1974’s Evil of Dracula is the last entry of Michio Yamamoto’s trilogy of Japanese gothic vampire films.  I could probably copy and paste much of what I wrote about the previous two and save myself some time.

Once again, this is a film solidly in the European gothic style, having some degree of novelty just by being set in Japan.  The plot is vague enough as to make it difficult to tell if some moments are plot holes or not.  And this is once again a film that feels like a direct sequel, though there are aren’t any overlapping characters.

One could easily make the mistake of assuming otherwise, as we once again have some of the same actors, especially Shin Kishida, who is yet again the head vampire.  He may not be technically Dracula, but he might as well be, and that’s what I’m going to call him here.

The setting this time is a girls’ boarding school set deep in rural Japan.  Toshio Kurosawa has arrived as the new psychology teacher.  On the ride from the train station to the school, he learns a mangled car by the side of the road was the accident which took the life of Drac’s wife (Mika Katsuragi).  Kurosawa is right to wonder how a car accident occurred such an isolated area.  He’s even more startled to learn he will be replacing the principal, who will be moving on.

Since Drac is keeping his wife’s body in the cellar of the school, will he be taking her with him when he goes?  It seems increasingly unlikely either will be going anywhere.  It’s no surprise she’s also a vampire now and the girls’ school is pretty much a Golden Corral for bloodsuckers.

At the time the events in the film transpire, the school is on a holiday break, leaving behind three students to be protected by Kurosawa and a helpful village doctor (Kunie Tanaka).  So, it is two vampires pursuing three women who look too old to be students there, with only two guys standing in the way.  It isn’t the most original premises, though it does have some odd elements which distinguish it.

One is just an overall laconic vibe which is odd.  While gothic cinema often has a languid air to it, this one is borderline lethargic, as if the film had accidentally consumed too much cough syrup.  That said, it is still a quality I liked about the production, with the tone being set in the opening credits, where Kurosawa is the only person to disembark the train at what appears to be an abandoned station, while the soundtrack plays jazzy, fluty music appropriate for It’s the Great Pumpkin.  Then again, this establishing scene also reminded me of Spencer Tracy exiting a train in the middle of nowhere in Bad Day at Black Rock, a movie where, coincidentally, things seriously did not go well for a different Japanese man.

There are a couple of elements here which distinguish this from other vampire films I have seen.  One is the strange Renfield-like character played by Katsuhiko Sasaki, who channels the strangely listless nature of the production as he walks around quoting Baudelaire in the most dispassionate manner possible.  Even more interesting is how each woman taken by Drac assumes the identity of the next victim by actually cutting off the face of that corpse and putting it on her own.  And that new wearer doesn’t look like Leatherface, but actually fully becomes that other person. 

As if Evil of Dracula wasn’t weird enough already, it is revealed in flashback the origin of these vampires in Japan was a Christian missionary who arrived when no visitors were allowed into the country, and how that man forsook his God and had to resort to drinking blood to survive.  Now, why the blood is taken by biting into a woman’s breast is not explained.  Tellingly, we never see any character try to feed on a man and I wonder which body part they’d be taking nourishment from in that case.

Dir: Michio Yamamoto

Starring Toshio Kurosawa, Kunie Tanaka, Katsuhiko Sasaki, Shin Kishida

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