Way back before Christmas, I found a website Hard to Find Films, which had, um, well, hard to find films. And I made up a wish list, and Mrs. R was subtly (okay, not so subtly) made to understand that any of these films would make great Christmas presents.
Mrs. R, in addition to her many other sterling qualities, likes to make me happy, and so she took a look at the website, and ordered two from my list, plus Lady Vampire, which she thought looked interesting.
Hard to Find Films sent the movies in April (apparently the end of last year was a perfectly awful time for the proprietor, personally) and last night I watched Lady Vampire.
The sole review on the IMDB is a little rough on the movie, saying that it’s atypically plebian for this director (Nobuo Nakagawa). But I thought it was very interesting, and it passed the “suck 'em in” test with flying colors, when Mrs. R dropped by while I was watching to discuss something, caught a glimpse of the movie, and ended up sitting down to watch the remainder.
First off, there’s no lady vampire. But there is a woman who’s disappeared for twenty years, who returns to her husband unaged and sleeps and sleeps, until a mysterious painting revives her. And there’s a journalist as our hero, not nearly as annoying as journalists in the Godzilla films, and his pretty and not-too-lame girlfriend, the entranced woman’s daughter.
There are also a male vampire, who, when he’s not visiting the city, wearing sunglasses and looking for his escaped paramour, lives in a cave/castle with wonderfully expressionistic claustrophobic corridors and a steaming pool of what might be lava; a malicious midget henchman; and a bald muscleman henchman. There is of course an ancestral curse.
The black-and-white photography is very moody, almost noir-like. The story moves along briskly, and I always knew what was going on. Some very spooky scenes.
On the down side, in one scene the vampire, affected by the full moon, slaughters six women in a bar while onlookers basically do nothing, which seemed a little passive of them; and our hero finds the vampire’s lair by just about the biggest coincidence in the history of the movies.
But on the whole I was impressed. Mrs. R’s taste in movies can be hit-or-miss, but I’d say she did good this time.