Animation in August: Vampire Hunter D (1985)

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This is one of those films I thought I had seen. I remember hearing about in college or thereabouts. It generated some buzz because it was a very adult animated film with lots of sex and violence. That seemed very unusual to me at the time. I have a vague memory of renting it and watching it, but no actual memories of what the film was about. Watching it yesterday brought back no memories whatsoever.

Which is good as had I remembered any part of it I would not have watched it again. Vampire Hunter D is a bad film. It is poorly animated, the writing is awful. It takes what could be a cool concept and absolutely does nothing with it.

A young woman, Doris Lang, is attacked by Count Mangus Lee, a 10,000-year-old vampire while taking a walk . He lets her go but within a few days, she will turn into a vampire and be forced to marry the Count.

She hires our titular vampire hunter to help kill Count Lee and thus be freed from his spell. D is a human/vampire hybrid (or a Dhampir if you will), his mother having been seduced by a powerful vampire many years ago. He’s also got a symbiote living in his hand. It has a mouth and is quite chatty. It reminded me of the silly animal sidekicks in Disney movies.

He’s super powerful. He agrees to help Doris. He goes on a quest to defeat the Count, encountering a number of grotesque magical creatures along the way. This includes the three sisters – siren-like creatures who turn into snakes and suck the life force out of anyone. There’s also the Count’s son and daughter who are conniving, scheming, and totally at odds with one another. He wants to usurp the Count, she thinks his desire to marry a commoner is ill-advised.

I love a good quest story and there are some interesting ideas here. It is based upon a series of books by Hideyuki Kikuchi and it has that feeling of containing a deep mythology, but the movie botches pretty much all of it.

The biggest failure of the movie lies in the animation. It looks cheap. It looks like those cartoons I used to watch on television after school. Think GI Joe or He-Man and the Masters of the Universe. Some of the character concepts are interesting – especially that of D who is fitted with a good hat and long cape – but the animation looks sloppy. During action scenes the characters strike a pose while the background turns into a generic set of constantly moving lines. It is meant to denote movement and action, but really it just looks like an easy way for the animators to save a little time and money. Any sense of location and actual movement is lost.

In 2000 they released a sort-of sequel, Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust. From the trailers, the animation looks much improved. I dig vampires and vampire hunters/slayers so I might give it a shot. It surely will be an improvement over this garbage.

The Friday Night Horror Movie: Wicked City (1987)

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Renzaburō Taki has been chatting up Makie at a Tokyo bar for months. Finally, she agrees to take him home with her. As soon as they arrive she strips off her clothes and they have passionate sex. As soon as he is finished she shows her true colors. She’s a demon. She morphs into a spider-like creature with long appendages and a mouth-like vagina that’s full of teeth. He manages to pull out before she chomps his member off and she flees out the window.

Outside, in the dark edges of the city live the creatures of the Black World. They are demons from an alternate dimension who can look like humans when they need to and live among us. Centuries ago a truce was made between the humans and the demons and they’ve lived peaceably together. Within a few days, a new pact must be signed, but there are rebel factions on both sides who want to stop that treaty from being signed.

Taki is a member of an elite organization known as the Black Guard designed to keep the peace between humans and demons. He’s assigned to protect Giuseppe Mayart, a 200-year-old mystic who signed the last treaty and will be instrumental in ensuring the new one is signed as well.

Taki is teamed with Makie a Black Guard from the Black World. They go through a series of adventures battling an assortment of demons trying (and often failing) to protect Giuseppe.

Wicked City is an inventive, beautifully designed bit of animated horror. Taki acts like a gumshoe out of some old film noir. Makie is cool as a cucumber. She’s not exactly a femme fatale, but she has that ice-cold attitude. The look of the film is a mix between neo-noir and steampunk. The demons are pure Japanese tentacle monsters.

I loved most of it. The story is good, the characters interesting, and the filmmaking is mostly spot-on. I love a good mix of crime stories and fantastic monsters.

However, if I may issue my first-ever trigger warning in a movie review the film is quite misogynistic. Nearly every man oggles Makie and whenever she is sexually assaulted (and she is sexually assaulted more than twice) the film lingers on her naked body. It is obsessed with her breasts. Even while being gang raped they make her moan with pleasurable noises.

Now I’m not against sex in cinema, and I’ve enjoyed the male gaze in more than a few movies. I’m fine with characters who do evil things and there are times when sexual assault and rape can serve a purpose. It sometimes does serve a purpose here. But the way those scenes are filmed made it more than a little gross.

If you can get passed that though, it is quite a good film. The world-building is excellent and some of the demons are truly terrifying, and weird, and imaginative. The animation is beautiful (and weird, and imaginative). Definitely recommend it for those who think they can stomach it.

The Friday Night Horror Movie: Guilty of Romance (2011)

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When you watch as many movies as I do you are sometimes going to venture into the strange. You’re gonna watch a few films that make you say “What the Hell did I just watch?” I’m not entirely sure I liked Guilty of Romance. I’m definitely sure I didn’t quite understand it. But I’ll never say I was bored watching it.

It begins with a grizzly murder. A young woman has been dismembered inside a rundown flat in the Love Hotel district of Tokyo. Parts of her body are wearing a pretty red dress with the missing parts being replaced by mannequin pieces. Other sections of the corpse are fitted out in the same manner but in a schoolgirl uniform. The head and sex parts are missing.

Police detective Kazuko Yoshida (Miki Mizuno) is on the case. The story intercuts the investigation with that of bored housewife Izumi Kikuchi (Megumi Kagurazaka). She’s married to a famous novelist. He’s an exacting husband. He leaves at the same time every morning and returns promptly in the evening. When he arrives he expects his slippers to be waiting for him in the entryway and to be placed in a precise manner. He complements her tea-making skills in a way that lets us know he’s chastised her about it before. When she places some Japanese soap (not the French stuff he likes) in the bath, he berates her.

Their marriage seems to be without romance, love, or satisfying sexual encounters. She’s approached by a woman in a shop who claims to be a talent agent. Izumi is pretty enough to be a model she says. The photos turn out to be softcore in nature. Later she meets Mitsuko Ozama (Makoto Togashi) a sex worker who convinces Izumi to join her in that work.

In some ways, the film is about this repressed woman, living a very traditional lifestyle, diving deeper and deeper into sexual liberation.

Kazuko is more modern and liberated. She’s a police detective, a working woman in a field dominated by men. She’s also married, to a man who seems perfectly nice. But she’s had affairs as well. Currently, she’s involved with a man who likes to play domination games.

There is a lot more to the story but to delve any deeper would be to spoil it. The murder mystery takes second shelf to all of the sexual shenanigans. Director Sion Sono is interested in the ways women must navigate their own sexuality, and society’s demands upon it.

It is a deeply weird, subversive film. At times I was quite uncomfortable watching it. Especially early on when Izumi is being pushed into sexual acts she’s clearly not ready for. But the film wants us to be uncomfortable. This isn’t sex for titillation, there is always a reason behind it. I’m not always sure I understand those reasons or can get behind them fully, but I’m glad I watched it.

Recommended, but not for the faint of heart.