I have never read the 70's manga by Shinichi Koga, so I cannot say how well the film follows its source.
I enjoyed the first 2 films in the series much more than this and feel it is missing director Shimako Sato's touch. This film is possibly less scary than its predecessors. Atmosphere? Not so much, I also don't think cheesy lumbering people in cloaks is all that scary as done in this film, they look more like a group of Jawas who are tall enough to form a basketball team. The film might be less action-packed than EEA2, it sure felt like it at times.
Combine the schoolgirls-in-peril in an institution of learning with a witchcraft-obsessed founder of "Suspiria" with the dimensional doors to dangerous forest real estate of "Troll" and add a handful of names referenced from H.P. Lovecraft Cliff Notes and you have this film. It might be as good as Troll but is far beneath the others I've referenced. At times it has more action than the first EEA film, but they have replaced Kimika Yoshino as Misa Kuroi (of EEA 1 & 2) with Hinako Saeki (Sadako from the mediocre Ring Spiral film "Rasen"), who had played the role the previous year in the EEA TV series.
The surgeon uncle apparently from the manga series has his first appearance in the film series. Misa goes off to join a drama club after catching sight of their script and surprise surprise, someone around there has been dabbling in black magic and must be stopped.
Mentioning the names of some Elder Gods from Lovecraft isn't going to get me all in a tizzy; anyone can make meaningless references to the Elder Gods in a film without doing anything interesting with the Cthulhu Mythos. The most mediocre of Stuart Gordon's HPL-inspired films is better than this. Likewise having a bevy of cute schoolgirls does not a good movie make. The sentimental moments of the drama club girls walking around 'bonding' towards the start of the film with lame cheesy background music did not help create a mood for the film and almost put me to sleep. The producers also tried to add implied lesbianism back to the film series (sans the nudity of said sequences in the first film) in a failed attempt to titillate the audience. The absence of those scenes from EEA2 actually helped that movie by making it seem less like cheap exploitation gimmickry. Overall, this film is less satisfying than even the first one. I rate them in the following order from best to worst: EEA2, EEA1, EEA3.
Tokyo Shock's DVD is also seriously lacking in special features whereas the other 2 films both had a 'making of' feature, recent updated interviews and theatrical trailer and film premiere clip, possibly because no one cared much about EEA3 to bother producing said materials. They didn't even retain the original Japanese ending credits for the EEA3 DVD.
***SPOILER WARNING*** I love when movie trailers try to make the film's plot seem bigger and more important than it is, like 'the future of the whole world is at stake'. A homunculus wanting to be human and planning to brutally kill off 7 girls to pursue those ends may be a tragedy, but it isn't going to end the world as we know it. Whether or not you are a fan of it, Lovecraft's work was often about cosmic horror that could have wide-ranging effect over the entire human populace in the event that the Elder Gods decided to turn their attention to our rather insignificant (to them) existence. Killing seven people and turning a female Pinocchio into a real boy isn't the kind of thing I imagine the Elder Gods bothering with and it's a bit insulting to throw them into this plot in such a lame way, even Lucifer would probably have more important things to do on his daily itinerary, like toying mercilessly with Dudley Moore's love life.
I enjoyed the first 2 films in the series much more than this and feel it is missing director Shimako Sato's touch. This film is possibly less scary than its predecessors. Atmosphere? Not so much, I also don't think cheesy lumbering people in cloaks is all that scary as done in this film, they look more like a group of Jawas who are tall enough to form a basketball team. The film might be less action-packed than EEA2, it sure felt like it at times.
Combine the schoolgirls-in-peril in an institution of learning with a witchcraft-obsessed founder of "Suspiria" with the dimensional doors to dangerous forest real estate of "Troll" and add a handful of names referenced from H.P. Lovecraft Cliff Notes and you have this film. It might be as good as Troll but is far beneath the others I've referenced. At times it has more action than the first EEA film, but they have replaced Kimika Yoshino as Misa Kuroi (of EEA 1 & 2) with Hinako Saeki (Sadako from the mediocre Ring Spiral film "Rasen"), who had played the role the previous year in the EEA TV series.
The surgeon uncle apparently from the manga series has his first appearance in the film series. Misa goes off to join a drama club after catching sight of their script and surprise surprise, someone around there has been dabbling in black magic and must be stopped.
Mentioning the names of some Elder Gods from Lovecraft isn't going to get me all in a tizzy; anyone can make meaningless references to the Elder Gods in a film without doing anything interesting with the Cthulhu Mythos. The most mediocre of Stuart Gordon's HPL-inspired films is better than this. Likewise having a bevy of cute schoolgirls does not a good movie make. The sentimental moments of the drama club girls walking around 'bonding' towards the start of the film with lame cheesy background music did not help create a mood for the film and almost put me to sleep. The producers also tried to add implied lesbianism back to the film series (sans the nudity of said sequences in the first film) in a failed attempt to titillate the audience. The absence of those scenes from EEA2 actually helped that movie by making it seem less like cheap exploitation gimmickry. Overall, this film is less satisfying than even the first one. I rate them in the following order from best to worst: EEA2, EEA1, EEA3.
Tokyo Shock's DVD is also seriously lacking in special features whereas the other 2 films both had a 'making of' feature, recent updated interviews and theatrical trailer and film premiere clip, possibly because no one cared much about EEA3 to bother producing said materials. They didn't even retain the original Japanese ending credits for the EEA3 DVD.
***SPOILER WARNING*** I love when movie trailers try to make the film's plot seem bigger and more important than it is, like 'the future of the whole world is at stake'. A homunculus wanting to be human and planning to brutally kill off 7 girls to pursue those ends may be a tragedy, but it isn't going to end the world as we know it. Whether or not you are a fan of it, Lovecraft's work was often about cosmic horror that could have wide-ranging effect over the entire human populace in the event that the Elder Gods decided to turn their attention to our rather insignificant (to them) existence. Killing seven people and turning a female Pinocchio into a real boy isn't the kind of thing I imagine the Elder Gods bothering with and it's a bit insulting to throw them into this plot in such a lame way, even Lucifer would probably have more important things to do on his daily itinerary, like toying mercilessly with Dudley Moore's love life.