| The final chapter in the "Bloodthirsty
trilogy", Evil of Dracula ends up
being a better successor to the throne than the
second installment was in some areas, but is still
lacking. Once again, Michio Yamamoto tries for
a more traditional vampire story, and gets a mixed
result for his effort. In general, the story here
isn’t too memorable, although it does provide
some nice initial scares, while the characters
and acting are serviceable. Unfortunately, Riichiro
Manabe is attached to the project, which means
another lackluster soundtrack.
Evil of Dracula starts
out with Shiraki, a psychology professor, arriving
to teach at the Seimei School for girls. Once
there, he receives the news that the principle’s
wife has been killed in a fatal car accident.
The current principle reveals that she’s
being kept in his cellar as part of a local custom,
and also announces that he would like Shiraki
to be his successor. Upon invitation, the professor
spends the night. Come dusk, though, he hears
an odd singing noise emanating from the house
and goes to investigate. In one of the rooms,
he locates a pale young girl in a blue nightgown,
while another women, with grotesque fangs, tries
to attack him. However, Shiraki is mysteriously
struck on the head, and slips out of consciousness.
He wakes up in his bed and assumes it must have
been a nightmare. Unsure, though, he goes to the
cellar and opens the coffin, to reveal the same
woman in his dreams, except now in an apparent
state of death. Unfortunately, the principal sees
him, and tells him never to enter the cellar again.
Later, Shiraki visits the Seimei
School, and befriends Yukiko, Kyoko and Kumi,
three of the students. The professor also meets
Shimimura, the school's doctor, who tells him
about Keiko, one of the female students that disappeared
five days ago. The doctor goes on to say how one
or two students disappear in the same manner each
year. That night, Shiraki hears the song again,
this time emanating from the school, and goes
to investigate only to find that Kumi was singing
it. She explains that it was a song Keiko used
to love to sing, Shiraki then explains his “dream”,
and Kumi assures him that Keiko was the girl in
the blue nightgown, as she was wearing that the
last time she was seen. Meanwhile, Kyoko starts
to wonder where Kumi has gone off to, and goes
to look for her. Unfortunately, she finds the
principal instead, who reveals his large fangs
and proceeds to bite her in the breast. She returns
to the room shortly after, followed by Kumi, and
the three proceed to sleep.
The next day, Shiraki begins his
lesson as a psychology teacher with some inkblot
tests. During this session, Kyoko sees one of
the inkblots change to blood red before her eyes,
and gets up to scream before she faints. The doctor
examines her, but suspects she simply studied
too hard. He does notice two small holes in her
breast though, as does Shiraki who is standing
nearby. Later, Shimimura takes the professor to
an old, uncovered grave and discusses with him
the town's folklore concerning vampires. After
hearing the story, Shiraki is convinced that his
“dream” at the principal’s house
was real, and the two begin to worry about Kyoko’s
safety. The professor then tells Shimimura how
he was set to be the next principal, an announcement
that startles the doctor as another person to
receive such a promotion later went insane.
That night, the two decide to post
watch over the three girls. The doctor also brings
the insane teacher's journal, which the last entry
notes how the principal had stopped going out
in the day. A comment that was actually directed
at the current principal's predecessor. In the
mean time, Kumi has left to get supper, while
Kyoko tells Yukiko that “he is coming”,
as the principal appears at the door. She screams,
causing Shiraki, the doctor and the school’s
guard to come running up. As they open the door,
the principal rushes through the nearby window
and off into the forest. The doctor and the guard
chase after him, but get separated. Meanwhile,
Kyoko assaults Shiraki, shortly before she commits
suicide. An event that allows just enough time
for Yukiko, who was struck just below the neck
by the principal, to leave the house through the
window. The young girl meets with the principal
out in the woods, just as the doctor locates the
man. He hides in the distance, taking pictures,
as he bites Yukiko. Unfortunately, he does not
go unnoticed, and the vampire leaps over to him
and strangles him to death. The police are called,
and arrive just as they find Yukiko unconscious
in the woods. The psychology professor accuses
the principal for the incident, but his alibi
is that he spent the night with Yoshii, who vouches
that this was true. So the police drop the accusation.
Much later, while Kumi and Yukiko
are alone, Yoshii arrives and renders Kumi unconscious
with his gaze, as Yukiko leaves. The young student
travels off into the woods, and ventures inside
the principal’s house, down to the cellar
where the Madam, the principal’s wife, begins
to drain her blood. The Madam isn’t done
with the girl, though, as she takes a knife and
begins to slice off her face. Once removed, she
takes the dead skin and rubs it into her own face,
a process that causes her to look identical to
Yukiko. Under the guise of the young girl, the
Madam returns to Kumi, but the student isn’t
fooled, so the Madam attacks her instead.
Later, Shiraki, who was visiting
the “insane” teacher who showed him
a scar where a failed attempt to remove his face
occurred, arrives looking for Kumi. However, he
only finds the Madam disguised as Yukiko. The
girl asks the professor to follow her, which he
does until they arrive at a lake. The girl asks
Shiraki to marry her, causing the professor to
scoff, as he explains that he has long since figured
out she wasn’t Yukiko; furthermore, he relates
how he has learned of the principal and his wife’s
practice of taking on the appearance of their
“successors”. A revelation that causes
the Madam to laugh as Yurii appears and attacks
Shiraki. The two struggle briefly before Yurii
is thrown into the lake, sinking to the bottom.
