Yûrei yashiki no kyôfu: Chi wo sû ningyô

The Vampire Doll is the first film of what would later on become The Bloodthirsty Trilogy with Lake of Dracula and Evil of Dracula. Produced by Toho Studios, The Vampire Doll was directed by rather unknown director Yamamoto Michio who had been working as assistant director on Kurosawa Akira's Throne of Blood. The lead actresses and actors had also mostly played in low-budget gangster movies or television films. Nobody really expected this take on classic Western vampire stories to be a success but The Vampire Doll turned out being an incredibly atmospheric film that has stood the test of time.

The settings are perfectly chosen for this film that starts on a lonely road in rural Japan on a rainy night. The most important location is the secluded mansion inspired by Western culture with its elegant but old-fashioned decorations. The old cemetery that isn't taken care of blends in perfectly. Even the nearby sleepy village recalls elements of European horror literature and cinema.

The ominous, melodic and gloomy soundtrack fits perfectly as well. The sound effects of a wailing woman and angry birds intensify the atmosphere. The camera work is generally calm and precise and therefore surprises when sudden cuts take place to introduce quite efficient jump scares.

The acting performances are superb. Matsuo Kayo convinces as sympathetic lead actress who is very emotive and willing to risk her life to save her brother. Her more grounded and rational partner played by Nakao Akira complements her excellently. Minakaze Yoko excels as creepy lady who seems to have some skeletons in her closet. Takashina Kaku convinces as deaf employee with a hauntingly creepy look and rude manners. Every single actor and actress involved performs with passion and talent that is unusual for such a low-budget horror movie. It's something that is very rarely seen nowadays.

The story isn't the most creative one and obviously inspired by classic European horror films but it's told in a steady pace that will keep you entertained from start to finish. The movie revolves Sagawa Kazuhiko who had spent six months abroad and wants to see his fiancee Nonomura Yuko again. When he arrives at her family mansion, he is told by her mother that she died two weeks earlier in a tragic traffic accident. About a week later, Sagawa Kazuhiko still hasn't returned home and his sister Keiko starts to be worried. She convinces her fiance Takagi Hiroshi to visit the family mansion where her brother was headed for. When they arrive, they are told that her brother left the day after he was told that his fiancee had died but Keiko senses that strange things are going on in the mansion. Her fiance and she decide to stay to investigate the family's sinister past in a nearby town. The further they investigate, the more their lives are getting in danger.

If you like classic atmospheric horror movies, you will adore The Vampire Doll. The settings, effects and acting are still superb by contemporary standards. It's the best horror film I have seen in a long time and I would both revisit it again soon and recommend it to my friends.

The first film in Yamamoto Michio's "The Bloodthirsty Trilogy" is usually viewed by fans of macabre cinema as the weakest of the three. Personally I find it stunning. Fully titled "The Fear of the Ghost House : The Vampire Doll" ("Yûrei yashiki no kyôfu: Chi wo sû ningyô") , Michio wasn't expected to turn in anything special for Toho (makers of the Godzilla films). just a simple pot-boiler rip-off of a typical European Horror.

Writers Hiroshi Nagano and Ei Ogawa however delivered a script which relied heavily on traditional Japanese ghost stories, which Michio then shot on Gothic style sets (the house, for example, is straight out of a Hammer, with oil portraits and suits of armour) with nods to western vampire tropes. The mix they created is intoxicating: full of atmosphere, genuinely creepy, and, in places, with unexpected scares of the quality of the earlier "Les Diabolics" or the later original "Ringu" ("Ring"). Highly recommended for anyone who likes classic horror, 1960s Hammer, or Asian Horror.

Arriving at a desolate mansion, a young man searching for his dead girlfriend finds that she has been turned into a vampire before he disappears, forcing his sister and her friend to come looking for him who discover the horrible truth about them and how to get away from the house alive.

