Vamp or Not? The Guardian

Recently I was having a conversation with my friend Leila about jubokko – a type of yōkai tree that amounts to a vampiric tree. Sometimes claimed of folkloric source, it may have been invented by GeGeGe no Kitaro creator Shigeru Mizuki. However, it is a tree (often found on the sites of battlefields) that has become yōkai by drinking the blood of the dead and now subsists on human blood. When cut it bleeds.

The conversation turned to the 1990 William Friedkin directed film The Guardian – but I struggled, I don’t think I’d seen it since the heady days of VHS rentals. I sourced the film to view and this is the resulting ‘Vamp or Not?’

Dianna looks in on her ward

The film begins with the following intertitle: “For thousands of years, a religious order known as the druids worshipped trees, sometimes even sacrificing human beings to them. To these worshippers, every tree has its guardian spirit. Most are aligned with goodness and life, but some embody powers of darkness and evil.” We see an owl and then we are in the home of the Sheridans. Mom (Natalija Nogulich) and dad (Gary Swanson) have a young son, who is reading Hansel and Gretel to their new-born baby, and a nanny called Dianna.

the tree

They are going away for the weekend but, as soon as they have gone and the infant is asleep, Dianna leaves with the baby. Mom realises she has left her glasses at home, they come back and, whilst getting them, she looks in on the kid and, of course, the baby is missing. She runs out to her husband hysterical as we see Dianna walk through a forest to a huge menacing tree. She holds the baby up, which vanishes and we see a baby face formed in the bark of the tree. Wolves come and Dianna talks of the cycle being complete and another beginning, she turns into a wolf…

new nanny

Phil Sterling (Dwier Brown) is offered a job in LA and he and his wife Kate (Carey Lowell) move out there. She is newly pregnant. They build a life, making friends with the architect of their home, Ned (Brad Hall), and the film skips over the pregnancy with alacrity. Once born they decide that Kate will have to work and so look for a nanny. We get a potted view of the interviews and they decide to offer the position to a young lady called Arlene (Theresa Randle) – cut to her cycling, hitting a pothole and dying on a cactus. The post goes to Camilla (Jenny Seagrove) instead. Now just a moment to note that it probably isn’t purposeful but her name is very close to Carmilla who, of course, was a vampire who entered a home in strange circumstances.

the tree kills

Camilla mentions that a new-born’s blood is somehow different for four weeks after the birth, at which point it changes. Phil has warning dreams that he ignores at first, she is not shy about her body (to be fair the film avoided going down an infidelity with the nanny route) and when Camilla and the baby are hassled by thugs she manages to run through to the tree, which protects her. This sees the tree hitting with branches, grasping with roots and literally chomping on a thug. The presence of the tree was problematic to me, in that it is in the woods literally behind the Sterling’s home. It would have been better, to me, if the tree was physically located in faery but nevertheless…

avatar's face in bark

Essentially what we have is an avatar of the tree, in the form of Camilla, and the tree needing sacrifice. The babies are incorporated into the tree “forever” but it is the quality of their blood that is needed, specifically wanting them before the blood changes. The tree can heal the avatar and an injury to the tree injures her also. Owls seem connected to it; she gives the baby plush toys including an owl called Pyewacket – the name of a witch’s familiar according to witchfinder Matthew Hopkins. Also connected are wolves, which Camilla demonstrates control over (though they are called coyotes by a character, in dialogue, I think they were actually more wolf-like). When the tree is cut it bleeds, like the jubokko.

flying

And that decides it for me – the sacrifice’s blood condition being key, the control over “the meaner things” and the ability to transform into a wolf (which only Dianna does but it still occurs), the fact that Camilla can fly and the fact that the tree seems sentient (it can defend itself when Camilla isn’t there), and bleeds when cut. Indeed Camilla has an inhuman, bark like, form and when wounded her scabs are bark – the tree has her face on its trunk as well as the baby faces. The film draws strong parallels to jubokko, even if the filmmakers knew nothing of the yōkai tree, and the tree is certainly vampiric.

The imdb page is here.

