By Andrea Thompson
There are precious few films that would round out Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month and be a fantastic watch on World Dracula Day, and that’s a shame. There should be more, and they should all be as fascinating as the 1992 film “Tale of a Vampire.”
It came out at an odd time. Seeing the world from the vampire’s perspective was still relatively new at the time. Sure, the book “Interview With the Vampire” was published in 1976, but the movie adaptation wouldn’t come out until 1994. Not that vampires stuck to the shadows in the meantime. They’d always been a part of cinema since its earliest days with “Nosferatu” in 1922 and maintained a steady screen presence since, mostly in slashers and general B movie fare.
But the 1980s saw a large number of vampire movies that took the undead seriously, and that attitude carried over into the 90s, which saw the release of many films that would come to define the genre. The same year “Tale of a Vampire” crept onto screens, two hugely influential films that would come to define how vampires were depicted burst onto the screen with far more flash - Francis Ford Coppola’s “Dracula,” and the far more infamous “Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” which would soon be eclipsed by the iconic (and now very problematic) series of the same name in 1997.
So it’s hardly surprising that “Tale of a Vampire” seems to have come and gone with little fanfare, or notice in general. Written and directed by Shimako Sato, she was less inspired by Anne Rice than Edgar Allan Poe’s poem “Annabel Lee.” And “Tale” commits, both to Poe’s inherent undercurrent of dread and its bibliophilism, which it wears on its sleeve like a deranged, twisted heart, with much of the film’s plot taking place in a beautifully musty London library with texts that would make any book lover swoon.
Sato has become more known for her work in Japanese horror and the “Resident Evil” video games, but “Tale of a Vampire” was her directorial debut, which occurred after she left Japan to study film in London. According to Variety’s dismissive review of the film, “Tale” was shot over a mere four weeks on a relatively paltry budget of $375,000, and Sato almost seems to delight in her confines, fetishizing the city to a degree that is thrilling and exquisite. She doesn’t make use of the London atmosphere with its fog and shadows as create her own, infusing even the most brightly lit restaurants with unearthly dread.
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There’s a more conventional, love across the ages romance too of course, with vampire Alex (Julian Sands, in some of the creepiest work of his career) mourning his lost 19th century love as he returns to the library day after...I mean, night after night to research religious martyrs for his thesis. Ah the wonders and drawbacks of a pre-digital age. One day, he’s struck by a new hire, Anne (Suzanna Hamilton), who bears a remarkable resemblance to his lost love Virginia.
Anne is mourning a loss of her own, and is dressed down to appear believably appealing rather than a lust object, but she still has (dare I say?) quirks like singing on her way to the cemetery at night to visit her recently departed love, reading palms, and conveniently for the film, the electricity at her place never seems to work, leaving her to make constant use of candles. No wonder Alex is quickly obsessed.
Make no mistake, obsession rather than love is what really sets the gears of “Tale of a Vampire” in motion. There’s no question that Alex is a monster rather than the gentle, sensitive loner he comes off as, and the movie is very aware of this. When Alex kills the victims he chooses at random, it’s violent, bloody, and painful for them as well as messy. How he drinks their blood is less like an elegant feeding than a clumsy attempt to drink liquid from an unwieldy jug. Even the lost love he mourns had a queasy beginning to say the least, since the film eventually reveals he met her as a young child, with their love blossoming when she became an adult.
If Alex has a redeeming quality, it’s that he seems very aware of how repulsive his needs and desires are, unlike his opponent Edgar (Kenneth Cranham), who cloaks his toxicity in righteousness. He bullies and manipulates Anne, and he confesses to consigning his wife to a fate worse than death because, as he puts it, “She dared to betray my high ideals. I had to punish her.” Shudder.
Like many a genre film directed by women, “Tale of a Vampire” is very aware of what a high price women tend to pay in struggles between powerful men, and the film ends by staying true to its coldly unblinking gaze. There’s no reassurance that good or even anyone’s better angels will triumph. Its lasting impression is that in the midst of so much darkness and toxicity, it isn’t love or any other lofty note of hope that lasts, but rather, pain.
Tale of a Vampire is streaming on Amazon.
