Starring Midori Fujita, Choei Takahashi, Sanae Emi, Shin Kishida, Kaku Takashina
Directed by Michio Yamamoto
(actor & director credits courtesy IMDB.com)
A young woman, haunted by a dream in which she encountered a vampire as a five year old, is shaken when that same vampire comes to her city seeking her for his bride.
The second entry in Toho Studios' "Bloodthirsty Trilogy" is a more straightforward vampire tale, and without the twists and turns of the previous entry (The Vampire Doll), I enjoyed this one a little less. It is still a beautiful film to look at, with gorgeous color cinematography, highlighting the beautiful Japanese scenery, and making the pasty-faced makeups of the vampire's victims stand out. Fujita is convincing as the haunted Akiko, who has been clearly traumatized and has a strangely aloof relationship with her boyfriend, and is nicely offset by her more free-spirited and joyful sister, well played by Emi. Kishida as the vampire himself is certainly frightening, armed with golden contact lenses and yellowish fangs, showcased well in shadow and lunging forward in devastatingly quick attacks. However, while the production is finely directed and suspensefully builds to a gory climax, it doesn't add much to the vampire mythos, content in duplicating the beats of western films, rather than bringing us anything really new and different.
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