and includes a “making of” featurette which is interesting for the insights it offers into the aesthetic choices that were made.

Viy (1967)

Viy is a 1967 Soviet gothic horror film. There was in fact a long tradition of Russian films about the supernatural. One thing I can say for certain, there has never been another movie quite like Viy.

It is based on an 1835 short novel by Nikolai Gogol. The movie has three credited directors, Konstantin Ershov, Georgiy Kropachyov and Aleksandr Ptushko and they are also credited as screenwriters.

I think it’s safe to say that the filmmakers had no interest in telling us anything profound about the human condition, or in giving us a serious story about the heroic struggles of the proletariat. This movie is pure entertainment. Insane entertainment, but still pure entertainment.

Brother Khoma (Leonid Kuravlyov) is a student at a seminary. He’s a decent enough chap, good-natured and totally lacking in malice, but he’s not exactly one of the seminary’s shining lights. He’s an indifferent scholar, he’s rather lazy and he lacks any really serious vocation.

On a brief holiday Khoma and two friends become lost. They eventually find an isolated farmhouse. An old woman grudgingly puts them up for the night. During the night the old woman takes him for a fly. She is of course a witch. Flying throigh the air with a witch on his back spooks Khoma quite a bit, and he’s even more spooked when the old witch turns into a beautiful young woman. Khoma however survives the experience.

Shortly afterwards a local boyar sends word to the seminary that his daughter is dying. She has asked for a seminarian to read prayers over her for three days. She asks for Khoma by name, which puzzles her father.

By the time Khoma arrives the girl has died but her father insists that Khoma read the prayers over her corpse for three nights. The corpse is lying in the local church. Khoma is not looking forward to this. He is not very brave. Luckily there are hundreds of candles in the church and once Khoma has all of them alight he feels better. He makes it through the night but he would have been a lot happier had the dead girl stayed in her coffin. Dead girls wandering about can be a bit disconcerting.

The next night is worse. Now it’s not just the dead girl who won’t stay put, the coffin won’t stay put either. And there’s still the third night to come.

Gogol claimed that this story was based on an authentic folk tale. The movie certainly tries to evoke the feel of a fairy tale or a folk legend. You could imagine travelling through the remoter parts of central Europe in the 19th century and being regaled with a story such as this in an inn. You would assume the story was part folk tale and part tall story. That’s the feel the film seems to be aiming for - to give its audience a few chills and a few laughs. There’s quite a bit of humour here. We’re expected to enjoy the story without taking it over-seriously.

This is not a movie that makes any effort to look realistic. There are obvious matte paintings and obvious process shots. On the other hand the special effects are impressive - they’re so wild and crazy and imaginative that you’re too flabbergasted to worry about whether they’re convincing or not. Honestly, how many other movies can you name that feature a dead girl surfing on a flying coffin?

The directors also come up with some very bold and ambitious camera moves. The rotating camera stuff is superbly done. That kind of thing is expensive because it’s time-consuming to set up. The same goes for some of the effects shots. The climax of the film, the third night in the church, involves some truly extraordinary special effects sequences. There was clearly some serious money spent on this film.

Viy does get described as a vampire film but this really is stretching it. Gogol’s novella was certainly tapping into the 19th century obsession with the supernatural and the occult but there’s nothing in it or the film that bears any real resemblance to a vampire. It would be more accurate to describe it as a movie about witches and demons.

Viy feels quite different to British, American and Italian gothic horror films of its era. It has its own distinct flavour with its mix of terror and offbeat whimsicality.

The acting is very good with Leonid Kuravlyov being the standout.

This is a wildly imaginative crazy movie that captures the feel of folk legends and fairy tales as effectively as any movie I can think of. It’s creepy and spooky and filled with inspired fantastic imagery. Highly recommended.

Severin’s Blu-Ray presentation is impressive. Extras include a superb mini-documentary on the history of Soviet science fiction and supernatural movies.

Lake of Dracula (1971)

The Japanese vampire movie Lake of Dracula, released in 1971, is the second movie in what became known as the Bloodthirsty Trilogy. It is not a true trilogy but it does comprise three gothic horror movies made in quick succession by the same director (Michio Yamamoto) for the same studio (Toho) and all dealing with vampires. They’re three entirely separate movies with no direct links to each other.

