Vamp or Not? Yokai Monsters: Spook Warfare

This was a 1968 movie, Yôkai daisensô in the original Japanese, which was directed by Yoshiyuki Kuroda. Looking at the characters portrayed within the film you’d be forgiven for letting your mind wander to Godzilla and men in rubber monster suits or even Power Rangers.

As I watched this, however, it felt fairer to consider it in terms of, I guess, the western fantasy films. The Yokai are traditional Japanese spirits – apparitions was the translation within the film – and the film makes a good fist of recreating these creatures as they should look.

However, our film does not begin in Japan but in the ruins of the city of Ur in Babylonia. The city became a refuge for a hibernating monster (later in the film we discover he is called Daimon (Chikara Hashimoto)). Legend said he would rise again but the legend became lost in time. Treasure hunters came and began digging for the treasures of the city. They find an axe or staff like artefact and dig it out.

Lightning flashes as storm clouds rush. Daimon has awoken and the men are crushed beneath falling masonry. The storm cloud rushes over the seas actually pushing a boat over as Daimon speeds across the ocean and reaches the shores of Japan. His arrival is seen by the local lord, his Steward Saheiji (Gen Kimura) and the Lord’s daughter Lady Chie (Akane Kawasaki).

The Lord stays at the shore, checking things and is attacked by Daimon. He cannot hit the creature as it becomes insubstantial and is, eventually, bitten on the neck. The Lord returns home and is acting strangely. He starts wrecking shrines in the house and orders them destroyed as they are tainted. Samurai Shinhachiro (Yoshihiko Aoyama) suggests to Saheiji that something is very wrong.

Saheji speaks to his Lord and, angered at being questioned, an ornament is thrown at the Steward but flies out of the house and hits a kappa (Gen Kuroki) in his pond. He looks to see what is happening and realises that the Lord is actually Daimon in disguise. He sees Daimon grab hold of Saheiji and bite him on the neck.

What we get then is something unusual indeed. A clone of Daimon splits off and infects the body of Saheiji – reanimating him and turning him in to Daimon’s servant. Whilst this was unusual in how it was done it showed almost a spreading of the vampiric condition except that there was only one true vampire – if vampire he is.

The kappa confronts Daimon but the monster is too powerful and the kappa finds himself evicted from his home. He goes to a yokai shrine but the other yokai do not believe his story – there is no spirit as he describes in the directory of Japanese apparitions.

Chie is worried about her father and is sat with her maid Shinobu (Hiromi Inoue) when a powerful wave of sleep comes over her. In a trance Shinobu leaves the room. Chie awakens and tries to find her, heading towards her father’s rooms. Shinhachiro intercepts her and goes himself. Having been given short shrift he returns but Chie has found the maid, dead and bleeding at the neck.

Shinhachiro visits a Buddhist priest who has discovered that a demon is in the Lord’s place – as he names Daimon. He explains to Shinhachiro that a demon extends its life by drinking the living blood of humans. He asks the samurai to place three candles around the room the demon is in. He tries to cast a spell but the monster is too powerful and the priest is killed.

It is when Daimon tries to get children’s blood, and two children end up hidding in the yokai shrine, that the apparitions finally believe the kappa and become involved, trying to stop Daimon as his actions reflect on the honour of the Japanese yokai. I don’t want to spoil too much more of the story but I do need to discuss how Daimon can be destroyed.

His weakness is his eyes and they need to be pierced, both of them. Now this is not unheard of in the vampire genre. I was dismissive of it in the film Bloody Tease as the vampires were meant to be a new breed of super vampires and it was handled badly (actually the whole film was handled badly). However piercing the left eye was also the method of vampire destruction employed in Black Sunday.

So, is it vamp? There is clearly blood drinking for nourishment reasons, though Daimon is referred to as a demon. He can be killed in a manner not unheard of within the vampire genre. He can shapeshift and can create others like himself (although in this case they are more like servile facsimiles). I would say that there is enough there to class Yokai Monsters: Spook Warfare as a vampire film.

The imdb page is here.