Go East, Old Nerd

I thought I would post a few more shots from my Japan trip just to show that it was about more than battling robots and AV starlets in metallic underwear--although there was that. As you might expect, in addition to visiting picturesque shrines and drinking Japanese whisky in cramped attic bars, I took the time to make as many of the nerdy pilgrimages that would be expected of a geek like myself as was humanly possible. To wit:

Sadly, Toho Studios, located in Tokyo's Chiyoda District, does not offer a tour--which, though disappointing, is not all that surprising, given the studio's long-held reputation for guardedness. Nonetheless, a visit to their gates offers enough spectacle to be worth the trip. For starters, there is the approximately 7' foot statue of the Big G that greets visitors, and which adults and children alike are welcome to paw and clamor upon to their hearts' content.

After that, there are the towering murals that grace the studio's walls, one commemorating Kurosawa's The Seven Sumurai and the other, completed in May of this year, of Godzilla himself.

Also from outside, one can glimpse a massive Mothra mural that overlooks the employee parking lot. We asked if we could be allowed inside to photograph it, but were told that we would have to do so from outside the parking gate. Whatevs, Toho!

In stark contrast, Toei Studios, in Kyoto, offers itself to guests in the form of an entire theme park. Admittedly, many of its attractions are pretty cheesy, but it nonetheless features a lot of displays of vintage posters, props, and costumes--giving no short shrift to the studio's many Tokusastsu and animated productions.

And then there is the park's Animation Museum, which features enormous statues of  Grandizer and Mazinger. How cool is that?

Mandarake is a chain of super stores dedicated to vintage Japanese toys, particularly of the variety related to kaiju and tokusatsu heroes, as well as  manga and anime. The Shibuya branch was sizeable, to be sure, but the largest has to be the one at the Broadway mall in Nakano, which appears to have metastasized to take over the majority of the multi-storied shopping center's storefronts. As someone who used to collect and deal in these types of toys, it was interesting for me to explore the store's many display cases, which were crammed to bursting with myriad Bullmark vinyl figures, Popy "Chogokin" die-casts and other assorted delights. It left me wondering, though, how the store was able to command such high prices for these items, as the conspicuous display of over-abundance seemed to contradict the aura of scarcity that the collectibles market so depends on.

All in all, Japan lived up to it's reputation as a nerd's paradise. To be honest, I think I saw more  kitschy sci-fi toys and memorabilia than my admittedly voracious appetite for same could comfortably tolerate. Fortunately, we were not so consumed that we couldn't take time out to sample the local delicacies:

I've finally reached the gutter

The Cultural Gutter has long been one of my favorite sites, reliably providing well written and thoughtful commentary on a wide range of pop culture subjects... well, until now. That's because, when Gutter editor Carol Borden invited me to contribute, I leapt -- leapt! -- at the opportunity. The result is a troubled rumination on one of my favorite musical moments in cinema. Please toddle over and have a look, won’t you?

Evil of Dracula (Japan, 1974)

Evil of Dracula is the third and final film in Toho’s mid 70s trio of western style vampire movies now known as the "Bloodthirsty Trilogy". I think it can be said at this point that the second film in the series, 1971’s Lake of Dracula, is officially “lost” -- meaning that, when I went to watch it, I found that I had either misplaced my copy or had never owned one in the first place. Hopefully future generations -- or perhaps me, with either my wallet or a more diligent eye -- will someday rectify this unhappy situation. Until then, we’ll all just have to make do with only referring back to my review of the trilogy’s initial entry, Vampire Doll.

Like Vampire Doll, Evil of Dracula is a vampire film with a contemporary setting, though it perhaps exploits even more than that first film the collision between the modern and the gothic, the urban and the rustic. Thus when our hero Shiraki (Toshio Kurosawa), with his fashionably generous sideburns, collar length hair and flared trousers, arrives in the eerily quiet northern burg where he is to start his new position as psychology professor at an exclusive girls school, he is accompanied by a swingy jazz theme courtesy of composer Riichiro Manabe. Manabe, whose music for Vampire Doll jangled in not all the right ways, actually scores high marks throughout Evil, thanks to a score that fittingly combines skittery psychedelic guitars with more traditionally “spooky” instrumentation like organs and bells.

