According to its opening title screen, 1985’s Vampire Hunter D “takes place in the distant future where mutants and demons slither through a world of darkness.” It is a time ruled over by the Nobility, a race of vampires descended from Dracula himself, though he is never named outright. (Most often he is referred to as their “Sacred Ancestor.”) In addition to the mutants they hold sway over, the Nobility also keeps werewolves at their beck and call, but apart from two blink-and-you’ll-miss-them moments, they aren’t called on to do much here, which is a shame because they look and behave quite ferocious.
The plot of Vampire Hunter D, culled from the first of a series of novels by Hideyuki Kikuchi, concerns a human named Doris Lang who is targeted by the local vampire Noble. She seems capable enough since she’s introduced hunting and killing a dinosaur with her laser rifle, but then she’s beset by a werewolf who removes the cross hanging around her neck (and then makes off with her cybernetic horse in its maw) so she can be bitten by its master, the 10,000-year-old Count Magnus Lee, who has decided to claim her as his latest bride. As the daughter of a Werewolf Hunter (deceased), Doris can handle herself well enough — and she has a way with a whip — but she’ll require outside help to escape the Count’s clutches.
Enter the title character, who appears riding through a post-apocalyptic wasteland on his own mechanical steed, identified as a DL4 model cyborg by Doris’s younger brother Dan. A man of few words who lets his actions speak for him, D agrees to protect Doris, but doesn’t immediately let on that he’s a dhampir, meaning he’s the product of a vampire father and human mother. This explains his quick-healing powers when he goes up against the Count’s haughty daughter Larmica and her pet mutant Rei. Their approach to Doris and Dan’s farmhouse is preceded by a werewolf tearing a protective cross out of the ground and destroying it, but unfortunately it disappears right after performing this act. We are even denied the spectacle of D facing off with it, which is decidedly a missed opportunity.
The balance of the film finds Doris being kidnapped and rescued, Dan being kidnapped and rescued, and Doris being kidnapped and rescued again. All the while, D fights a golem, a phantom jaguar, and the infamous Midwich Medusas, along with his own vampiric instincts. As expected from a Japanese animated film of this vintage, there is blood and viscera galore, as well as a gratuitous shower scene, and a talking hand that taunts D every step of the way for good measure. (Naturally, it is his left.) Fifteen years after riding off into the sunset, D returned to movie screens in 2000’s Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust, which also has a werewolf in it, apparently. I haven’t seen that since it showed up in US cinemas the following year, though, so I guess I’m due for a refresher.