Frankly, this was a really enjoyable and interesting effort. One of the more appealing aspects of this one is the fact that it manages to really feel like a fantastic mixture of the different country's styles throughout here. The fact that it goes for a more traditional Western flavor in it's setup, from the large layout of the mansion and the the way it's decorated, the overall traditional feel of the house while the two are staying there looking for her missing brother and the straightforward setup here all make this one a rather familiar tone than what would be expected from a vampire film from this era. There's quite an eerie feel from the large wooden layout and the multiple floors of the house, the long winding basement path and secret passages that are all part of the experience when it comes to these types of Gothic efforts, enabling for some rather eerie scenes where the couple is investigating the source of chilling wails coming from deep inside the house or witnessing ghostly figures emerging out of the shadows before being scared away by the light shining in their face. These here are in place to hold the film up for it's more action-packed moments, such as a great brawl in the woods where after digging up the corpse they end up fighting off the henchmen as well as the big confrontation in the house where they finally come face-to-face with the vampires inside the house and leads into the rather shocking manner of disposal here that gives this a rather fun finale. Given that this uses some rather chilling and creepy looks to the main leads gives this a rather nice edge here while giving this another big plus alongside the nicely effective bloodletting when it occurs, these here give this one enough to like to be able to hold itself up over it's few minor flaws. One of the main issues here is the pacing issues on display, as this one is rather dull in spots during its middle section. Since the middle of the film is about the investigation into what happened, it's mostly about the two of them going around the house being scared of everything or in the village nearby looking for answers to the mystery it does slow down a touch here which does counteract some of the vampire action. As well, there's also the rather strange manner in which this one deals with the vampirism as the focus on more western mythology doesn't translate as well into Eastern folklore so it not only has rather strange means of being inducted into the concept of a vampire but how it's actually dealt with is slightly strange and doesn't make much sense. Nonetheless, there's still a lot to enjoy here.

Rated Unrated/R: Violence.

Kazuhiko Sagawa (Atsuo Nakamura) returns from the USA to Tokyo and immediately travels to the countryside in a stormy night to see his fiancée Yûko Nonomura (Yukiko Kobayashi) in an isolated house in the woods. Her mother Shidu Nonomura (Yôko Minakaze) tells that Yûko died in a car accident two weeks ago. Kazuhiko spends the night in the house and during the night he overhears and sees Yûko in the nearby cemetery. A couple of days later, his sister Keiko Sagawa (Kayo Matsuo) convinces her fiancé Hiroshi Takagi (Akira Nakao ) to seek her brother out at Yûko's house where they disclose the mystery of the Nonomura's family.

"Yûrei yashiki no kyôfu: Chi wo sû ningyô", a.k.a. "The Vampire Doll", is an atmospheric vampire movie produced by Toho studios. It is interesting to see the Japanese view of vampire and how scary the make-up is. The plot is satisfactory and will not disappoint any fan of the genre. My vote is seven.

Title (Brazil): "A Boneca Vampira" ("The Vampire Doll")

Note: On 14 August 2021, I saw this film again.

Despite its vampire titling, I would place this film more in the ghost-story genre (featuring that famous figure of Japanese horror cinema: the creepy, and ever-silent, female, child-like waif).

My short summary is that, in the end, the film does not quite capitalize on the wonderfully eerie mood it builds, but that it is well worth a watch and has some great (and occasionally scary) cinematic moments. (My main complaint is that the film ends up using what I will call the "Scooby Doo" reveal at several points, in that it employs both peripheral and central characters to tell us, in narrative format, the backstory: the who, what, where, when and why. It's a strange choice for a movie that relies so heavily on images and subtle expressions for the first 75% of the running time.)

While some have compared the film to the Hammer offerings, the moral universe here is not quite as "modern" in its themes, as its chief concerns are with familial loss, personal revenge and the ripples of social violence. (Even Hammer's historically oriented offerings-- say, the Witchfinder General or the Karnstein Trilogy-- tend to be preoccupied with much more contemporary themes.)

In terms of aesthetics, my own comparison would be to something like "Carnival of Souls" and, as a result of the really fine cinematography of Kazutami Hara, to something a Hitchcock understudy might have made. (My understanding is that the producers did want something like a Hammer-style vampire movie, but that the director was definitely looking for something in the Hitchcock vein. That might explain the somewhat disjointed style at points.)

Anyway, worth a watch, particularly as there are some really memorably unsettling episodes involving Yuko dispersed throughout the firlm. (The likes of Wei-Hao Cheng and Takashi Shimizu must have studied this film for inspiration.)

A side note: It's never developed enough to warrant extended consideration, but I could not help but notice the role that "the foreign" plays in this film (it's even more pronounced in "Lake of Dracula," the second installment in the trilogy). There are many instances where we learn that various male characters in movie have traveled beyond their homes / overseas as diplomats, to the US on business, in service for the war, etc., and that this contact or travel has unsettled the world in which they live. In at least two instances, this impact of foreign culture / foreign contact becomes very important to the narrative. It's easy to miss, but does some plot-work nonetheless.