| Director Michiro Yamaoto's second
entry in the "bloodthirsty trilogy",
a name derived from the Japanese title, is a poor
successor to Vampire
Doll (1970), although it's not entirely
uninteresting on its own merits. From a technical
standpoint, though, the film is fairly poor on
multiple levels. From a story that lacks surprises,
to flat characters supported by uninteresting
acting, to being topped off with only a decent
score from Riichio Manabe, there is very little
to praise here, save Rokuro Nishigaki's fantastic
camera work that manages to carry the picture
during several sequences.
In terms of the plot, the movie
starts out on the coast, as a young girl chases
her dog Leo. The small animal finds shelter in
an isolated mansion, as the girl follows the dog
inside. Once there, she spies a dead woman at
the piano, and a tall, yellow eyed, man with blood
dripping from his mouth.
Outside her house, Akiko Kashigawi
takes her dog Leo for a walk to meet Kyusaka,
a local handyman, at the rest house to see if
he can fix her door. The two are interrupted,
though, by a delivery truck that drops off a large
box. Kyusaka begins to lug the crate up to the
house, and agrees to fix the door after supper,
allowing Akiko to be on her way. Once the crate
is at the rest house, Kyusaka opens it to reveal
a white coffin. Meanwhile, Akiko and her sister,
Natsuko, are preparing dinner as Akiko shows off
her latest painting: a large yellow eye as a sunset,
which she says was inspired by a childhood nightmare.
With the meal ready, Saeki Takashi, Akiko's boyfriend,
arrives just in time to eat with them. During
this time, Kyusaka opens the coffin and, much
to his relief, nothing is inside; however, the
kind man is suddenly grabbed from behind and attacked.
At Akiko’s home, the three finish dinner
and say farewell to Saeki, as Akiko notes how
odd it is that Kyusaka never showed. Akiko then
goes to the rest house to see if she can locate
the handyman, but instead sees a tall man lurking
in the shadows. She calls out for his name, but
he doesn’t answer. Akiko, recalling her
vision, panics and flees from the house.
The next day, Saeki, who is a doctor
at the local hospital, receives an unconscious
patient without any notable sign of injury or
disease, just two holes in her neck and a massive
loss of blood. The girl was discovered at Lake
Fujimi, near where Akiko lives. Meanwhile, Leo
has gone missing, and Akiko goes out in the woods
to locate him. She manages to find her, but it
has been killed, as Kyusaka stands nearby. The
handyman then knocks Akiko out and drags her off
to the rest house. Once there, the tall stranger
emerges from the shadows to meet her, but he and
Kyusaka are scared off as a car flashes its headlights
through the window and pulls up to the house.
It turns out that the car belongs to two campers,
looking for a boat, but Akiko, still frightened,
leaves with the two travelers. She then goes to
her house, only to find the residence empty. Worried,
she calls Saeki, only to be interrupted as Natsuko
suddenly appears. Later that night, though, Natsuko
leaves the house in secret, meeting with the tall
stranger who proceeds to draw blood from her neck.
The following morning, Saeki arrives,
and he and Akiko go off to the rest house to confront
Kyusaka. However, the handyman denies the incident
and tells them that the stranger is his new master,
before asking them to leave. The pair goes back
to Akiko’s home, where Natsuko tells them
that the hospital called, asking Saeki to work
the night shift. Akiko sees her boyfriend to his
car, but once she returns inside she finds Natsuko
and the stranger waiting for her. In the meantime,
Kyusaka, who was hiding in the backseat of Saeki’s
car, emerges and tries to strangle the doctor.
Saeki manages to break free, as he stops the vehicle
and runs out. The handyman, wielding a wrench,
runs out after him, but lightning strikes the
tool and kills him. Back at the house, the dark
stranger is giving chase to Akiko through the
residence. Thankfully, Saeki arrives, causing
the stranger to disappear. The two then take Natsuko
to the hospital, but, after a morbid request to
be cremated, she dies on the way. Saeki, on a
hunch, ignores the request and orders her autopsy,
while he uses hypnosis on Akiko, and discovers
that her “nightmare” was in fact a
repressed event that occurred in her childhood.
