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It Came from the Reader-Suggested Queue

IT CAME FROM THE READER-SUGGESTED QUEUE: CUADECUC VAMPIR (1971)

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DIRECTED BY: Pere Portabella

FEATURING: , Herbert Lom,

PLOT: B-roll footage from Jesus Franco’s Count Dracula (1970) repurposed into an avant-garde presentation of the story.

Still from Cuadecuc Vampire (1971)

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:

“The effect is gorgeously dreamlike, as the actors, who are captured alternately in character and as themselves, appear as automatons, moved by some shadowy unseen force… a radical, avant-garde mood piece that is among the most mysterious artefacts in cinema.”–Tom Grieve, The Skinny

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Vampir-Cuadecuc + Umbracle (Double Feature) [Blu-ray]

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    366 UNDERGROUND: THE VAMPIRES OF NEW ORLEANS (2026)

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    DIRECTED BY:

    FEATURING: Courtnee Carter, , Andrew Rakich, , Monica R. Harris, Mekhai Lee, , Carl Sailor, ,

    PLOT: When Brigitte Jackson’s sister is found dead under mysterious circumstances on the streets of New Orleans, she begins an investigation which leads her to a trinity of vampires; interspersed with this story is documentary footage exploring the city’s vampire heritage.

    COMMENTS: “Y’all believe in vampires?”

    It begins with the clap of a slate and an interview with “Sanguinarian Vampire” couple “Louis De Pointe Du Lac” and “Lestat De Lioncourt,” who found each other and moved to New Orleans’ French Quarter, in their words, “to live authentically regardless of society.” Then comes a series of interviews with various experts on “lifestyle vampires,” people self-identifying as vampires. This phenomenon appears to have started in the 1970s –80s in the NYC occult scene and grown in the1990s, with the Internet allowing more people to connect and converge on New Orleans to “live the Life.”

    America has a love affair with vampires. They’re almost inescapable, everywhere you look.

    Atun-Shei Film’s The Vampires Of New Orleans, a follow-up to their independent debut feature The Sudbury Devil, brings that same energy and cheek to a survey of tortured Americana that promises to be “the final word on the New Orleans Vampire as a pop culture figure.” It’s a big swing for an experimental docudrama. An epic one, in fact, clocking in at 159 minutes (including an Overture and Entr’acte, like a Hollywood roadshow picture). It will be interesting to see how audiences receive it.

    The main narrative which hits the expected tropes of a vampire tale. Shania Jackson (Unique) is abducted by Nate Debney (Guiness), the human familiar for Jean-Louis D’Hemecourt (Rakich). D’Hemecourt has two sires: Josephine Macarti (Gregg) a Southern Belle turned vampire after her husband’s death in the Civil War, and the Axeman of New Orleans (Sailor), a (real) serial killer who preyed on Italian immigrants in 1918–19. This trio has been hunting and feeding in New Orleans for some time, with D’Hemecourt stressing that he “does not kill humans”—“humans” defined as “Whites.” Shania’s sister, Brigitte (Carter) crosses the path of the vamps while looking into the death, and with the assistance of her aunt Saffron (Harris) and street hustler/Voudon priest Dr. Tom (Lee) attempts to avenge her sister. It doesn’t play out as easily as they may hope.

    It’s a straightforward narrative, but it’s all interspersed with those “expert” interviews—historians, tour guides, vampires (Sanguinarian and psychic)—who provide context and  commentary on vampire folklore, specifically that which involves New Orleans: the LaLaurie Mansion, the Casquette (casket) Girls, Jacques St. Germain, and the Axeman. They also provide a critique. While there proves to be rich and horrific historical lore in New Orleans, most, if not all, pertaining to vampires stems from a single source: Anne Rice’s “Interview With The Vampire,” published in the early to mid 70s, which fed the fantasies of self-identifying vamps and their acolytes and created a cottage industry of ghost tourism goosing up dry historical facts with the hook of the lurid supernatural. As one interviewee states, they’re “very grateful to Anne Rice for the tourism she brought.” “Interview” also helped sanitize the image of the vampire from the bloated, pestilent corpse depicted in European lore into a dark romantic figure, the aristocrat of Southern Gothic tales.

    The real history became superseded by fictional legend: “a form of cultural amnesia, because Americans don’t like to face their real history; fictional stories drag us away from facing reality,” as one interviewee states. Vampires uses the fiction of D’Hemecourt to tell the actual stories it wants to impart about the metaphorical vampires of  New Orleans: corporate tourism replacing the soul of New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina; incarcerated labor as modern slavery, multi-generational poor communities turned into modern plantations. It may throw audiences expecting a more conventional vampire tale, but it’s rewarding for those willing to set expectations aside and go with the flow. The performances are good (most of the cast are veterans of Sudbury Devil). The length might be an issue for some, but the film doesn’t drag, helped immensely by Dillon Derosa’s score, which is as epic as the scope of the film.

    The Vampires Of New Orleans is available to rent or buy via Atun-Shei Films’ website, and will drop on YouTube on 10/31: Halloween.