It begins with a little girl having a dream in which she loses her dog. At least she (and the audience) assume it’s a dream. It’s not really a very terrifying dream, although perhaps she doesn’t remember the terrifying parts. We then jump forward a number of years. The girl, Akiko (Midori Fujita), is now a young woman living with her younger sister Natsuko (Sanae Emi). They live in a cottage on the shores of Lake Fujimi. Akiko has a boyfriend, a young doctor Takashi Saeki (Chôei Takahashi). He’s a really nice guy. Both girls are very likeable girl. We care about them. They’re typical cheerful bubbly young women.

Akiko cannot forget the dream. It has driven her to produce a disturbing painting of a hideous eye.

A large crate has just been delivered to Akiko’s neighbour’s house. The crate contains a coffin. The neighbour’s servant Kyûsaku is unwise enough to open the coffin.

Akiko by now has another dog and it runs off just as did the dog in the dream. It runs off into the woods, and while Akiko is searching for it Kyûsaku tries to rape her. This is very surprising. Kyûsaku is a very gentle soul.

Another young woman is found near the lake. She is barely alive and has lost a lot of blood. She has puncture wounds on her neck. Dr Takashi Saeki has slim hopes of saving her.

Akiko becomes increasingly frightened. She has seen a strange man hanging around the neighbour’s house. There were the incidents in the woods wth the dog and with Kyûsaku. And Natsuko is behaving rather strangely.

There’s no mystery that there is a vampire abroad and Akiko and her boyfriend eventually figure that out.

The plot doesn’t hold many surprises but atmosphere is what matters in gothic horror and this film has a nicely spooky atmosphere that is achieved in a nicely low-key way. The vampiric transformations are handled well. When someone is vampirised they don’t look much different, in fact most people would not notice anything strange about them other than the fact that they look rather pale. The main clues lie in slight changes in behaviour.

Sanae Emi handles this very expertly. She plays Natsuko as a normal cheerful very likeable young woman and as a vampire she is subtly menacing and seductive in an unsettling way.

This is very much a western vampire story in a Japanese setting. And yes, Dracula himself does play a part albeit indirectly.

It’s not a particularly terrifying movie but I’ve never thought that gothic horror movies were supposed to be terrifying. Or at least they’re not supposed to trade in straightforward physical terror. They’re about the dread of the unnatural, the dread of evil. In a thriller or a slasher movie we’re afraid that the hero or heroine will be killed. In a vampire or a werewolf film we’re worried that he or she will be transformed into a thing of evil. It’s the fear of eternal damnation rather than death. To some extent that’s true of witchcraft movies as well. The witch might not just kill you. She might curse you for all time, and curse your descendants.

From around 1970 to 1972 was an interesting period for the vampire film. In various countries filmmakers were all coming up with the same idea - to revitalise the genre by moving the vampire into contemporary setting. In France there was Jean Rollin’s The Nude Vampire (1970), in Spain there was Jesus Franco’s film Vampyros Lesbos (1970), in Britain Hammer’s Dracula A.D. 1972 (1972), in the U.S. Count Yorga, Vampire (1970) and The Velvet Vampire (1971). It’s intriguing to find that the Japanese were working along the same lines at the exact same time.

Lake of Dracula is enjoyable if you don’t set your expectations too high. Recommended.

Arrow’s Blu-Ray presentation is excellent. I’ve also reviewed the first film in this trilogy, The Vampire Doll (1970). It’s rather more interesting than Lake of Dracula.

Young Hannah, Queen of the Vampires (1973)

Young Hannah, Queen of the Vampires (AKA Crypt of the Living Dead) is a 1973 Spanish-US gothic horror movie. It was part of the trend at the time to do gothic horror in contemporary settings so the story takes place in the 1970s.

Chris (Andrew Prine) arrives on a remote Mediterranean island to find out how his father died. The circumstances were mysterious. He was crushed under a four-ton stone sarcophagus.

The setting might be the present day but in fact it could have been set any time in the preceding hundred years or so. The island is sparsely inhabited and incredibly backward. There are no cars, there seem to be no telephones and no electricity. The islanders are steeped in superstition. They’re still living in the mental world of the Middle Ages.

There are two other Americans on the island, Peter (Mark Damon) and his sister Mary (Patty Sheppard). Mary teaches at the island’s one and only tiny school.

That sarcophagus is the resting place of Hannah. She was a French noblewoman. She was interred on the island by Louis VII on his way to the Second Crusade. She has lain in her sarcophagus for seven hundred years. But nobody on the island believes she is dead. They believe she was interred alive and still lives, in some way. For Hannah was a vampire.

