dispatched if their bodies are moved or hidden from their resting place. While scores of Kaidan (Ghost Story)
films have been produced in Japan since the early days of the medium, the first western-style Bloodsucking Demon appeared in 1959’s THE LADY VAMPIRE (Onna Kyuketsuki), directed by Master of Horror, Nobuo Nakagawa (1905-1984). Nakagawa, who brought the masterpieces GHOST OF YOTSUYA (Tokaido Yotsuya Kaidan, 1959) and JIGOKU (1960) to the screen, made his screen debut in the 1930s, but would posthumously be associated with the horror films he helmed in the 1950s and 1960s. Although he directed VAMPIRE MOTH (Kyuketsu Ga) in 1956, based on the Seisho Yokomizu mystery of the same title, a very human culprit was responsible for the seemingly “supernatural crimes” of the story. So, with THE LADY VAMPIRE, we got the first full-blooded Japanese movie Vampire. The title, though, is something of a misnomer—the eponymous “Lady” is only a victim under the influence, and the Vampire in this film is strictly male (played by screen and television star Shigeru Amachi).
The plot of THE LADY VAMPIRE is a monster mash combining numerous
sources, but is credited on screen to the Soto’o Tachibana story “The Catacombs of Beautiful Flesh” (Chitei-no Biniku, 1958). Other sources include Rampo Edogawa’s bizarre “The Strange Tale of Panorama Island” (Panorama-to Kidan, 1926), later adapted as a manga by Suehiro Maruo (available in English from Last Gasp). There are also major lifts from Seishi Yokomizo’s “The Deaths-Head Stranger” (Dokuro Kengyo, 1939), published during a Vampire literature boom in Japan spurned on by xenophobia towards foreigners during the rise of the Imperial Military State. In this story, the sanguinarian main character, Shiranui, is the vampiric incarnation of Shiro Amakusa, who led the Catholic-Christian Rebellion at Shimabara in 1637. In THE LADY VAMPIRE, the Vampire
poses as a painter, Nobutaka Takenaka, a former retainer of Amakusa who, during the siege against Kisaragi Castle, drank the blood of Amakusa’s daughter, Princess Katsu, with whom he was madly in love. He was cursed to live forever to seek out her reincarnated soul, which was perhaps taking a Tana Leaf out of Universal’s THE MUMMY (1932). Also, unlike the classic western bloodsucker, Takenaka
is a tortured man by day (who must wear dark sunglasses) and transforms into a vampiric monster under light of the full moon—owing more to Lon Chaney Jr. than Bela Lugosi. But THE LADY VAMPIRE also reeks of European Horror, and is even shot like many of the Italian and Mexican Horrors of the time, such as Riccardo Freda’s I VAMPIRI (1956) and Fernando Mendez’s EL VAMPIRO (1957). Still, between the FREAKS-like menagerie in Takenaka’s labyrinth beneath his European Gothic Castle and his sporting a Lugosi Collection knock-off cape, THE LADY VAMPIRE cannot be taken seriously, even on its own terms. Despite numerous clichéd portrayals of Dracula on Japanese television, including cartoon caricatures and mutant space monsters, it would take a young director who would take the Japanese Screen Vampire seriously, and an iconic actor who would become the indelible image of this character. Together, they would produce two modern-day Vampire films steeped in Hammer Gothic. The director was Michio Yamamoto, and his actor was Shin Kishida. Yamamoto (1933-2004), an up-and- coming young director at Toho Studios, cut his teeth as an Assistant Director on prestige
FAMOUS MONSTERS OF FILMLAND • MAR/APR 2012
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