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    CAPSULE: NADJA (1994)

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    DIRECTED BY:

    FEATURING: , , , , Jared Harris

    PLOT: Dracula’s estranged son and daughter reunite after his final death.

     

    COMMENTS: A remix of Bram Stoker’s original text haunted by the influences of prior adaptations, Nadja is an atmospheric homage to the Universal monster flicks of the 1930s filtered through the East Village art scene with deadpan Brechtian cool. Bela Lugosi portrays Dracula through clips of old footage. For half the film, the image appears distorted by an aura of supernaturalism, thanks to a pixelating camera. The rest of the cinematography is crisp black and white, interiors cloaked in Expressionist shadows, exteriors swathed in shrouds of fog.

    When André Breton met the woman who called herself “Nadja,” she had left behind one life and arrived in Paris seeking another. We meet Almereyda’s Nadja in a similar scene, on a date with a random guy who asks her the usual questions. “Do you work?” “No.” Her father provides for her. What does he do? He has money, family money – old money that goes back all the way to Romania. But she left Europe because it’s like a small village, whereas New York City is the world. She talks of how she wants to change her life. She can sense the potential for change but, as Renfield will remind her, changing your life is easier said than done, even when you’re undead.

    The guy asks if she wants another drink. A dangerous question to ask a vampire but apparently the old Romanian money didn’t tip him off. He takes Nadja back to his place and she has that second drink, disappearing before he even knows what happened.

    But then she feels it: her father is dead. Van Helsing has staked him, and Nadja knows immediately that Dracula is gone for good. She experiences a sense of relief, the impetus for change she’s been looking for. But first, she has to risk a reconciliation with her estranged brother, Edgar, who for unknown reasons, wants to kill her.

    Nadja was one of a slew of existential vampire films released in the early to mid-1990s. It makes a perfect double feature with ‘s The Addiction (1995), which features a similarly impressive cast, set in New York City just before it drowned beneath a tide of Starbucks lattes. But while Ferrara focuses on gritty street reality, Almereyda’s style is more Pictorialist, providing impressions of a city that never seems quite real. It’s all about the atmosphere, the vampire as symbol, as philosopher, though these musings are delivered with tongue-in-cheek humor, preventing the tone from ever becoming too ponderous or heavy. The story follows the basic outline of Stoker’s plot, but Almereyda introduces additional entanglements and family secrets to a pared down cast of characters. Peter Fonda’s Van Helsing is the embarrassing drunk uncle of Jim (Donovan), a Harker-esque character whose marriage to Lucy is on the rocks. When Lucy catches Nadja’s eye in a bar, she unwittingly sets Van Helsing on the trail of Dracula’s children.

    The ending sees the characters, somewhat improbably, whisked away to Transylvania, after some of them inexplicably survive an explosion, but don’t expect an action-packed, blood-soaked finale. The always lovely Suzy Amis delivers a moving monologue on humanity’s bereftness in the modern world, and Nadja finds the change she was looking for.

    Nadja largely succeeds as arthouse horror through its unusual visual style and subtle surrealism, enhanced by the strengths of its cast. Löwensohn captivates as Nadja, and plentiful shots focus on her unique face framed by the dark folds of a hooded cloak. She and Martin Donovan were regulars in Hal Hartley’s early ’90s films, where both perfected the technique of delivering emotionally resonant lines with minimal modulation of voice and facial expression. Fonda provides much needed energy as a zany and eccentric Van Helsing. For fans of , his brief cameo as a morgue security guard is a nice little bonus.

    Arbelos Films recently completed a 4K restoration of a director’s cut approved by Michael Almereyda, which has just finished its run in select theaters and will see by a physical media release in mid-October.

    WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

    “Stylish, eccentric and occasionally deliciously weird, it is a film for audiences who like their horror served with humour and their vampires with personality. With a runtime of under 90 minutes, for those willing to embrace its peculiar rhythms, Nadja reveals that even creatures of the night can have a sense of humour.”–Romney Norton, Dirty Movies (re-release)

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    Nadja

    Nadja

    • Director Michael Almereyda and Executive Producer David Lynch conjure a rare vampire film.

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    CAPSULE: VISIONS OF SUFFERING (FINAL DIRECTOR’S CUT) (2006/2016)

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    Visions of Suffering is available to watch on video-on-demand in either it’s original 2006 version or the 2016 “Final Director’s Cut.”

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    DIRECTED BY:

    FEATURING: , Anastasia Asafova, Andrey Iskanov

    PLOT: A necrophilia-obsessed man is haunted by demons.

    Still from Visions of Suffering (Final Director's Cut) (2016)

    COMMENTS: Ominously titled, as if to warn potential viewers, Andrey Iskanov’s Visions of Suffering is available both in an original 2006 cut and in a shorter 2016 “Final Director’s Cut.” Given the option of watching both, it seems obvious that 90 minutes of Suffering is preferable to 120 minutes of Suffering. Without having seen the original, I feel confident in saying Iskanov made the right decision to cut out 30 minutes of Suffering.