On DVD @ Amazon US

On DVD @ Amazon UK

Vamp or Not? Aragami

Aradami was brought to my attention By Leila, wanting my view as to whether the film fit into the vampire genre – she had erred to ‘no’. It is a 2003 film by Ryûhei Kitamura, who is known to TMtV for the Spear of Longinus but, to me, his film Versus was a benchmark production.

This film was part of the Duel Project Kitamura and fellow director Yukihiko Tsutsumi had both finished their contributions to an anthology film and so they were challenged to create feature length films, featuring two actors, one setting and a battle. Tsutsumi’s film was 2LDK, Kitamura this (though there are, in total, 5 actors, the majority of the film concentrates on the two primaries). This is also known as Aragami: The Raging God of Battle.

arrival

It begins with knocking on a door. A woman (Kanae Uotani) walks to it and opens the door. Framed in the doorway are two samurai, one (Takao Osawa) carrying his friend (Hideo Sakaki) who is gravely injured. She steps back and allows them to enter the temple. Over the threshold the samurai drops his friend and we see that he is gravely injured also. He passes out.

Kanae Uotani as the woman

The samurai awakens, he is cleaned up and in clean robes. He looks around the temple and a man (Masaya Katô) addresses him, offering food. The samurai tries the food, it is good, he then wolfs it down. he asks about his friend and the man admits that the wounds suffered were too deep and he has not survived. The temple, he admits, was derelict when he came to it and he lives there as he is not sociable and the mountain location means few visitors.

wine

He convinces the samurai to stay and have a drink (French wine and crystal cut glasses are produced, a boon from the man’s wandering). He then tells him the legend of the ‘long nosed goblin’ or tengu, a supernatural creature that haunts the mountains and smells the blood of men and eats of their flesh. He says the tengu is really called Aragami. When asked if he is not afraid of the temple being attacked he confesses not – he is Aragami and he wants the samurai to kill him as he has lived too long (he later suggests that he was also the famous samurai Miyamoto Musashi).

fighting

Not believing him, and not wanting to fight the man who saved him, the samurai refuses. Aragami starts to tell him of a mad Lord who would kidnap babies to use for immortality and, whilst the lord was mad, it is true that there is power in human flesh – the liver especially potent. He essentially tells the samurai that he ate his friend. They fight and the samurai is run through with a sword, but Aragami says it is a scratch and he sees the wound has healed. It must be take the head or pierce the heart.

Masaya Katô as Aragami

It is suggested that the samurai, like Aragami, was born human but is not. It is also suggested that not all flesh will prolong life and aid rapid healing – it depends on the chef. Now I was reminded of the eating of flesh in Ravenous but the specific persons needing the right sort of cook made more sense than the carpet cannibalism of the earlier film. So, Vamp? What we have is longevity and healing (and not aging) through the consumption of human flesh and a need for beheading or piercing the heart to kill and, thus, we do have the use of tropes. But what of the tengu itself?

the woman is something other also

The tengu is sometimes deemed a form of yōkai (some of which may be vampiric) or a kami (Shinto gods) and the two primary depictions are of bird like (often crow) creatures or the long nosed humanoid variant who wear clothes similar to the yamabushi. Bane lists the karasu (crow) tengu as a vampire type, suggesting that the crow and yamabushi varients eventually became one and the same. Ashley in the Complete Book of Vampires includes tengu in the vampires from around the world section of his book.

There are certainly, as pointed out, tropes used. However, the inclusion in Bane and Ashley does not necessarily make something reproduced in film vampiric. In this case Aragami was born human (but somehow different) and waged bloody war until something triggered him to become an immortal creature who will never age. He can smell blood and distinguish between human and beast blood. Due to this I am airing towards vampiric, if not a vampire, and certainly of genre interest. However, beyond anything else, it is a great film.

The imdb page is here.

On DVD @ Amazon US

On DVD @ Amazon UK

Suffering of Ninko – review

Director: Norihiro Niwatsukino

Release date: 2016

Contains spoilers

Suffering of Ninko is a Japanese release that in one moment is a comedy and in the other an interesting take on both Japanese art and Buddhist symbolism – using both traditional ukiyo-e style illustrations and mandalas within the film to stylise in-film animations. It is also deemed as an erotic piece, something I did not particularly agree with – the comedy within it is almost (and I stress almost) bedroom farce, perhaps even seaside postcard or Benny Hill in nature, but that does not make for a film to be especially erotic.

