The first two of Michio Yamamoto’s “vampire” movies for Toho made a valiant attempt to repurpose the idea of the bloodsucking ghoul to explore something other than their usual reason for being. In The Vampire Doll, the vampiress at the centre was a knife wilding, grudge bearing ghost of vengeance in keeping with the familiar image from Japanese folklore. In Lake of Dracula, Dracula was (uncomfortably) a bearer of bad blood and a symbol of the destructive capabilities of a repressed memory. Evil of Dracula (血を吸う薔薇, Chi wo Su Bara) takes us back to source as this time Dracula really is a sex crazed, bloodsucking maniac with a sideline in strange ambitions which include being the headmaster of an all girls’ high school in a no horse town somewhere in the frozen north.
Professor Shiraki (Toshio Kurosawa) gets off the train in a tiny provincial town but there’s no welcoming party there to great him. The station seems to work on an honour system and he drops his money in the box, but when Shiraki walks past the ticket office there is an employee, only he seems to be allergic to customers. The attendant gruffly explains that there are no busses running today and goes back to his paper, leaving Shiraki to wonder what to do next. Someone from the school he’ll shortly be working at eventually comes to fetch him but Mr. Yoshii (Katsuhiko Sasaki) is a bit strange too. It’s nothing, however, next to his new employer (Shin Kishida) whom, he learns, was widowed a few days ago when his wife died in a terrible car accident. In fact the headmaster’s wife is still at rest in the cellar – a “local custom” apparently demands holding off on burial for seven days while praying for the deceased’s “resurrection”. Shiraki is surprised to learn from the headmaster that he is being groomed as a potential successor which is why he asks him to stay over so they can get to know each other better. Whilst there, however, Shiraki has a “dream” in which he’s attacked by (he presumes) the headmaster’s wife and another much younger woman dressed in blue…
Evil of Dracula situates itself neatly in the middle of the girls’ school exposé, upping the camp factor with its overexcited adolescent girls apparently chomping at the bit for a little male attention. Shiraki is the new psychology teacher and one would expect him to be a paragon of ethics and an astute judge of character. He is, however, very much of his time and has a distinctly ‘70s approach to sexual politics. When the girls, flirting with him while he (refusing to deflect) appears flattered, complain to him about the “creepy” Mr. Yoshii who keeps leering at them from behind chainlink fences, he tells them Yoshii can’t be blamed because the girls are all so pretty to which they giggle and turn coy. Of course, they’ve all instantly fallen in love with Mr. Shiraki but unbeknownst to them there’s much more going on with creepy guys at the school than they could ever have guessed.
Shiraki finds out a girl recently went missing (apparently that’s something that happens often enough that no one thinks much of it), and can’t get it out of his mind that that’s the girl he saw in his “dream” even though he obviously didn’t know what she looked like. Meanwhile another of his charges, Kyoko (Keiko Aramaki), has turned pale and entered a semi-catatonic state. Her friends have agreed to stay behind and look after her while everyone else goes on vacation but Shiraki remains worried, especially as the school’s folklore obsessed doctor (Kunie Tanaka) has told him what happened to his predecessor.
Yamamoto goes back to source in partially blaming the girls for being led to destruction, allowing their nascent sexuality to pull them into the path of a supernatural evil rather than remaining chaste and innocent as schoolgirls should, punishing them for being flattered when Shiraki (with a slightly condescending air) tells them they can’t be annoyed by men looking them because that’s their fault too in being so very “pretty”. This time around the vampires like to bite their prey above the heart which takes us into the artier realms of exploitation as blood drips salacious from the girls’ bared breasts, though Yamamoto does his best to mitigate the sleaze factor by pushing a heavily romanticised gothic aesthetic complete with innocent white roses which ultimately turn a violent blood red once the vampires have had their way.
Once again, the “corruption” is foreign born though this time it has a Japanese catalyst, as folklore expert Dr. Shimomura explains. Long ago, a European washed up in Japan after a shipwreck, but he was a Christian when Christianity was illegal. He was persecuted, they made him betray his god and it turned him into a bloodsucking demon whose rage has lived on through a succession of Japanese hosts for more than a century. Why he particularly wants to be the headmaster of an elite girls boarding school in the middle of nowhere is never explained but it does at least seem to give him ready access not only to young and innocent victims, but also to weak willed minions.
