The Vampire Doll (1970)

This film starts well and the cast are all good apart from the token lunk that every vampire film seems to have. Atsuo Nakamura (Mr Sagawa) visits his girlfriend Yukiko Kobayashi (Yuko) in a remote house that she lives in with her mother Yôko Minakaze (Mrs Nonomura) and the previously mentioned lunk Kaku Takashina (Genzo). One problem, though, the girlfriend is now dead. Or is she? After 8 days, Atsuo's sister Kayo Matsuo (Keiko) goes to look for her brother who has now disappeared. She goes with her partner Akira Nakao to the house to find some answers.The story seems refreshing at first with some moments that make you jump, an excellent campy soundtrack and a very effective Yukiko in the lead spooky role. She's scary. Unfortunately, we needed more of her, and by the end of the film, things wrap up rather speedily with an explanation and some gore thrown in. Old ground, I'm afraid, although we do get a different version of vampirism than we are accustomed to. It's OK to watch but only on occasion as, annoyingly, a lot of the nighttime scenes just morph into a black screen. What's the point of that? We can't see anything!! The doll element could have been worked on to provide more intense scares and paranormal theories. I don't mean blow-up dolls – there aren't any of those kind in this film, neither are there any of those weird people who like dressing themselves up as dolls. I watched a documentary about them and that was way more frightening than this film.

This movie begins with a man named "Kazuhiko Sagawa" (Atsuo Nakamura) taking a taxi from Tokyo to a remote area of the country to see his fiancé "Yuko Nonomura" (Yukiko Kobayashi) who he hasn't seen in 6 months. When he finally gets to her house he meets Yuko's mother "Shidu Nonomura" (Yôko Minakaze) who sadly informs him that Yuko died in a car wreck 2 weeks ago. Stricken with grief and unable to get transportation back home he is invited to spend a few days at the house. That night he sees Yuko. Eight days later his sister "Keiko Sagawa" (Kayo Matsuo) gets concerned because he hasn't called her or returned to Tokyo. So she asks her fiancé "Hiroshi Takagi" (Akira Nakao) to drive her to Yuko's house to see what is going on. Now rather than reveal any more of the story I will just say that, having already seen the other two movies in the "Bloodthirsty Trilogy", I was a bit disappointed. Part of the reason for my disappointment was the fact that this film didn't have the same Gothic foundation as the other two and I felt that this deviation wasn't for the better. To be more specific I was expecting a "classic" vampire picture but got what appeared to be an "old style" zombie movie instead. At least, that's how it seemed to me. Having said that I realize that vampires are portrayed differently in various cultures but even so the other two movies in the series—even if they had no thematic relationship with one another—were more similar to a "Hammer" movie than this particular film. In any case, whether a ghost, zombie or vampire movie it seemed both out-of-place and rather lackluster and because of that I rate it as slightly below average.

Keiko (Kayo Matsuo) and her friend try to find her missing brother after he disappeared on a trip to visit his girlfriend Yuko (Yukiko Kobayashi). They don't get very far as Yuko's mother claims the brother ran away after finding out Yuko had been killed in a car wreck the week before his visit. But Keiko finds signs that she might be being lied to - namely, a doll that her brother had purchased and, oh yeah, she sees Yuko's corpse walking around at night. This Toho production is a unique Japanese take on vampires. Fans of suave vampire types will be disappointed as this film's count is very different. The film does benefit from some great scary and atmospheric bits though. I also wonder if Tobe Hooper ever saw this as several things remind me of his later SALEM'S LOT (1979), most notably the design of the vampire (pale blue face with gold glowing eyes) and the rotting depiction of the vampire's lair. Toho produced two more vampire films after this in LAKE OF Dracula (1971) and EVIL OF Dracula (1974).

Kazuhiko Sagawa (Atsuo Nakamura) met and fell in love with Yuko (Yukiko Kobayashi) while in Tokyo, but had to go abroad for six months on business. When he returns, he decides to go to Yuko's secluded country home in a small village called Tadeshina to pay her a visit. Almost immediately upon arriving, strange things begin to happen. The creepy, near-deaf servant Genzo (Kaku Takashina) attacks him right after he enters the door, but is called off by Yuko's mother, Mrs. Nonomura (Yôko Minakaze), who promptly informs him that just two weeks earlier Yuko was tragically killed when her car got caught in a landslide. She still offers up her home for him to stay in and he agrees. That night, Kazuhiko hears something coming from Yuko's room, goes to investigate and finds Yuko standing in the closet. He's knocked out by someone, and the next day the mother claims he must had fainted and dreamt it all. The following evening Kazuhiko looks out his window and sees Yuko. He follows her into the woods and to the family graveyard. When he catches sight of her, she's ghostly white and ice cold, and pleads "Please kill me..." Instead, he's the one to end up dying when she reveals a set of green cat eyes and then sinks a knife into his back.A week later, Kazuhiko's sister Keiko (gorgeous Kayo Matsuo) becomes worried because she hasn't heard from her brother. She and her friend Hiroshi (Akira Nakao) decide to take a trip to Yuko's former residence to look for him, and that's when they discover the home's sordid history, a tragic attack that soiled the family name and of a possible curse. During a visit to the town doctor (Jun Usami), they learn that twenty-years earlier a killer broke into the home and murdered nearly everyone there except for Mrs. Nonomura, who was raped and ended up conceiving a child. That child was Yuko. They were then shunned by the locals and became reclusive. After the car accident, the grief-stricken mother couldn't part with her daughter, and through another means found a way to ensure she could keep Yuko around.The film is technically well-made, with good cinematography, nicely composed shots, classy art direction inside the Nonomura home and fine performances from the entire cast. Unfortunately, it's also saddled with a confused, needlessly cluttered and muddled screenplay. Yuko seems to be either a vengeance-seeking ghost or a blood-thirsty vampire, but may not be either. So how is she able to return from the grave? There's talk of the mother making a pact with the devil to keep her alive... and then there's talk about the use of hypnosis to keep her in a parallel world between life and death. And she might not even actually be dead; when her grave is excavated, all that's there is a mannequin. The movie waits until the last 20-minutes to start flinging around various ideas about who or what Yuko is, and why she's back from the dead killing people, before finally deciding to settle back into the vengeful ghost mold.So while it's a pretty good effort overall, it's not quite as good, nor as satisfying, as it could have been, despite fine production values and eerie visions of the pale-faced, green-eyed Yuko popping up from time to time. I saw the 71-minute widescreen cut of the film, which was released as VAMPIRE DOLL. The film was also released in the UK under the misleading title LEGACY OF DR ACULA: THE BLOODTHIRSTY DOLL. It was the first film is a three-part series from director Michio Yamamoto (called the "Bloodthirsty Trilogy" by some) and was followed by LAKE OF Dracula (1971) and EVIL OF Dracula (1974).