There is a nice play on a yōkai within the plotting, also.

unwanted attentions

After a moment where we see the novice monk, Ninkô (Masato Tsujioka), in a forest reciting the heart mantra as we see a desiccated body and a bloodied corpse, we move to the monastery and meet Ninkô properly. He is a devout young monk, an exemplary novice, but he has one massive problem. Whilst a monk must be celibate, women cannot resist Ninkô. We see him and his fellow monks in a nearby village begging for alms and the women are all over the young man.

friendly monks

The narration also tells us that his problem is not solely with women and certainly there are a couple of monks in the monastery who have a more physical than spiritual interest in the young novice. To try and change this – as he believes it must be something within himself – he tries even harder to be the exemplary monk. However Master Myoko (Seiichi Shido) decides that Ninkô will not go to beg alms – a decision unpopular with the women of the village.

burnt hand

Whilst his fellow novices are out (and getting a hard time because he isn’t with them) Ninkô sweeps the steps of the monastery, when he hears a female voice calling his name. Seeing nothing he goes into the forest to investigate and sees a woman – hiding her face behind a mask. She disrobes, asking Ninkô to relieve the heat inside her and grabbing his hand, placing it on her breast. The flesh burns his hand and he falls to the floor in pain. When we see her without the mask, we see her face as featureless.

the masked woman

After the incident the attention of the village women becomes worse, with them baring their breasts as they chase after him in the village, grabbing at him and demanding his reaction. Through those scenes we see the masked woman dancing, as though she deliberately intensifies the reactions. There is an interesting theme of consent through the story that I’ll touch on later. Eventually he decides to leave the monastery. Myoko – as a parting gift of wisdom – tells Ninkô that to deny his ‘disturbing emotions’ and to overcome them are two different things, suggesting that Ninkô is a victim of his own karma – something he can’t escape. Eventually, on his journey, he starts hallucinating lascivious women and goes mad for a while.

drained of life

After his bout of madness, he meets a ronin called Kanzô (Hideta Iwahashi). The ronin is stood over a corpse and asks Ninkô to chant for him, claiming he never killed him. He recognises Ninkô as the famous womaniser monk (later his reputation is enough to have him called a satyr). Kanzô decides to follow the monk. They get to a village where the people mourn over a desiccated corpse – the remains of a husband.

Yamma-onna and a victim

The village elder (Masamichi Hagiwara) tells them that the nearby mountains are haunted by Yama-onna (Miho Wakabayashi) a creature described as having pale skin and wearing red rags who seduces (or charms with sorcery) men and steals their life energy – the elder asks for the two men to help defeat her but Ninkô refuses even as Kanzô accepts – demanding the widow (Tomoko Harazaki) and her home as payment. Eventually, however, Ninkô goes into the mountains both because he realises that he and Yama-onna may be in some way akin but also because the widow throws herself at him.

eyes removed

So, Yama-onna is almost succubus-like and is certainly an energy vampire. From what I can gather the name translates as Mountain Woman and she is a yōkai, akin to yamauba – a yōkai known for her ferocious hunger (though yamauba devours her victims through an enormous mouth hidden below her hairline rather than drain their energies). There is a missing villager, assumed victim, who took his own eyes out to escape her charms.

