by tbeasley » Sun Jun 10, 2018 7:31 am
For me Lake was the strongest of the bunch but all three have a wonderfully spooky stylish look and feel to them. Makes me curious as to what a Michio Yamamoto Godzilla film would be like, I imagine something like a cross between Hedorah and Terror of Mechagodzilla.
Godzilla fans should recognize quite a few faces as well - In Vampire Doll Sachio Sakai (Hagiwara in the original Godzilla and a bit player in many other Honda sci-fi films) cameos as a cab driver, and a young Akira Nakao (Commander Aso in the Heisei series and Prime Minister in the Kiryu films) stars as the male protagonist. Shin Kishida (the Interpol agent in Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla) appears as the main vampire in the last two films, and he's one of the coolest screen vampires I've ever seen.
The approach to vampirism is quite interesting as well cause it's not quite traditional, there's definitely a supernatural slant to it, but they do try to offer a more scientific rationale including hypnotism, hereditary blood conditions, and whatnot but things are mostly left open. All three have a strong identity in that way, and there's a nice booklet included in the BD set that goes into how vampires were seen and depicted in Japanese films back in the day.
Only thing that really bothered me, and I hope I was seeing things as it goes by fact, but I'm pretty sure there's some animal violence in the first film, where it appears a crow has its throat cut. There's also a pretty convincing dead dog in the second film, but I've been told that's most likely a prop.
~ Tyler
Exterminate all rational thought.