The island was at one time known as the Island of the Vampires. What Chris doesn’t know is that there is still a vampire cult on the island.

Chris wants to bury his father. To do that he needs to move the sarcophagus. To do that he has to remove the lid. Chris is warned that this will free Hannah but he doesn’t believe in such foolish superstitions.

Mary does believe. She cannot change Chris’s mind but events will soon accomplish that. The corpses start to pile up. Chris realises that he has unleashed something evil and terrifying.

There are important things that Chris doesn’t know. He has more to worry about than the vampiress Hannah.

Of course Chris and Mary fall for each other.

There are plenty of conventional gothic horror visual clichés but the great thing about such clichés is that as long as they’re executed with a modicum of skill they always work. They work pretty well here.

The island setting works well too. There’s no escape from the horrors. And on such a remote island the survival of ancient fears seems plausible.

The major problem is that Hannah just doesn’t seem like a very formidable vampire. There’s no real sense of menace.

The acting from the three principals is quite adequate.

The movie was shot in Turkey and there are indications that the island is supposed to be a Turkish island.

The feel of this film is very American. One can’t help feeling that an Italian or a Spanish director would have extracted a bit more from what is a perfectly decent gothic horror movie setup.

The horror is very mild. There’s no nudity and no sex. For 1972 it’s very very tame. There is one very brief tantalising hint of an incest subplot but it’s immediately forgotten and never mentioned again. This movie desperately needed to be spiced up a bit, and livened up a bit.

Oddly enough this was apparently a Spanish movie (directed by Julio Salvador) which was subjected to drastic re-editing and had a lot of extra scenes shot in California by Ray Danton. It would be nice if the original Spanish film surfaced one day as it was apparently much less tame and bland. But the exact details of this movie’s production history are very murky.

Not a great movie but kind of fun if you don’t set your expectations too high.

I bought the very old VCI DVD which is letterboxed. I have no problems with that. I don’t mind as long as a movie isn’t pan-and-scanned.

The Vampire Doll (1970)

The Vampire Doll is a 1970 Japanese horror movie, the first in what became known as the Bloodthirsty Trilogy.

Kazuhiko Sagawa (Atsuo Nakamura) has been overseas for six months. As the movie opens he is on his way to see his fiancée Yûko Nonomura (Yukiko Kobayashi). He will be staying at the home of the Nonomura family in the country for a few days. He arrives only to be told by her mother that Yûko was killed in a car accident two weeks earlier. He is of course devastated. That night he thinks he sees Yûko but of course it must have been a dream.

The focus of the film now switches to Sagawa’s sister Keiko (Kayo Matsuo). She’s worried that she hasn’t heard from her brother. Keiko and her boyfriend Hiroshi (Akira Nakao) decide to drive out to the Nonomura home to make sure that Sagawa is OK.

What they find there makes them just a little uneasy. Yûko’s mother seems a bit evasive. Keiko finds a doll that Sagawa has bought for Yûko as a present. The doll has been smashed, which seems odd. Keiko and Hiroshi are not exactly alarmed but they’re not entirely satisfied, and they’re worried that they have found no trace whatsoever of Keiko’s brother.

And they hear some slightly disturbing stories about the Nonomura family.

Something very bad happened in the past and it may be the key to what is happening now.

Speaking to Yûko’s doctor increases their unease.

What does alarm them is seeing Yûko.

The story develops in much the way you would expect a gothic horror tale to develop, with a few significant differences.

Keiko and Hiroshi start to suspect that something bad has happened to Sagawa, and that they might be in danger as well.

There’s also the Nonomura family servant, Genzo. He has a habit of attacking people and gives the impression that he sees himself as defending the Nonomura family.

This is a Japanese horror film with an unusually strong western influence. Vampires are part of the western gothic horror tradition. Vampires as such are not really a feature of Japanese folklore. The Japanese (and Chinese) concept of the supernatural is much more focused on ghosts but Japanese ghosts are not quite like western ghosts. They’re corporeal rather than being disembodied spirits.

There is a vampire in this story but in many ways this vampire is more like a ghost than a western vampire.

A lot of the familiar elements of the vampire myth are missing in this movie. There are no crucifixes or holy water and no mention of garlic. There are no mentions of stakes through the heart. The vampire does not sleep in a coffin.