Masato Tsujioka as Ninkô

The film is begging for an analysis around consent and victim blaming. Ninkô blames himself for the actions of the women – as does Myoko who identifies an inner quality within Ninkô that causes the others to behave the way they do and also suggests that it is his fate. Ninkô unfairly gains a reputation despite the fact that he never acted on the temptation in his way and yet, when he finally succumbs to the pleasures of the flesh he blames Yama-onna rather than himself, repeating a mantra of “It’s not my fault”, and then ignoring her withdrawal of consent as now it is her who is blamed.

ukiyo-e style

This is a fascinating film, which at just over 70-minutes doesn’t outstay its welcome. Whilst it is a comedy, as mentioned, one might call that comedy black given the undercurrent of consent and victim blaming identified. The animations are lovely and the film itself has a minimalist feel with a luscious soundtrack – the arrangement of Ravel’s Boléro on traditional Japanese instruments works wonderfully well. 7 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

On DVD @ Amazon US

On Blu-ray @ Amazon UK

Wellington Paranormal: A Normal Night – review

Director: Jemaine Clement

First aired: 2018

Contains spoilers

With the TV series of What we do in the Shadows airing, the first season on Wellington Paranormal was made available for free stream on the internet. The original film What we Do in the Shadows was based in New Zealand (rather that the TV shows Staten Island location) and featured a couple of cops part way through, Officers Minogue (Mike Minogue) and O’Leary (Karen O'Leary), and this is a spin-off centred on the two.

Played with deadpan, this is done as though there is a film crew on ride along (ala shows like Cops) and was thus a tad reminiscent of shows such as Death Valley - though in this the paranormal menace was a hidden one and it is certainly less Police Squad in delivery.

Minogue and O'Leary

The essence is that the precinct’s Sergeant Maaka (Maaka Pohatu) is aware of paranormal activity in the Wellington area and has the two coppers investigate. Through this they come across aliens, ghosts, demons, werewolves, zombies and, in this episode, vampires. The episode begins with the investigation of a ghost that turns out to be a plastic bag (though Maaka suspects it to be a Yōkai). The two cops are then sent to investigate the theft of blood bags from the hospital. O’Leary's suspicions are mundane but Minogue thinks vampires. In the car park they find a dropped blood bag (though Minogue manages to burst it by trying to put it in a smaller evidence bag).

ritual

They go into the hospital and interview the worker in the blood bank, Nick (Cori Gonzalez-Macuer) – who was one of the What we do in the Shadows characters. He, of course, denies the theft and (after a couple of failed attempts) manages to glamour the two cops into believing his innocence. Maaka is convinced they have been glamoured and sends them to interview him again. They get side tracked a few times, the first when they investigate a report of chanting and find a naked man (Tom Clarke) tied and hooded figures chanting, led by Nick – he glamours the officers again and they leave them to it.

the creepy clowns cometh

The next distraction is a bunch of sinister clowns (for no reason but surreal creepiness) and then a call to sightings of ghosts in the cemetery (which turns out to be goths – Minogue can’t read his own writing). However, in the cemetery they see Nick again, with the bags of blood, dealing with a Nosferatu looking vampire (Fergus Aitken) – he has also given out leaflets to the Goths for Nick’s Vampire Party. Will he glamour the officers again? I won’t answer that but will say that there are some nice lore moments such as Nick floating and also a vampire transformed into a bat carrying a blood bag.

cemetery vampire

The series is amusing and relies heavily on the deadpan performances of Minogue and O’Leary. There is a nice moment where Nick brings a racial aspect into his police interactions. The episodes are short and so don’t overstay their welcome but it isn’t the most hysterical comedy I’ve ever watched – not to decry it, it works very well but its parent vehicle was much funnier. 6 out of 10.

The episode's imdb page is here.

On Region 4 DVD @ Amazon US

On DVD @ Amazon UK

Anno Dracula: One Thousand Monsters – review

Author: Kim Newman

First published: 2017

Contains spoilers

The Blurb: “There are no vampires in Japan. That is the position of the Emperor. The Emperor is wrong...”

In 1899 Geneviève Dieudonné travels to Japan with a group of vampires exiled from Great Britain by Prince Dracula. They are allowed to settle in Yōkai Town, the district of Tokyo set aside for Japan’s own vampires, an altogether strange and less human breed than the nosferatu of Europe. Yet it is not the sanctuary they had hoped for, as a vicious murderer sets vampire against vampire, and Yōkai Town is revealed to be more a prison than a refuge. Geneviève and her undead comrades will be forced to face new enemies and the horrors hidden within the Temple of One Thousand Monsters…

The review: Kim Newman hit on a fantastic concept in 1992 when he published Anno Dracula, a revisionism of Stoker’s novel in which the vampire won and subsequently married Queen Victoria and vampirism mainstreamed. The first novel took place in 1888 but subsequent novels decamped from the nineteenth century and were based through the twentieth (there were short stories set in the nineteenth).