Shiraki then rushes off to the principal’s
house, only to find Kumi in the Madam’s
coffin. He awakes the girl, just as the principal’s
wife rushes out and attacks him. The two fight
as Kumi runs off, only to be confronted by the
principal. Saeki ignores the female vampire, and
chases after his student. He finds them upstarts,
with the principal’s fang locked into the
girl’s neck. The vampire tosses her to the
ground though, and begins to fight with the professor
as the Madam emerges and does likewise with Kumi.
The fighting appears to end, though, when Shiraki
strikes the principal in the heart with an axe,
which also causes the Madam to collapse. The battle
is far from over, though, as the wound simply
injured the vampire, and soon both the principal
and his wife arise again. Shiraki ends the confrontation
for good, though, when he takes a hot poker and
rams it directly through the principal’s
chest, causing both him and the Madam to fall
to the ground. The two begin to age rapidly as
the principal clutches the hand of his nearby
wife for the final time before death overtakes
them.
The story, as a whole, isn’t
anything special, but it suffices as a platform
to deliver a couple of scares through its duration.
One thing about Evil of Dracula is that
it’s crueler then either of the other “bloodthirsty”
films. Something that mounts when one of the innocent
school girls, Yukiko, is called by the Madam,
only to have her face hacked off, shown in a very
disturbing sequence that reverts to a shadow on
the wall to let one’s imagination make it
even worse. It’s this level of cruelty that
makes the film unpredictable and much more unnerving,
especially since the students are seen carrying
out normal lives at the beginning of the film
before all hell breaks loose. Unfortunately, the
“emanating sound device” is back,
this time in the form of Keiko singing in place
of Yuko’s wailing in Vampire
Doll (1970). It’s still an effective
device, but the scene plays out a little too close
to the first entry overall, likely causing people
familiar with Yamamoto's 1970 offering to call
foul. The major fault of this entry, though, would
have to be the climax, which feels long-winded.
It starts out good, and the anti has been upped
as two fights are happening simultaneously, but
it drags, especially after the fake closure with
the axe. The movie at least has something for
the female lead to do here though, unlike Lake
of Dracula (1971). Unfortunately, in
doing so, it seems to go against the logic established
by the film. After all, both the Madam and her
husband have biten Kumi. Going from the rest of
the film, at this point Kumi should have been
a servant of the vampires, not duking it out with
one of them. It’s something that can really
only be explained as a plot hole.
In regards to the character development:
it’s serviceable, which might be giving
it the benefit of the doubt. Shiraki is the film’s
main character and all around hero. It’s
here, too, where the film really trumps its predecessor,
as unlike Saeki in Lake
of Dracula (1971) the psychology professor
is fairly likeable. He seems to face the situations
created by the dire circumstances logically, while
his attempt to guard the three students is admirable.
Unfortunately, even though he is likeable, he
isn’t very deep in the least, as very little
is learned about him. The same could basically
be said of Shimimura, the doctor. His interest
in protecting the girls and exposing the principal
make him fairly likable to the point where it’s
sad to see him go, but not much is explored of
him all the same. As for the female lead, Kumi
is a teacher’s pet of sorts. She’s
generally good-natured at the start of the film,
and very helpful, while her relationship with
Shiraki grows very gradually through out the course
of the film. Their romance isn’t given a
lot of screen time. However, given the isolation
they are both feeling, as everyone around them
is being turned against them or killed, it seems
to work.
As for the acting, Toshio
Kurosawa plays the film’s lead, Shiraki,
and ends up giving a pretty enjoyable performance.
Nothing too extraordinary, but Kurosawa does well
enough to make the character likable. It’s
interesting to see his reaction to the large amount
of flirting that the students do with him too.
The other lead, Kumi, is played by Morio Mochizuki.
Given the material, she does a good job. Mochizuki
comes off as very innocent and sweet at the start
of the film, while her relationship with Shiraki
grows slowly. She does well when the character’s
emotions switch too, as she exposes the Madam
as taking over Yukiko’s appearance. Looking
at the supporting cast, Katsuhiko Sasaki plays
Yoshii here, the French literature teacher. I
will attest: I never much liked Sasaki as an actor,
his delivery always felt monotone. Consequently,
he seems like the perfect candidate to play the
emotionless Yoshii here, who is under the Madam’s
influence, and, accordingly, he fits the part
well as Yoshii goes around reciting the French
poet Baudelaire’s morbid verses about vampires
in the movie. Shin Kishida returns to play the
film’s nameless vampire, although the character
has no connection with the one he played in Lake
of Dracula (1971). Kishida turns out
a performance about on par with that in the previous
film in the trilogy, in that he’s good when
acting mysterious or delivering lines, but gets
a little goofy when he reverts to the more “animalistic”
nature of the character and starts roaring.
In regards to the score, Riichiro
Manabe is back, and set to compose some more haphazard
themes for the viewer's listening experience.
Unfortunately, this soundtrack is bad, even for
Manabe, as at least his previous scores featured
a memorable theme or two, but there is nothing
but a sea of awful and mediocre cues here. The
film’s climax music alone should have been
enough to send the composer packing here.
Overall, Yamaoto’s end to
the “bloodthirsty” trilogy, which
is also his last film as a director, is entertaining
in spite of its faults. It’s also frightening
enough to involve the viewer. Oddly, though, this
film seems to be the anti-thesis to Lake
of Dracula (1971): it fares much better
in the initial viewing, but seems to suffer from
being watched repeatedly, when the film’s
course of events is already known and the scares
are nonexistent on account of it.
|
(2.5/5)