[HorrorScience] Dracula – Tomb of Dracula (1980)

Not long ago I commented in this section a anime about frankenstein created by Toei Animation in 1981. Well, that film emerged thanks to the acceptance of a previous one, which is the one I am going to comment on below.

Yami no Teiō: Kyūketsuki Dorakyura is the original title of the anime that Toei Animation made in 1980 based (more or less) on the comic collection Tomb of Dracula from Marvel Comics. This film had different names when it came to the West, so you can find it as Dracula, Tomb of Dracula either Dracula: Sovereign of the Damned, among others.

The film begins with some occultists doing a satanic ritual to offer a woman named Domini as a sacrifice. Dracula will immediately appear and take her as his own and fly her away. Something strange happens with the vampire, because he seems incapable of drinking the blood of that woman, who will eventually end up falling in love with him and giving him a child.

On the other hand, we have a group of vampire hunters formed by a distant descendant of Dracula (Frank Drake) and two descendants of Van Helsing and John Harker (Rachel Van Helsing and Quincy Harker), who, accompanied by their faithful dog (a specialist in following the trail of vampires) decide to kill Dracula.

However, the story decides to twist a little more, since Satan appears before one of the occultists, claiming Domini, since that woman had to be his sacrifice, and upon discovering that Dracula stole her, he decides to take revenge, although first he will wait a year for Dracula's son to be born.

After that time, the vampire hunters are surprised that the vampire victims have descended in Boston, which makes them think that Dracula has changed his habits, something that curiously seems to be true, since since he fell in love with Domini and had a child with her, the prince of darkness acts like a normal human, within his limitations. Unfortunately, the occultists set him up to try to kill him, and in that situation his newborn son ends up dying, which will provoke a burst of anger on Dracula's part, once again showing the most evil of his being.

While Satan and Dracula prepare their particular duel, the vampire hunters follow Domini to try to find her husband and find her in the cemetery, looking at the grave of her deceased son. Unable to bear the pain anymore, Domini decides to commit suicide, but God prevents him... and in the process resurrects his son, turning him into an adult whose mission will be to destroy Dracula.

Just by reading the summary I posted above you can see that in this film they added everything they wanted and if you watch it without knowing what it's about, it surprises you more than once or twice, due to the crazy nature of the events. For example, when you see Dracula take Domini in the satanic ritual, you assume that the occultists were offering her to him, since culturally occultism and Satanism have been linked to Dracula on many occasions (as in The power of Dracula's blood). However, then you discover that Domini was for the devil himself and you wonder how the occultists couldn't differentiate between a pale man with a black cloak and a red being with horns...

In the same way, the vampire hunters seem to be an important part of the film, you think that they will be the center of it along with Dracula, but the truth is that it seems that they prefer to be doing nothing, rather than looking for Dracula himself. About the vampire hunters, except for a couple of specific acts, we could say that the only thing that stands out is their eighties music, which could sound perfectly in Miami Vice or similar series.

The duel between Satan and Dracula has its charm, it is not something you see every day and that makes you think that the vampire hunters could have been spared. However, Satanists are not very constant either, in fact, in the final part of the film Satan himself creates more vampires to do his dirty work. And then we have to add the “divine vampire hunter” created by God by resurrecting Dracula's baby... who also does nothing! And he moves behind his father and says two stupid sentences.

This Dracula anime offers a lot of crazy things, but then none of them seem to go anywhere and make you wonder if it was necessary to include so many unnecessary characters. So as you watch the movie the story begins to deflate, which causes you to focus on the nonsense and totally stupid scenes that appear from time to time, and I emphasize that it is unintentional humor.

Unfortunately this movie seems to me to be far behind the Frankenstein anime. However, I have to admit that I really liked the first half of this film and it made me really want to see how it ended, with the final part being disappointing. Still, I think it's worth checking out if you're a fan of Dracula or want to see a slightly crazy movie about the character, since it has some interesting things that can tip the balance in its favor (or against).

Curiosities of the movie

• Theoretically this movie is based on the comics Tomb of Dracula, but the truth is that it omits many main characters (such as Blade, who became much more popular than Dracula himself within the Marvel universe) and changes many things regarding the general story (including the origin of some characters).
• As happened with the Frankenstein anime, when it reached the West it was considered that this film was suitable for children, despite its obvious violence and sinister theme. It was common at that time for everything that was "cartoons" to be classified as such, regardless of the content.
• We can find some errors with the posters and texts that appear in the film, for example, in the Taxis it says Taxe and on the tomb of Dracula's son we can see that it says REST IN PEAEE instead of REST IN PEACE.