Rent Vampir Cuadecuc (1970)

My revenge has spread over centuries ... - Vampir Cuadecuc review by NP

In this curio, Pere Portabella filmed many silent scenes from Jess Franco’s 1970 production, the oft-derided ‘El Conde Dracula’, and pieced them together. His images are deliberately very grainy and clumsy, as if his goal is to create a documentary-style product - Portabella was by this point known as a documentary director after all. Christopher Lee as the main man features here, alongside other stars Soledad Miranda, Herbert Lom and Franco himself.

Any time we are in danger of being treated to moments from the familiar story, there are inserts from behind the scenes featuring false cobwebs being sprayed over coffins, a poor old rubber bat being coerced into action, and general larks from the cast and crew. What results is a curious hybrid of genuinely unsettling scenes, often filmed without dialogue and saturated with unearthly moans and noises, in stark, heavily-grained black and white.

In fact, the only dialogue we're treated to is at the end of the film, with Christopher Lee's very grand reading of a scene from the novel.

The whole experience is an odd one, and certainly not everyone's pint of blood. I'd suggest, however, it's worth a look. I rather enjoyed it.

Outtakes from a 'Dracula' movie - Vampir Cuadecuc review by NK

I like the idea of a film that transforms the myth of the vampire into a powerful metaphor for bloodthirsty fascism, with Dracula as the dictator who feeds on his people. That's certainly a metaphor we can relate to in 21st Century Britain where obscenely wealthy vampiric oligarchs suck huge amounts of money out of the economy into their bloated offshore tax havens, whilst ordinary people suffer cuts to vital services and sink into poverty and destitution. I didn't see that metaphor here though. Franco's censors would have had to have been sensitive to the point of paranoia to see any implied criticism of their government in this footage. It's basically outtakes from the making of the classic Dracula movie, shown in chronological sequence, with either no sound or inappropriate sound, like the Victorian funeral where a jet can be heard passing noisily overhead.

This film might be of a certain specialist interest, but I don't really think it's for general entertainment.