Crucially this vampire does kill but does not drink blood. Blood is not the motivation for the killings. Revenge is the motivation. And revenge is the motivation you would expect of a ghost.

My impression is that this is essentially a ghost story with the apparent western influences being entirely superficial. Vampires were a big thing in western pop culture and the Japanese have always been very aware of trends in western pop culture. The Japanese have always been willing to absorb western pop culture influences but somehow Japanese pop culture remains Japanese pop culture. In this movie the vampire elements are like a seasoning but the main dish is a Japanese ghost story.

Director Michio Yamamoto provides some gothic trappings but doesn’t overdo them. He is not trying to make this movie look like a Hammer horror film. It has a certain Japanese aesthetic austerity.

The vampire makeup is also not overdone but it’s effectively creepy. There’s one brief gore scene but overall this is a movie that relies on creepy atmosphere rather than gushing blood.

The Vampire Doll manages to be a rather interesting slightly unusual vampire movie and on the whole it works. Highly recommended.

The Arrow release offers a nice transfer and there’s an appreciation by Kim Newman which is, as you would expect, informative and entertaining.

Vampire Hunter D (1985)

Vampire Hunter D is a 1985 science fiction/horror anime feature film.

Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust, released in 2000, is rightly regarded as one of the great anime movies and certainly one of the most visually stylish and flamboyant anime films ever made. In fact it’s one of the most visually stylish and flamboyant movies of any type ever made. It is a sequel to the 1985 film.

When approaching the 1985 film you do have to take that fifteen-year gap into consideration. This was several years before Akira established anime’s first firm foothold in English-speaking markets. Even in Japan in 1985 the idea of anime aimed at adult audiences was fairly new. Anime film-makers were just starting to explore the thematic and aesthetic possibilities this would open up.

Vampire Hunter D was made as an OVA (basically direct-to-video but without the negative connotations this has in western countries) and later released theatrically. Director Toyoo Ashida did not have anywhere near the budget of the 2000 film. The 1985 movie simply cannot match the visual magnificence of the 2000 sequel.

On the other hand, given its budgetary limitations, the 1985 film is visually quite impressive. At the time it was certainly visually impressive. There are some striking images and the first appearance of D is memorable.

Like the 2000 film this one mixes familiar gothic horror tropes with Wild West elements. It is however not quite the Wild West of American westerns. It’s closer to old Mexico, or perhaps to Spanish California. In fact it’s set 10,000 years in the future so this qualifies as a post-apocalyptic sci-fi movie as well as a horror movie. The hints of the Wild West are there to add coolness, which they do.

Doris Ran is a formidable young lady who is quite prepared to take on werewolves. Vampires however are out of her league. Only a specialised vampire hunter can hope to take on a vampire.

And Doris has a problem. She was bitten by Count Magnus Lee, a vampire. This means that henceforth she will be regarded with fear and suspicion by the other villagers. It seems to her to be an extraordinary piece of good fortune when she encounters a vampire hunter, known only as D.

She knows she will have to pay him. She has no money but she hopes that he will accept the use of her body as payment (the incorporation of such adult concepts in anime was still quite ground-breaking in 1985). D does not take her up on her offer but he agrees to work for her anyway.

Before he even gets near the Count D will have to battle his terrifying supernatural minions.

The Count is not simply out for victims for the sake of their blood. He is 10,000 years old. He gets bored. He needs amusement. Marrying a human girl should provide plenty of amusement. It’s not specifically stated but it is implied that vampires are very attracted to human women. He has chosen Doris to be his bride. Doris is of course horrified. She would choose death rather than succumb to the embraces of a vampire. That’s why she hired D - to save her from such a fate.

There are some twists that make this more than just a conventional vampire tale. D is a dampiel, the offspring of a vampire father and a human mother. He has a vampire side to his nature, which sometimes asserts itself in disturbing ways. There is another dampiel in this story but I’m not going to give away a spoiler.

There are conflicts with the aristocratic vampiric Lee family. There is tension between the Count and his vampire daughter Ramica. There are conflicts within the human population of the village as well.

These conflicts and divided loyalties will pose problems for D, and he has his inner conflict between his human and vampire sides to worry about as well.

Interestingly this movie was based not on a manga but on a series of novels by Hideyuki Kikuchi. It was later adapted into a manga. The character design for D was retained almost exactly for the 2000 movie.

