When I discovered there was a blu-ray set with a trilogy of Japanese gothic vampire films, I knew I had to check this out.  While that country has a long, rich history of ghost stories, I was wondering what their spin on the European gothic tradition might be like.  Short answer: it is an odd and not entirely settled mix, akin to the Japanese films remade by US studios. 

The first film on this set is 1970’s The Vampire Doll.  First, that title is not entirely honest, as there may be dolls in this, but none of those are bloodsuckers.  For reasons I couldn’t discern, Atsuo Nakamura brought a solid clay figurine everybody calls a doll for his fiancée.  What he discovers too late is his squeeze (Yukiko Kobayashi) is a vampire.  That’s the kind of thing one should discuss early on in a relationship.

None of this is a spoiler, because all this business happens very early in the runtime.  The remainder is the guy’s sister (Kayo Matsuo) and her boyfriend (Akira Nakao) arriving at the mansion of Kobayashi’s mother (Yoko Minakaze).  The mother is seriously creepy, and her insistence her daughter died in a car crash two weeks earlier would scan as suspicious regardless of anything else.  There’s also a weirdly aggressive groundskeeper (Kaku Takashina) who may be mute, but is no dummy.  Well, that’s until he loses a fight to the death with Nakao and what is supposed to be his body is just a mannequin tossed off a cliff. 

There isn’t much here that is surprising and nothing is scary.  At best, it competently sustains a gothic atmosphere.  There were some touches in the effects I appreciated, such as animated bat silhouettes filling in for the typical lame variety bouncing on elastic strings.

The most peculiar element of The Vampire Doll is seeing Japanese actors in the kinds of sets I associate with Western cinema.  I can imagine the filmmakers borrowing a mansion interior set from Hammer Studios.  The characters have dinner in what looks like an upscale British dining room, and without a chopstick in sight.  But the only thing that truly stood out to me as memorable are the massive sideburns of a doctor played by Jun Usami, which immediately brought to my mind the similar ones Isaac Asimov was famous for.  Now, those sideburns truly are scary.

Dir: Michio Yamamoto

Starring Kayo Matsuo, Akira Nakao, Yukiko Kobayashi

Watched on Arrow Video’s blu-ray collection The Bloodthirsty Trilogy