Shiraki’s uneasiness in his new surroundings is far from alleviated upon his arrival at the gloomy manse of the school’s principal (Shin Kishida), who wastes no time in informing him that the corpse of his recently dead wife is still lying in state in the cellar. Shiraki is further surprised when the principal tells him that he has chosen him to be his successor, and then insists that he spend the night so that the two men can get to know each other a little better. Not surprisingly, things take little time to get markedly creepier from there. Shiraki “dreams” that he is attacked by a pair of ghostly women, one a girl with a bloody wound on her chest and the other an older woman whom he later identifies as the principal’s deceased wife. Later, upon meeting a trio of girls who are roommates at one of the school’s ancient dormitories, he learns of a friend of theirs who has recently gone missing, and recognizes her from a picture as the other woman in his dream.

Fortuitously, the school’s doctor, Shimimura (Kunie Tanaka), is also an amateur scholar of the occult, as well as an enthusiastic compiler of all of the town’s most macabre folklore (where would horror films -- and horror film exposition -- be without such hyphenates?) Now convinced that his was no dream, Shiraki teams with Shimimura to get to the bottom of things, and it is not long before all signs point to the principal -- as well as to a mysterious white European who happened to wash up on the shores of the town some two hundred years previous. And, while Evil of Dracula is here giving an obvious tip of its hat to its western literary source, it isn’t all as you might expect. This Dracula, you see, was a devout man driven to renounce his faith by 17th century Japan’s criminalization of Christianity, which thus set him on the path to becoming a mad, blood-drinking demon. That’s right, y’all; Japan is claiming responsibility for Dracula, which back in the 80s probably would have made a lot of white people really furious.

Unfortunately, knowledge, while perhaps being power, does not prevent Shiraki’s young female charges from one by one falling victim to the principal’s evil charms. One such victim is Kyoko (Keiko Aramaki), who takes to her bed with a mysterious illness after receiving some even more mysterious puncture wounds on her left breast. Kyoko’s two roommates insist upon staying in the dorm and looking after her while the rest of the students go on vacation break, and Shiraki and Shimimura commit to guarding over them while they do. Thus do we end up with a large, suitably gothic and largely deserted creepy old building for the film’s final confrontation with Dracula’s titular evil to take place, as well as a dubiously sustainable supply of nubile innocents to provide the snacks.

It being a Toho film, it should come as no surprise that Evil of Dracula is technically well executed, and director Michio Yamamoto and cinematographer Kazutami Hara each bring a sure hand to the task of making it rich in both atmosphere and appearance. In fact, in contrast to the contemporary western films that appear to have influenced the trilogy, Evil of Dracula comes off as downright stately. It has neither the grittiness of AIP’s Count Yorga films or the cheesecake-y sexploitation trappings that Hammer was indulging in at the time to put it over (nor, thankfully, does it stoop to the ill-advised attempts at pandering to the “hip” youth market seen in the latter’s Dracula A.D. 1972). Even its few brief moments of nudity and eroticism come off as more artful than prurient, and by comparison a genteel exercise in tasteful restraint.

All of the above gives Evil of Dracula an enjoyably old fashioned quality that overrides somewhat its timely aspirations. It straight-facedly favors melodrama over action, concealing any proclivities toward intentional camp that might or might not have lurked behind the camera. And, despite a couple of gory moments, it studiously avoids cheap shocks, perhaps out of fear of upsetting the mannered atmosphere that it has so fussily strived to create. In place of that, we get more than a few strikingly poetic -- and very Japanese -- visual moments: the blood red rose in the foreground of one scene to suggest the principal’s malevolent omnipresence, the conspicuously aestheticized arrangement of the body of a young woman who has plunged to her death from one of the dormitories’ upper landings, and more.

If this formalism sounds like it might prevent Evil of Dracula from being fun, then I am simply describing it wrong. The film is a joyously seamless piece of genre entertainment, largely free of the tonal hiccups that made Vampire Doll less so. Yamamoto -- along with Manabe and co-writer Ei Ogawa -- clearly learned from his experience as the series went on, and his resulting confidence and familiarity with the territory all ends up on the screen to our benefit. Of course, the same might possibly be said for Lake of Dracula, if I could only track the damn thing down.

