![]() |
From http://www.coffeecoffeeandmorecoffee.com /archives/Evil%20of%20Dracula%201.jpg |
Director: Michio Yamamoto
Screenplay: Ei Ogawa
Cast: Toshio Kurosawa (as
Professor Shiraki); Mariko Mochizuki (as Kumi Saijô); Kunie Tanaka (as Dr.
Shimomura); Shin Kishida (as the Principal); Katsuhiko Sasaki (as Professor
Yoshi)
A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies) #110

![]() |
From http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-3OTQecFPoO4/ThkYgPFnn8I/ AAAAAAAAZWw/6rQbtjgpD1Y/s1600/evil11 |
Barring this, in the midst of seventies plaid trousers and floppy hair, the third of the Toho trilogy of vampire films is b-movie chique that even on a dreadful early 2000s DVD has elegance in spite of the story being seen so many times before. A new teacher is brought to an isolated local community and, like the best of most horror stories, cut off by train within a strange new environment where car accidents are abandoned on desolate roads, murky forests exist from dark fantasy, and he's assigned to an all girls school trapped outside of reality. One, as the girls openly flirt with his during one of his psychology lessons with giant Rorschach tests on the projector, that's all gothic shadows and European decor. Were it not for the back-story set in period Japan, this would be set within a mukokuseki environment. At times, with many women surrounding our protagonist and having screen time themselves, it also feels like it's the prologue of Hausu (1977) before everything went insane.
The vampires feel antiquated even
next to the period flashbacks, figures out of time and tone from the reality
shown. Even if this is a mukokuseki film in most of its presentation, vampires
clearly don't gel as well as yakuza in western suits and jazz by themselves.
It's the details around them which makes the result work as has been the case
with (almost) every Japanese film/anime/series about vampires. A morbid
elegance, some of which is openly borrowed from other countries - the negligees
of the female students, the Charles
Baudelaire quotations from the Renfield stand-in, a French literature
teacher with a pale skin, and gothic tropes of coffins and dark cellars. The
rest is the tone between the erotic and grotesque that's arguable from Japanese
art. Its tame next to other Japanese films that were made in the sixties and at
same time as Evil of Dracula, but
there's still the brief glimpses of bared breast with blood staining them, of a
white rose turning bloody crimson, that has far more perverse sensuality to
them than the more brazen and (frankly) embarrassing attempts I've seen from Hammer from the same period. Then
there's the suddenness of two scenes which make what's a pretty standard
J-horror film stand out in memory. One, a naked female corpse on a table, the
face severed off, the body gasping one last time in agony, as a crow is
silhouette in shadow nearby and the face becomes a new appearance for another
figure. The other the final shot, practical effects both gruesomely oozing and
melting but almost beautiful in fast forward decay, capping off Evil of Dracula on a high note. What
would be a generic, average film shows moments of real visceral power that help
it for the better.
![]() |
From http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-ByHV4PA5Ogc/ThkVxroibXI/ AAAAAAAAZVo/wJotOQjjjHU/s1600/evil2 |
No comments:
Post a Comment