One fascinating thing about this movie is that it deals with a subject that is a crucial ingredient of Bram Stoker’s Dracula novel but which is often rather glossed over in western vampire movies - the class issue. In Stoker’s novel Dracula is seen as a particular threat because he represents the power, glamour and seductiveness of the decadent aristocracy. Dracula’s opponents are solidly bourgeois. In Vampire Hunter D the vampires represent a decadent oppressive (but glamorous) aristocracy which preys on the poor and the middle class.

There’s plenty of violence and gore and there’s some nudity. There’s no shortage of adult concepts. Vampirism in fiction and movies is usually a metaphor for sex but in this case the sexual motivations of vampires are made much more overt.

The overall concept is brilliant, the world-building is done effectively and economically, there’s lots of mayhem and for a low-budget production the visuals are stylish and imaginative. Highly recommended.

Happily the Urban Vision DVD includes the Japanese language version with English subtitles. In general the English-dubbed versions of 80s and 90s anime should be avoided like the plague. There’s also been a Blu-Ray release. One thing that should be noted is that some of the character names are totally different in the subtitled version compared to the English dub.

Goke, Body Snatcher from Hell (1968)

Goke, Body Snatcher from Hell (Kyuketsuki Gokemidoro), released in 1968, is one of a handful of movies that marked a short-lived and tentative attempt by Japan’s Shochiku studio to tap into the burgeoning science fiction/horror/monster movies market. 

Four of these movies are included in Criterion’s Eclipse Series 37 DVD boxed set When Horror Came to Shochiku.

Goke, Body Snatcher from Hell has very definite claims to being both science fiction and horror. It features both flying saucers and vampires.

It opens with a commercial airliner in trouble. There’s been a bomb threat. There’s a crazed gunman aboard. The sky has turned blood-red. Birds are committing suicide by deliberately flying into the airplane. They’re being shadowed by a UFO. And all this before the opening titles!

The plane crashes in a remote desolate area. There are quite a few survivors but how long they can hold out without any food or water is an open question. There’s also still the problem that there may be one or more murderous crazies among the survivors.

Not surprisingly the survivors do not cope very well.

Then the airliner’s pretty stewardess sees something so weird and terrifying that she can’t even describe it. We, the audience, saw it too and we can understand why she freaked out.

The passengers and crew are being stalked by someone (or something) but while they know they’re up against something sinister they have no idea what it is.

You won’t be surprised to hear that it’s not long before one of the passengers meets an unpleasant end. There’s more terror to come. While they really do face a deadly threat their own fears make things much worse.

The basic plot holds few surprises. What makes this movie interesting is that the survivors are such a weird bunch of people and the interactions between them get a bit bizarre. There’s an obsessed space biologist who is convinced that aliens really exist. There’s a psychiatrist and he’s really enjoying himself - he’s fascinated by the spectacle of people being unable to cope with stress and turning on each other and destroying each other. He’s a rather disturbing guy.

And then there’s a very creepy trio. There’s Mr Mano, a corrupt politician, and there’s crooked defence contractor Mr Tokuyasu and his wife Noriko. Tokuyasu is trying to bribe Mano into awarding his company a huge defence contract. He’s prepared to do anything to get that contract, including offering Noriko’s sexual favours to Mano. Mr Mano makes enthusiastic use of this offer, right there on the plane.

There’s also the pilot. There’s the stewardess, Miss Asakura. And finally there’s a pretty blonde American woman whose husband has just been killed in Vietnam.

Some of the visual effects are a bit crude but some are genuinely striking and creepy, with a definite late 60s psychedelic vibe. Some of the makeup effects work, some don’t. The blood-red sky really does look sinister and unsettling.

This is very much a late 60s movie, which is both a good thing and a bad thing. The bad part is some clumsy political messaging. The attempt to link the Vietnam War with the alien invasion theme is a bit cringe-inducing. The stuff about political corruption is exaggerated to the point of parody.

I did mention vampires, and there are vampires. Of a sort. I suspect the vampire angle may have been included in the hope of making the movie easier to sell in international markets.

There are a couple of moments that are vaguely similar in tone to American sci-fi and horror movies of that era such as Night of the Living Dead (although Goke, Body Snatcher from Hell is much more interesting and imaginative). This is also a movie that at times plays out with a nightmare feel except that it’s real.

Goke, Body Snatcher from Hell manages to be genuinely weird, off-kilter and at times creepy. Recommended.