Vampire Doll (Japan, 1970)

Vampire Doll -- for enemies of brevity also knows as Fear of the Ghost House: Bloodsucking Doll -- is the first of a trio of vampire films produced by Japan’s venerable Toho Company during the early 1970s, each of which was directed by Michio Yamamoto and co-written by Ei Ogawa. These films have come to be known as the “Bloodthirsty Trilogy”, although the links between them are more thematic and stylistic than arising from any connective story elements.

The story in this case begins with Sagawa (Atsuo Nakamura) arriving at the spooky, remotely located mansion of the Nonomura family with the intention of paying a visit upon his fiancé Yuko (Ukiko Kobayashi). Unfortunately, Yuko’s equally spooky and remote mom (Yoko Minakaze) informs him that, during his absence on business, Yuko has died in a car accident. However, during his night spent at the mansion, the grief stricken Sagawa has an unexpected encounter with Yuko, though she does seem to not quite be herself.

Skip forward a week, and Sagawa’s sister Keiko (Gate of Flesh’s Kayo Matsuo) arrives at the Nonomura home with her boyfriend Hiroshi (Akira Nakao), having not heard from her brother since his departure. Mrs. Nonomura tells Keiko and Hiroshi that Sagawa left after that first evening, but after finding evidence to the contrary, the two decide to fake car trouble and stick around to Scooby-Doo the situation out. In the process, they stumble upon all kinds of ghostly goings on, as well as the requisite dark family secrets, before finally coming face to face with the spectral, bloodthirsty Yuko herself.

Though Japanese folklore is not without its fair share of blood drinking critters (the Kappa, for example, is said to suck the blood of an animal out through its anus!), the idea of the vampire as an undead human with a taste for the red stuff appears to be one wholly imported from the West. Because of this, Vampire Doll to some extent comes across as a catalog of transplanted tropes from European and American gothic horror films, with those tropes given novelty by their placement within a Japanese milieu. These include everything from the Nonomura’s sinister deaf mute servant, to the ceaseless “dark and stormy night” ambience, to the Nonomura house itself with all of its cobweb covered tchotchkes (among which, in the most blood-curdling touch of all, appear to be a couple of Hummel figurines). This last strains credulity enough that the filmmakers felt duty bound to have it remarked upon in the film, with Hiroshi at one point mentioning that the mansion is “an authentic foreign-style residence”.

That said, Vampire Doll quite obviously does not hold itself to all of the rules of Western vampire films. For instance, going by those rules, it’s difficult to say exactly what Yuko is. She slashes the necks of her victims with a knife before drinking their blood, rather than biting them, and, if I understood the third act reveal correctly, she is meant to be under some type of state of hypnosis. Whatever the case, though, there’s no denying that Yuko -- with her blank, iridescent eyes and unearthly smile -- is creepy as fuck. Yamamoto most excels in creating a horrific atmosphere when she’s on screen, and never fails to highlight her presence in the most disturbing manner possible.

Undermining these legitimately unsettling elements within Vampire Doll are those others that fall decidedly within the realm of high camp, chief among them being the comically overwrought performance of Kayo Matsuo as Keiko. Cushing excepted, it’s generally true that the protagonists of horror films tend to be their least interesting characters, usually serving as exemplars of the fact that, while virtue perhaps makes one ideally equipped to battle the forces of evil, it also tends to render one something of a dullard. Unfortunately, so outmatched is Keiko that she can’t even face up to her evil battling duties, and instead leaves all the heavy lifting to Hiroshi while she engages in all manner of bug-eyed, “feets don’t fail me now” histrionics. On top of that, Riichiro Manabe’s harpsichord heavy score tends to oversell things by half, and as a result fairs poorly in the inevitable comparisons to James Bernard’s work in Hammer’s Dracula films, which are an obvious influence here.

