THE BLOODTHIRSTY TRILOGY
A yen for Hammer horror
released OUT NOW! 1970/1971/1974 | 18 | Blu-ray Director Michio Yamamoto Cast Kayo Matsuo, akira Nakao, Midori Fujita, sanae emi, Toshio Kuro, Mariko Mochizuki
The success of Hammer horror can be measured not only in box office receipts, but the way their gothic template was taken up across the world. This box set of films from Godzilla’s Toho Studios shows that Japanese filmmakers also fell under their thrall.
A Western-style mansion is generally a key location, often with trappings like a cobwebbed suit of armour. Christopher Lee is clearly a model, with vamps making dramatic entrances at the top of staircases, and much atavistic snarling. There are also Renfield types, and bodies which melt after death... but there are innovations too: director Michio Yamamoto brought Dracula-style bloodsuckers into the modern day before Hammer’s Dracula AD 1972.
The Vampire Doll (which doesn’t feature a vampire doll…) sees a man visit his girlfriend in the country, where he’s told she’s died in a car wreck. When he disappears, his sister investigates… Some of the plot twists are barking, and Yamamoto’s overly keen on making viewers jump with a bird suddenly taking flight. But his eerily grinning pale-faced female vampire is seriously creepy; and the idea that a vampire can be created via hypnotism at the point of death is certainly novel.
The most traditional of the trio, Lake Of Dracula (which doesn’t feature Dracula...) is also the most patience-testing, as we wait for its heroine to twig that a recurring dream stems from a childhood encounter with a vamp. Featuring a vampire rocking a white scarf like a ’70s Elvis (sadly, he doesn’t hand one to each of his suckees), it’s a little plodding, but adds another spin on vampirism – the idea that this curse can, like ginger hair, skip a generation or two.
In best of the bunch Evil Of Dracula (no Dracula here either) a teacher joins a girls’ school where the principal and his dead wife are actually… oh, guess. The mad twist on vampire mythology here’s that they can change their appearance by cutting off a victim’s face; could Yamamoto have possibly seen Les Yeux Sans Visage? This is cleverly presented through shadowplay, with a pecking bird helping out… A white rose which inexplicably turns red after Dracula has fed is another indelible image.
So, while Yamamoto owes a huge debt to the likes of Terence Fisher, he also has ideas of his own. The resulting blend of familiar tropes and fresh coinages will intrigue fans of both Hammer and Japanese horror.
Extras A Kim Newman talking head (16 minutes) provides context; trailers; stills. Ian Berriman
The very first Western-style vampire film to be made in Japan was Onna Kyûketsuki (The Lady Vampire), released in 1959.
Owes a huge debt to Terence Fisher