The Vampire Doll

A young man named Kazuhiko returns to Japan and travels to the remote country estate of his girlfriend, Yûko, only to be told by her mother that Yûko died in a car accident weeks earlier. He stays overnight in the large, gloomy house and is unsettled by what he experiences there. When he fails to come home, his sister Keiko grows worried and sets out with her boyfriend Hiroshi to find him. They reach the same estate, where the mother claims Kazuhiko has already left, and a car breakdown forces them to spend the night. Their search for answers draws them into the family's dark past.

The film is a Japanese horror mystery from 1970, produced by Toho and directed by Michio Yamamoto, whose only earlier feature was The Resurrection of the Beast. Ei Ogawa and Hiroshi Nagano wrote the screenplay, and the cast includes Kayo Matsuo, Akira Nakao, Yukiko Kobayashi, Yoko Minakaze, Atsuo Nakamura and Kaku Takashina. At 71 minutes, it is a short, compact genre piece.

Reception has been modest but positive over the years. On IMDb it holds a 6.6 out of 10 from around 1,500 votes, while on TMDB it stands at 6.9 from a much smaller group of 62 voters. The two scores sit close together, suggesting viewers who seek the film out tend to respond to it similarly.