In other aspects, though, Vampire Doll measures up to its Western inspirations quite nicely, thanks in no small part to the scrupulous production design of Yoshifumi Honda and the ornate Tohoscope compositions of cinematographer Kazutami Hara. Also working in its favor is a hysterical pace that sees all its spook show trappings crammed into a terse 70 minutes. Once you’re dumped out the other end of this frantic spook ride, the impression your left with is that of a balance of genuine scares and tongue-in-cheek “boo” moments of the type ideal for low-investment Halloween viewing, best savored between mouthfuls of candy and answering the call of the demons at the front door. All in all, a nice, mildly exotic alternative for those not up to the umpteenth viewing of House on Haunted Hill.

Daigoro vs. Goliath (Japan, 1971)

Seeing as I am an essentially joyless person, I tend to regard all of the trappings of childhood with undisguised contempt. I had to override that tendency in the case of Daigoro vs. Goliath, however, because, while it is unmistakably a movie aimed at the toddler set, it is, more importantly, that rarest of rarities: a Japanese giant monster movie that I had not, until very recently, ever heard of. Sadly, I cannot even blame my ignorance of the film on it being some kind of off-brand knock-off of the genuine article. It's a co-production between Toho and Tsuburaya -- basically the Gucchi and Prada of Japanese giant monster films -- and was made in 1971, close enough to the peak of the Kaiju Eiga boom to make its escaping my notice somewhat inexcusable. Bad me!

But what there is no escaping is the fact that Daigoro vs. Goliath is indeed a children's film, and as such contains its fair share of cute kids and dopey, childlike adults. (If it had been an American film, it would have starred Dean Jones.) Of course, we know what to expect from cute kids in Japanese monster movies (micro-shorts) and as far as the grown-ups go, things aren't much less predictable. We have a wacky and hapless amateur inventor, an irascible yet basically sweet-natured fat buffoon, a bespectacled blowhard, an oaf, etc. Oh, and then there's the whimsy. God, the whimsy! In short, this is Toho's -- at the time, recently instituted -- policy of skewing its monster pictures toward the matinee crowd taken to its logical extreme. Seriously, those people who complain about Jun Fukuda's Godzilla movies really need to check this one out just to see how bad things could have been. And then shut the hell up.

Our hero here is Daigoro, a friendly, dog-like monster whom I'm confident fans of evangelical claymation will recognize as a kaiju version of Goliath from Davey and Goliath (see below). I know that's confusing since he is not the monster in this movie who is actually named Goliath, but it is what it is. Anyway, Daigoro had the misfortune of being the offspring of the only giant monster in Japanese cinema history to be felled by the Japanese military's conventional weaponry. Try not to snicker at that fact, though, because it's sad -- like in Bambi. As a result, Daigoro was orphaned and now lives on his own island where he is looked after by a team of human caretakers.

One thing that can certainly be said for Daigoro vs. Goliath is that it really sets itself apart from the Kaiju Eiga pack, though not necessarily always in the most auspicious ways. For example, there is the fact that it makes a major subplot out of its lead monster's digestive problems. At the time of our first meeting Daigoro, it is made apparent that he has been suffering from constipation for quite some time. His handlers serve him up with bowl after giant bowl of monster Mucelix, but, despite their efforts, the door to his giant outhouse remains wreathed in undisturbed cobwebs. This is a cause of much concern for all -- especially Daigoro, whose stomach is frequently heard to make loud rumbling noises. I didn't make any of that up.

Eventually the mean blue space monster Goliath shows up on the scene, prompting Daigoro's human friends to try to get him to man-up and get in touch with his inner monster. In this sense, Daigoro vs. Goliath is basically a remake of Godzilla's Revenge, but without Godzilla and most of the other things that made that movie watchable. The monster fights that follow are, in keeping with the downscaling that Toho was doing at the time, unambitious but reasonably well shot, keeping their action mostly limited to the island in order to minimize the need for miniatures. In sum they have the look of a monster battle from one of the cheaper tokusatsu TV series of the time, and about the same brief duration, thanks to the time already spent on the human characters Dean Jones-ing all over the place.

I really don't think it's much of a spoiler to reveal that Daigoro ultimately wins the battle with Goliath. In the aftermath, his bashful head caretaker, inspired by Daigoro's example, finds the courage to propose to his girlfriend. Goliath is tied to a rocket and blasted off into space as all of the children wave and cheer. And Daigoro, triumphant, returns to his giant outhouse and has a really good poo.

See, I told you I wasn't making that up.