The 16:9 enhanced DVD transfer is excellent. The film was shot in colour and colour is used very effectively throughout.

Vampirella (1996)

Vampirella is a legendary comic-book character created around 1969 by science fiction super-fan Forest J. Ackerman. She’s a sexy vampire from outer space. The most surprising thing about Vampirella is that she has never been the subject of a movie franchise. Maybe because she’s too sexy and that scares big studios off. They prefer their superheroes to be bland and safe. We do however have this 1996 movie, directed by Roger Corman protege and ultra low budget movie legend Jim Wynorski (with Corman acting as executive producer). It has an IMDb rating of 3.3, which is promising (with genre movies generally speaking the the lower the IMDb rating the better the movie).

The movie is an origin story of sorts, and while it retains a few elements of the comics it adds a lot of other elements. Gary Gerani wrote the script.

As in the comic Vampirella is from the planet Drakulon. The inhabitants of Drakulon are vampires but they don’t go around biting people. By a happy coincidence Drakulon has rivers of blood. Actual rivers, of actual blood. So these vampires are not killers. They’re not predators.

Well, mostly not predators. There are a few bad vampires who want to go back to the good old days when vampires really were killers. The leader of this faction is Vlad (Roger Daltrey).

Vlad’s followers carry out a bloodbath and the wise ruler of Drakulon is one of the victims. Vlad’s followers set off to find a planet where they can express their true vampire natures, by killing people.

All this happened centuries ago. Now we’re in Los Angeles in the 1990s. There are vampires but nobody knows about them. They are plotting away in secret. There’s also a paramilitary force of vampire hunters. The paramilitary outfit is codenamed Purge and it’s run by Adam Van Helsing, the last descendant of the Van Helsings.

Vlad and his followers have another more deadly threat to deal with. The daughter of the ruler of Drakulon who was killed by Vlad has arrived on Earth. She wants to destroy Vlad and his followers. She is Vampirella (Talisa Soto).

Vlad is now a rock star, a useful cover. People expect rock stars to be weird and decadent.

Vlad has some very big very sinister plans.

Adam Van Helsing trusts Vampirella but his colleague Walsh doesn’t. Van Helsing thinks that Vampirella could be the key to defeating Vlad.

Vampirella is clearly attracted to Van Helsing but he’s too uptight to do anything about.

I’ve only read some of the very early Vampirella comics but to me the movie doesn’t really capture the flavour of the comics. It’s a bit too much of a 90s action movie. But in commercial terms that may have been a sound move. There isn’t quite enough fun and sparkle, and (despite a few bare breasts) there’s not quite enough sexiness.

Vampirella’s costume is disappointingly tame compared to the comic-strip version. Talisa Soto was apparently concerned that the original much sexier costume designed for her would be a problem in the action scenes because certain parts of her anatomy would undoubtedly pop out during such scenes. She was probably right but the final costume is just very unexciting.

Talisa Soto is OK as Vampirella. She’s certainly beautiful. Her problem is that Roger Daltrey is in full-bore scenery-chewing mode and tends to dominate the movie. That’s not Daltrey’s fault - he gives exactly the right performance. The movie probably needed an actress with a bit more zing, and she needed to ramp up the sexiness in order to avoid being overshadowed. She also needed to be more amusing and more fun. Hammer had planned to do a Vampirella movie back in the 70s and they had Caroline Munro in mind. She would certainly have made a much better Vampirella.

The movie does have its strengths. The high-tech anti-vampire weapons are rather fun. The western ghost town near Las Vegas used as Vlad’s hideout is a great location.

This origin story here really has no connection at all with the origin story in the comic, and the version in the comic would have been preferable.

The bat transformations are so crude that it would have been better to dispense with them completely.

The paramilitary anti-vampire organisation was later shamelessly ripped-off by Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

Vampirella isn’t as bad as it reputation would suggest. It’s moderately entertaining. The Vampirella in the movie isn’t really Vampirella. The movie is not sexy enough, it’s not enough fun, it doesn’t have enough energy, it doesn’t have the cheerful tongue-in-cheek vibe it needed. If you’re a hardcore Vampirella fan you’ll want to see it out of curiosity but it is a disappointment.

The German DVD which I own not only includes the original English-language version, it also includes Jim Wynorski’s commentary track (in English of course). Wynorski always does great commentary tracks.