Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust Review

Yoshiaki Kawajiri made this for American theatres, and it looks like a studio betting everything on the frame. Madhouse started it in 1997 and finished it in 2000, and the result is gothic horror drawn at a level the 1985 original never approached, which was the point: Hideyuki Kikuchi, whose novel it adapts, had long complained about how cheap that first film looked. Castles, carriages and moonlit wastes are rendered with the density of illustration, and the action cuts fast without ever losing the geography.

The story is a chase. The vampire Baron Meier Link has taken Charlotte Elbourne, her father hires the dhampir D to bring her back dead or alive, and a family of bounty hunters, the Marcus Brothers, races him for the fee. The turn, that Charlotte went willingly, gives the last act its sadness, and the stop at Countess Carmilla's castle is the film's most frightening sequence. D is a cipher by design and the hunters are sketches, which is why it stops at an A; Rotten Tomatoes' consensus credits the crisp action and nightmarish style, and that is exactly what it delivers.