Unfortunately, during this session, Natsuko drains
the blood of the nurse looking over her and escapes.
The pair then decide to travel to Akiko's hometown,
and walk the same path she did in her repressed
memory. Their efforts lead them to the mansion
where they discover the body of an old man, the
man who saved her from that place as a child.
As it turns out, the elder gentleman is the vampire’s
father, and had his blood drained by his son.
This revelation is interrupted, though, by the
stranger, causing Saeki and the vampire to fight
as Natsuko and Akiko stand watching. It appears
that the dark stranger is about to finish the
doctor off, just as his father grabs his foot,
causing him to lose his balance and fall, impaling
himself on a spike below. The injury kills the
vampire and releases Natsuko from his hold, allowing
her to die in peace.
As a whole, there aren’t
a whole lot of surprises to be had in the story.
It generally lacks the atmosphere which made the
previous entry, Vampire
Doll (1970), work so well too. One thing
that would have helped is if they showed the tranquility
of the lakeside area a little more. One gets a
slight sense of this with the kind handyman, but
the writing rushes past this to introduce the
vampire as quickly as possible, not bothering
to develop the cast beforehand. It’s a lost
opportunity to make turning Akiko’s friends
and family against her seem even more vile. To
the film’s credit, Lake of Dracula
is actually frightening during the first half
hour of its run time, but the scare factor all
but dry up past that point, as the movie as a
whole begins its downward spiral. There are a
couple of laughable moments during the film too,
such as when Saeki tells Kyusaka that he is making
it hard to drive while he is strangling the doctor,
instead of stopping on the abandoned road and
trying to get him off immediately. The subsequent
lightning that strikes the handyman feels a little
too convenient as well, while there are no special
effects to help the scene along either, as this
is merely shown by the screen flashing. The hypnosis
portion of the film is pretty ludicrous too. I
can understand that the writer wanted to create
a mysterious sequence at the start of the film
that would be linked up later, but doing so by
having one of the film’s medical doctors
perform hypnosis on the main character seems awkward
and rushed in its approach. The use of hypnotism
by the movie feels incredibly odd too, considering
the first entry in the “bloodthirsty”
trilogy used this device as the route of the movie’s
dilemma. Still the film’s climax, Saeki
vs. the vampire, is riveting, at least at the
start, as the stranger bursts through a stain
glass window to cut off their escape and easily
tosses around the doctor. However, the scene drags
on, as Akiko refuses to do anything while Natsuko
appears to have fallen in a plot hole somewhere.
As for the character development,
it’s pretty weak. Akiko, the film’s
lead, is the stereotypical female character in
the horror genre. What this means is that one
can expect Akiko to never save herself, and stand
idly by, without lifting a muscle, while her boyfriend
is beaten nearly to death. I was generally surprised
to see the stereotype applied here, after Keiko,
a much more independent female character, appeared
in the director’s previous horror film:
Vampire
Doll (1970). Although I guess Akiko’s
“miraculous escape” should be mentioned,
even though I would imagine this was more of a
plot hole then anything. The scene in question
occurs as Akiko is in the grasp of the vampire
in one scene, until Saeki arrives in the house
and Akiko suddenly appears running down the stairs
in the next scene. Still, to the writers' credit,
it appears that they at least tried to flesh out
Akiko just a little bit here, adding in the sibling
rivalry angle with Natsuko. Although, honestly,
it’s not executed that well. In fact, I
didn’t even realize they were sisters until
half way through the film, when Natsuko mentions
their parents. Up to that point I assumed they
were just roommates.
The other lead here is Saeki, the
doctor, who is the film’s “hero”,
although he isn’t structured well as one.
