Talk:The Vampire Doll

Toho International and "U.S. release"

Toho operated a few Japanese language theaters across the U.S., mostly in cities with large Japanese populations (San Francisco, LA, Honolulu, briefly in New York as well) in the mid 20th century. The main product at those theaters were Toho films, often subtitled in English. Galbraith occasionally lists such screenings as "U.S. releases" for certain films that were otherwise unreleased in the United States.

Now, we can split hairs about what does or doesn't constitute a film's release. (Personally, I'm hesitant to declare a film having been released when it only played in a Japanese theater in one of three or four U.S. cities for a handful of days.) Unfortunately, a major flaw of Galbraith's text is that he doesn't always clarify the extent of a given film's release, often giving the false impression that a film was more readily available to American audiences than it actually was. Such is apparently the case with Vampire Doll, the "U.S. release" of which he gives as much legitimacy as something like Universal-International's wide release of King Kong vs. Godzilla. See the problem?

I'd advise further research than Galbraith's books for distributor information and U.S. release dates on such films. --The H-Man (talk) 22:02, 21 March 2021 (UTC)