This novel returns to the nineteenth century (or the very last gasp thereof) and the opening was published as a teaser in Anno Dracula 1899 and Other Stories. It sees a group of vampires, exiled by Dracula, appear as refugees in Tokyo. Offered sanctuary of a sort (the Emperor refused to accept that there are vampires in japan thus there are not) the vampires are taken to Yokai Town, a walled off ghetto where yokai are placed. In this Newman reimagines the various yokai as vampire types (not all blood drinkers, one subsists on tea that he has stolen – and it has to be stolen).

As in his other books in the universe Newman mashes up (alternative) history, mythology, literature and movies – drawing from all areas. Therefore one of the primary vampires in this is Drusilla from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the book contains the origin story of Popeye (not named that) and a kyonsi. The vampire Christina Light is a Princess (originally an American who married into nobility) and a revolutionary. Interestingly her vampire character is light based, being almost luminescent she is described at one point as sparkling. From a Japanese point of view there are appearances of characters/creatures as diffuse as Goke from Goke: Body Snatcher from Hell to various traditional yokai such as kappa, Kasa-obake and Rokurokubi. The primary yokai (though hidden for much of the book) is the Yukki-Onna – the legendary Snow Woman literally consumes heat (sometimes blood, but preferred cold) and the backstory we are given is the folkloric one, which was filmed in Kwaidan. This level of mash-up is a strength but, in this volume, it teeters on being a weakness.

The writing is as crisp as one would expect from Newman but the primary narrative is perhaps less convoluted than in other volumes and this gives more room for mash-up and one felt, just on the odd occasion, that perhaps a level of geek fan-service was being applied too thickly. That is a matter of taste and opinion, of course, and was only a minor grumble. Newman is a fantastic storyteller and strong composer of prose and so for the most part this is all you would wish for in an Anno Dracula book – especially as it moved back into the origin century (even if the setting was somewhat more exotic) 8 out of 10.

Honourable mention: Anno Dracula 1899 and Other Stories

This was a 2017 release by Kim Newman and is a collection of multi-world stories, mostly taking the Anno Dracula premise of adapting a film or book into an alternate world, but only the last story being part of the Anno Dracula series. That was the last tale Yokai Town: Anno Dracula 1899, which in itself is a teaser of a new Anno Dracula novel due later in 2017.

It was actually fun to step out of that world and into other worlds created in Kim Newman’s fertile (and genre geek heavy) imagination. Some of the stories also touched on vampire themes occasionally.

The first story is Famous Monsters and follows the fortune of a Martian (ethnicity, it was birthed in the USA) actor in Hollywood. When I say Martian I mean, of course, those of H.G. Wells’ War of the Worlds (1898), which itself is a book concerned with alien vampires as our blood is their sustenance. In this cow’s blood is consumed.

The story Amerikanski Dead at the Moscow Morgue was probably my favourite in the volume. An unusual zombie apocalypse story that name checks wurdalaks and vrykolakas. The Chill Clutch of the Unseen sees the last monster hunter and the last monster (the invisible man) meet – with a memory of a vampiric attack touched on. Red Jacks Wild follows Jack the Ripper whose life is extended with ritualistic sacrifices to Hecate. In Übermensch Newman imagines what would have happened if Superman had crashed in Germany and fell under the sway of National Socialism – one of his enemies (in a name-check) was Graf Orlock. Completist Heaven sees a genre fanatic find a TV channel that shows the films you could imagine – obviously vampires feature in some of these.

Finally the Anno Dracula story sees a boat pull into Tokyo harbour, the passengers – all vampires fleeing Dracula – seek sanctuary and are allowed to move to Yokai Town – a place that officially doesn’t exist and houses the Yokai (in this reimagined as types of vampires).

A worthy volume though the Anno Dracula connection is more a selling point than the underpinning of the volume.

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.