I’d be surprised if anyone doesn’t
harbor at least a little resentment toward him
after he denies Natsuko’s wish to be cremated,
based on a “hunch” of his. Of course
his hunch, that this is the work of vampires and
that she will be revived as one, is correct, but
the lone nurse who has to prepare the body for
the autopsy ends up suffering as a victim. It’s
a series of events that the viewer sees coming
a mile away, but can’t believe that Saeki
doesn’t, considering what he suspected.
The movie makes the character seem downright crazy
though, considering his hunch and all that he
has learned, when he finally confronts the vampire
and claims he's just a madman whose slaves are
nothing more than the work of a “hypnotic
pheromone”. So, what gives? Perhaps he’s
just trying to psych himself up to go toe-to-toe
with him, but the intention is never clear and
the sequence seems odd, unless this was an homage
to the plot for Vampire
Doll (1970). As for the rest of the characters:
flat, with not a notable candidate among them
to discuss. The only one of them that can get
away with being mysterious is the film’s
vampire, too.
In regards to the acting, some
of the performances are serviceable, but they
don’t lend themselves to make the picture
enjoyable. Midori Fujita plays the film’s
lead role, Akiko. To sum up her performance: Fujita
is pretty undeserving of helming any production.
She has the whining aspect of the character down,
but that’s about it. Her acting is pretty
much summed up when she tells her sister of Leo’s
death: clutching a nearby beam, before turning
around and throwing her head back to deliver the
news; a delivery which is about as over dramatized
as they get. Sanae Emi plays Natsuko here, whose
performance is a mixed bag. She has the chirpy,
carefree, aspect down, but struggles to convincingly
display any other emotions, particularly during
her flat read of the scene where she rejoices
that her sister will become like her, another
servant of the dark stranger. Moving to the supporting
characters, Kaku Takashina, as Kyusaka, shouldn’t
go unmentioned here. He did a fabulous job as
Genzo in Vampire
Doll (1970), and shows his range here
by playing the friendly handyman. Unfortunately,
Kyusaka is bitten rather early on, and reverts
to a fairly evil character for the remainder of
the picture, which Takashina still portrays with
a good level of expertise, but it’s not
a role that he is unfamiliar with. Shin Kishida
plays the movie’s nameless vampire, and
his performance is good when he is being silent
or delivering lines of dialogue, but he gets a
little silly when he roars, particularly during
the climax where he seems to slip in and out of
character while fighting.
In regards to the music, Riichiro
Manabe returns to score Lake of Dracula,
and ends up churning out a career high, although
the score is still plagued with some standout
bad themes. A couple of the cues here sound remarkably
similar to his work that same year for Godzilla
vs. Hedorah too. Even the composer’s
odd “frog croaking” style of music
is used here, which fit when related to the smog
born monster but feel entirely out of place in
this vampire film. Still Manabe’s score
here is actually the best of the trilogy, as the
main theme is nice along with several other cues.
In general, it just seems to grow on the viewer
with repeated listening.
When everything else about the
production seems to go astray, though, cinematographer
Rokuro Nishigaki manages to save the production
from being an unmemorable affair. In fact, the
movie's camera work is really commendable, particularly
the movie's breath taking use of color and the
great camera set ups, including the wide shot
of the beach at the start and the exterior shot
of the mansion, which is "on set" but
is photographed so well one can't help but be
impressed. The introduction scene of the vampire,
blood dripping from his mouth, is a very iconic
shot as well, especially as it moves into a eye
level view for the next edit.
In conclusion, Lake of Dracula
runs a gambit of complaints, without much praise
to dish to the picture. Nearly every aspect of
the film seems to be lacking in one way or another,
save Nishigaki's camera work. However, there is
something oddly alluring about the movie. My initial
reaction was extreme disappointment, but the film
grew on me, as Lake of Dracula is one
of those movies that actually benefits from repeated
viewings. Not a good film, but one that will likely
earn an audience all the same.
|
(2/5)