The police, deciding vampires aren’t in their remit, declare themselves disinterested leaving Shiraki all that stands between the innocent young girls and the bloodsucking predator. The atmosphere is florid in the extreme, each frame filled with a macabre beauty as bodies fall artfully and vampires move with the elegance of dancers, but Yamamato also gives free reign to Hammer-inflected camp humour as hands almost wave from an open coffin behind the still unsuspecting Shiraki and the headmaster comes to a sticky end on the point of his own poker. Repeating the death motif from the second film which itself echoed Christopher Lee’s demise in the 1958 Hammer classic, romanticism is where Yamamoto chooses to end as his vampires decay, melting into skeletons but together, caught in one last gesture of an oddly eternal “love”.
Evil of Dracula is the third of three films included in Arrow’s Bloodthirsty Trilogy box set which also includes extensive liner notes by Jasper Sharp detailing the history of vampires and horror cinema in Japan.
Original trailer (no subtitles)
The Christmas movie has fallen out of fashion of late as genial seasonally themed romantic comedies have given way to sci-fi or fantasy blockbusters. Perhaps surprisingly seeing as Christmas in Japan is more akin to Valentine’s Day, the phenomenon has never really taken hold meaning there are a shortage of date worthy movies designed for the festive season. If you were hoping Blue Christmas (ブルークリスマス) might plug this gap with some romantic melodrama, be prepared to find your heart breaking in an entirely different way because this Kichachi Okamoto adaptation of a So Kuramoto novel is a bleak ‘70s conspiracy thriller guaranteed to kill that festive spirit stone dead.
“Sometimes it feels good to risk your life for something other people think is stupid”, says one of the leading players of Masaki Kobayashi’s strangely retitled Inn of Evil (いのちぼうにふろう, Inochi Bonifuro), neatly summing up the director’s key philosophy in a few simple words. The original Japanese title “Inochi Bonifuro” means something more like “To Throw One’s Life Away”, which more directly signals the tragic character drama that’s about to unfold. Though it most obviously relates to the decision that this gang of hardened criminals is about to make, the criticism is a wider one as the film stops to ask why it is this group of unusual characters have found themselves living under the roof of the Easy Tavern engaged in benign acts of smuggling during Japan’s isolationist period.
Now four instalments into the Lone Wolf and Cub series, Ogami (Tomisaburo Wakayama) and Daigoro (Akihiro Tomikawa) have been on the road for quite some time, seeking vengeance against the Yagyu clan who framed Ogami for treason, murdered his wife, and stole his prized position as the official Shogun executioner. Lone Wolf and Cub: Baby Cart in Peril (子連れ狼 親の心子の心, Kozure Okami: Oya no Kokoro Ko no Kokoro) is the first in the series not to be directed by Kenji Misumi (though he would return for the following chapter) and the change in approach is very much in evidence as veteran Nikkatsu director Buichi Saito picks up the reins and takes things in a much more active, full on ‘70s exploitation direction. Where 
The first instalment of the 
You know how it is. You work hard, make sacrifices and expect the system to reward you with advancement. The system, however, has its biases and none of them are in your favour. Watching the less well equipped leapfrog ahead by virtue of their privileges, it’s difficult not to lose heart. Asakura (Yusaku Matsuda), the (anti) hero of Toru Murakawa’s Resurrection of Golden Wolf (蘇る金狼, Yomigaeru Kinro), has had about all he can take of the dead end accountancy job he’s supposedly lucky to have despite his high school level education (even if it is topped up with night school qualifications). Resentful at the way the odds are always stacked against him, Asakura decides to take his revenge but quickly finds himself becoming embroiled in a series of ongoing corporate scandals.
Kihachi Okamoto first made his name with his samurai movies but his output was in fact far more varied in tone than the work most often screened outside of Japan might suggest. Marked by heavy irony and close to the bone social commentary, Okamoto’s movies are nothing if not playful even in the bleakest of circumstances. He first teamed up with Japan’s indie power the Art Theatre Guild for 
Yusaku Matsuda was to adopt arguably his most famous role in 1979 – that of the unconventional private detective Shunsaku Kudo in the iconic television series Detective Story (unconnected with the film of the same name he made in 1983), but Murder in the Doll House (乱れからくり, Midare Karakuri) made the same year also sees him stepping into the shoes of a more conventional, literature inspired P.I.
Windows on Worlds 