At its core, Vampire Girl is a high school romance with bloodsuckers, mad scientists and walking corpses, Twilight by way of Reanimator, albeit with the Student wrist-cut rally Stephanie Meyer left out. When Monami (Yukie Kawamura), the weird new girl who avoids sunlight, confesses her love for Jyugon (Takumi Saito) with a customary gift of chocolate, it infuriates his girlfriend Keiko, played by Eri Otaguro, whos unaware her rival is a centuries-old vampire. Unbeknownst to them, however, is that Keikos weedy father is really The scientist of the century, a Frankenstein descendant conducting strange experiments in the basement while wearing garish facepaint and a fright wig. The girls rivalry comes to a head when Monami transforms Jyugon into a bloodsucker, which in turn leads to an untimely demise for Keiko, much to her fathers delight (I can chop up her body! Every father with a daughter dreams of this!) as hes able to reanimate her as a pieced-together creature whose detachable limbs can be used as lethal boomerangs or propellers that allow her to fly around the room. Thank goodness a zombie killer nurse and a hunchbacked custodian named Igor are around for credibility.
Ian Watson is the author of 'Midnight Movie Madness', a 600+ page guide to "bad" movies from 'Reefer Madness' to 'Poultrygeist: Night of the Chicken Dead.'
