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DIRECTED BY: Pere Portabella
FEATURING: Christopher Lee, Herbert Lom, Soledad Miranda
PLOT: B-roll footage from Jesus Franco’s Count Dracula (1970) repurposed into an avant-garde presentation of the story.
COMMENTS: Pere Portabella’s oeuvre refuses to be easily intelligible. It embraces the fragmentary nature of surrealism, suggesting the idea of a narrative without delivering a cohesive story. Portabella is especially known for his clandestine period: a series of films made illegally during the Franco regime in the late 1960s and early 1970s, employing guerrilla tactics in the vein of the Third Cinema.
Cuadecuc Vampir is perhaps his most famous work from that period, an abstracted take on the vampiric myth camouflaged as a making-of documentary for the European co-production Count Dracula by Jesús Franco, directed a year before. Franco’s movie was a typically mediocre B-movie affair following the tradition of Hammer Films, even using Christopher Lee as Dracula.
Portabella worked like a documentary filmmaker for this project. During Franco’s movie, his own crew filmed the improvisations and behind-the-scenes footage without directing anything himself. Due to purposeful continuity errors and grainy black-and-white high-contrast photography, he made something whose effect closely resembles the unearthing and manipulation of long-lost media: that is, a found-footage movie.
As in a found-footage movie, Portabella uses editing to set the mood he has in mind. An oppressive and claustrophobic atmosphere emerges through segments depicting the spread of vampirism from an old patriarch. The results hints at possible political undertones, but those are not always clear.
What remains undeniable, though, is the anachronistic aesthetic—a result of the stylistic choices mentioned above—that engages in a dialogue with the cinematic tradition of gothic horror and the vampire myth, and explicitly refers to productions the silent era. Nearly all diegetic sounds are muted, replaced by an experimental soundscape composed by concert pianist Carles Santos, including thunderstorms, tapping sounds, and glitchy effects alongside the melodies, deconstructing any sense of cinematic illusion. From the beginning, the creative process unmasks itself: practical effects are shown during their construction, actors take off their makeup, cinematic crews appear onscreen or in mirrors.
Cuadecuc could be interesting as a glimpse into the backstage production for fans of Franco’s original movie, but only if they are open to an experimental format without voiceover and with no informative intent. But the film stands alone as a puzzling and challenging cinematic experience.
WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:
