Chi o suu bara

"Professor Shiraki" (played by Toshio Kurosawa) arrives from Tokyo to a new school for teenage girls in a small Japanese village. Upon checking in he learns that the principle's wife died a couple of days earlier and that a student named "Keiko Nonomiya" (Tomoe Mari) went missing about the same time. That night he has an encounter with a vampire that matches Keiko's description but dismisses the incident as nothing more than a dream. Not long afterward another student named "Kyoko Hayashi" (Keiko Aramaki) faints in his classroom and is taken to the school's doctor, "Doctor Shimimura" (Kunie Tanaka). During Kyoko's examination two small "needle pricks" are discovered but neither Professor Shiraki nor Doctor Shimimura are able to figure out their significance. Since she appears to be tired, they send her back to her dorm room to recover with her two roommates, "Yukiko Mitamura" (Mio Ohta) and "Kumi" (Mariko Mochizuki) promising to take care of her. All hell breaks loose after that. Anyway, having outlined the first part of the story, I'll stop here so I won't spoil everything for any viewers who wish to see the rest. Now, although this is a "standard" vampire story, the fact that it is entirely Japanese results in a few curious details. For example, a white rose is seen by the bedside of each of the females who have been bitten. Once they drink blood the rose turns red. I thought that was an interesting touch. Having said that though, I thought there were a couple of faults as well. First, the dialogue was awful. But the movie I saw was originally in Japanese and dubbed in English and it is quite possible that much had been simplified or even lost in translation. Likewise, the acting was also quite bad. Even so, this film had a different flavor than most other vampire movies and I thought some of it was actually quite good. Obviously, there will be people who might not like this film. Like I said, it has its flaws. But I think fans of this genre might be pleasantly surprised.

I recently watched The Evil of Dracula (1974) on Tubi. The film centers on a school led by a principal who is revealed to be a vampire, with his wife residing in a coffin at home alongside three vampire mistresses. When a suspicious teacher begins investigating the principal's home, he risks disappearing forever.

Directed by Michio Yamamoto (known for The Vampire Doll & Lake of Dracula), the film stars Kunie Tanaka (Sanjuro), Katsuhiko Sasaki (Terror of Mechagodzilla), Midori Takei (Brain 17), and Shin Kishida (Shogun Assassin).

While The Evil of Dracula maintains a high standard, it doesn't quite reach the level of its predecessors in the trilogy. The film excels in its elite attire, settings, and background music, while the blood-drinking scenes are effectively executed. However, the mind control elements lack the intensity seen in previous installments, and I found myself missing the distinctive "crazy eyes" of the vampires from Lake of Dracula. Despite this, the dialogue and storyline remain engaging, with standout sequences depicting stabbings, corpses, and the aftermath of vampire destruction.

In conclusion, while The Evil of Dracula may not surpass The Vampire Doll or Lake of Dracula, it still offers enough compelling elements to warrant a viewing. I'd give it a 6.5-7/10 and recommend watching it at least once.

So after subscribing to Arrow Video service on Prime (initially started to watch the move Spanish movie REC) I was looking through their Asian movie catalogue. This is where I was introduced to Michio Yamamoto. The concept is great and the acting and pacing is good too. It reminded me of Hammer horror films. There is a lot conveyed in the short runtime of the movie.

While I did enjoy the film, there was a lot of back and forth in the scenes which I personally thought wasn't necessary. I think I would've enjoyed more focus on the back story of the occult, rather than a quick glance over it.

But this has started my exploration into the Yamamoto universe.

The last part of Yamamoto's Vampire Trilogy has been described as the worst, but it's still very entertaining. The main problem is that it obviously tries to copy the Hammer Vampire movies, and the man with the cape always looks a little bit out of place. Otherwise, most 'scary moments' are carried out in the `Kaidan Eiga'- fashion with slow camera movements and impressive lighting. Here, and in some beautiful long shots, it shows that some skill was involved, and that the movie could have become a minor classic if it had stuck to the Japanese tradition of the Horror Film. The sound track sounds too European, too and the dubbing is a total nightmare, but I think, a subtitled version recently got released in the U.K. Recommended viewing for fans of offbeat seventies horror.

Taking a job in a remote village, a man is promoted instantly to be principal of the all-girls school he teaches and comes to learn that the previous boss was a vampire still lurking around the school grounds and must find a way to stop him before he claims more of the student body.

This was a highly enjoyable and engaging effort in the series. What tends to give this one a lot of it's best qualities is the fact that there's quite a creepy atmosphere developed from the very start. The ride to the school where they witness the damaged car on the side of the road gets this off to a nice bit of foreshadowing, especially once the real motivation for his arrival is given which is what really starts this one off. Moving into the school's bunkers is where this one starts in on the Gothic atmosphere that's present throughout here in his first encounter with the three brides in his room which is full of tense Gothic images as they chase him around as well as the later scene in the basement where he discovers the coffin of the dead wife unknowingly turned into a vampire. That they appear so early into the film help make the film's tangent into the mysticism and lore of the backstory for the main villain all the more interesting as there's quite a large influence of Western mythology which readily enhances this as a whole. As that itself leads into their behavior later on when they start attacking the schoolgirls in much more frantic encounters out in the woods attacking the transfixed girls or brawling with the faculty chasing after them which feel far more commonplace in Western efforts rather than these Eastern tales which adds immensely to their appeal. Once we get into the finale where the bodies of the students under his control come out and are shown to attack the others in his basement, this one becomes quite fun with the added fun of some cheap-looking gore to enhance the experience while giving this one some nice action to close it out. Along with the chilling look to the vampires and the way it moves rather nicely along, there's enough to like here to hold this one up over it's few minor flaws. The film's biggest issue is the way it resorts to lengthy, somewhat drab dialogue-heavy scenes to tell a vast majority of its plot points, as rather than feature them battling each other or investigate anything it's all driven by speaking to everyone and then drawing conclusions based on that so it tends to run into sections where it's not nearly as exciting as the events that are supposedly being put forth end up being. Likewise, there's also the fact that this one does look rather cheap at times, especially in the bloody kills which are like colored water in their consistency and the day-for-night scenes in the woods are somewhat obvious and embarrassing. These are the film's only real problems, though.

Rated Unrated/R: Violence, Language and Brief Nudity.