Lake of Dracula

My partner Perry likes movies. Merchant/Ivory movies like A Room With A View. Robert Altman movies like Gosford Park. So he doesn't quite grasp the idea of a good bad film. His movie world has good movies, like the ones I mentioned, and bad movies, like Ishtar.
My standards are different. There's good movies, like A Room With a View and Bela Lugosi's Dracula, and there's bad movies like Bloodsucking Redneck Vampires, and then there's bad movies that are so bad they're good- like Noroi no yakata: Chi o sû me a.k.a. Lake of Dracula a.k.a. Japula.
Yes, Japula.
Because it's Japanese.

First thing we see is that it's a Toho production.
Then there's a little girl being menaced in a strange house pre-credits sequence, it seems promising. The house is a European style house, out of place in Japan, so there's a little Hammer vibe going on. Then the credits kick in. Gothic, atmospheric credits. OK, cool, it's a Toho movie- the people who did the Godzilla movies. I'm thinking "Hammer meets Toho"- this should rock.

It didn't.

The little girl, Akikko, grows up to be a teacher and an artist. She lives with her sister, Natsuko, by a lake- yes, the one in the title. And thanks to the magic of bad dubbing, Akikko has an American accent and Natsuko has an Austrailian accent. Akikko's boyfriend is a doctor at the local hospital.

Akikko is being stalked by a vampire, one she met when she was a child. He wants her as his bride. He's got his own special accent. It's faux Lugosi that ends up sounding mock Scandanvian.

So, aside from the from the setting, a totally groovy early seventies Japan, it's pretty much by the numbers vampire movie. I think that's its biggest flaw- Lake of Dracula is a Hammer style script in a Japanese context and the incongruity coupled with the bad dubbing and awful music makes for a pretty good bad movie.