    While the movie is extremely abstract and opaque in its details and methodology, playing like a feature length music video for an industrial noise/death metal crossover band, the basics of the thin plot are not especially difficult to comprehend. Sasha, our bespectacled protagonist, wanders through a misty yellow forest until he encounters a guy wearing a burlap sack on his head (the synopsis explains that this is a shaman and that Sasha interrupts an occult ceremony, perhaps thus bringing a curse on his head). Of course, it was all a dream, and Sasha wakes up and immediately screens a necrophilia porno flick before discovering that his phone is on the fritz. He leafs through books on Jack the Ripper and an anthology of murder scene photos while waiting for the repairman to arrive. While the repairman fixes the phone, they talk about dreams, and the guest casually drops some vampire lore. Phone fixed, Sasha calls his girlfriend (?) Vika, who’s busy shooting lesbian cutter porn. After hanging up, Sasha sees some vampires loitering about outside, and one of them stabs him in the earlobe through the keyhole. Then Sasha has some visions of suffering, and Vika’s car is possessed as she drives to his apartment while wearing iron cross sunglasses. Sasha has some more visions of suffering and calls an exorcist type (played by the director), who explains that Sasha has likely riled up some demons through his desecration of the dead. The director offers to fix the problem for 7000 euros, but that’s too steep for Sasha. So he has some more visions of suffering until the demon Golgatha shows up in his apartment with a sword and starts hacking up the furniture. Then he wakes up, and everything’s OK.

    It’s a familiar old story, but Iskanov films it with some genuine style, if not taste or discipline. Much of the film is shot through hazy green/yellow filters that turn cheap costumes and effects that would probably look ridiculous in the full light of day into creepy nightmare fuel. (At times it’s like a less-effective Begotten, without the mythological resonances.) The sound mix is thick, dripping with ooze, spooky noises, and shrieks and moans off one of those atmospheric Halloween sound effect compilations. There is a lot of shock imagery: mutilation, autopsies, explicit sex, implied necrophilia. There are also a lot of superimposed image, especially in the fast-cut opening credits sequence that shows off Iskanov’s gift for montage. But all of this artistry is in service of a juvenile morbidity that seems to arise from listening to too many Marilyn Manson albums under the influence of too much hashish.

    Suffering earns the rare and, in some quarters, coveted “” + “” tags. That’s not a recommendation for most folks. The Beware is for content—explicit sex, grotesque real autopsy footage, and some sick stuff that made even me cringe—but even excepting those, the film will prove a bit of a slog for most viewers because of its nonlinearity, tonal monotony, and humorlessness. Still, although it might have worked better chopped up into a series of easily digestible shorts, thanks to some memorably spooky imagery and resourcefulness in disguising his budgetary limitations Iskanov’s movie is not as much of a trial as it sounds like on paper. Fans of experimental extreme horror will eat it up. But please, don’t force me to watch the 2-hour version.

    WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

    “The movie is really about an endless stream of colorful cinematography and visuals, head-trips, nightmares, atmosphere, bizarre creatures, etc… the plot and characters never really develop. In other words, too undisciplined.”–Zev Toledano, The Worldwide Celluloid Massacre

    (This movie was nominated for review by “Josh.” Suggest a weird movie of your own here.)

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    CAPSULE: DRACULA (2025)

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    DIRECTED BY:

    FEATURING: Adonis Tanta, Oana Maria Zaharia, Gabriel Spahiu

    PLOT: A film director narrates the tale of a washed- up actor playing Dracula, while AI- crafted sketches inspired by the vampire myth play as interludes.

    Still from Dracula (2025)

    COMMENTS: When a movie starts with shots of the historical Dracula—also known as Vlad the Impaler—clearly made by AI, you know you are in for a treat. Romanian director Radu Jude, one of the most uncompromising voices in European cinema today, proves once again his willingness to be weird and sarcastic. Dracula is a spiritual successor to some of his most controversial works, especially the infamous Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn (2021).

    A film director narrates the tale of an actor performing Dracula through a structure somewhere in between sex-show and participatory theater. Jude intersperses a plethora of interludes among this story as the in-film director occasionally asks AI for inspiration and help in creating embedded narratives. This complex form of tales-within-tales recall everything from “The Arabian Nights” to ambitious cinematic projects like Mariano Llinás’ colossal La Flor (2018).

    Dracula is a Frankenstein of a movie, a pastiche of vastly different genres and styles. There are adaptations of Romanian vampire tales, love stories set in different time periods, a hyper-stylized farce about a farmer harvesting cocks, a vulgar song, and ads inspired by Nosferatu (1922). Some sketches place Dracula in contemporary Romania to comment on the re-emergence of extreme right and nationalism, while another uses the vampire as an allegory for bloodsucking capitalism, in the vein of Julian Radlmaier’s Blutsauger (2021).  There is even a realistic slice-of-life episode towards the end.

    Jude works here with a wide range of styles, from grim realism to surrealism. Some things remain constant, however. The acting is mostly over-the-top with rapid dialogues, as if we were watching a variety show. Jude applies Brechtian techniques, with fourth wall breaks reminding us of the artificiality of everything portrayed here. The theatrical props and AI shots further the theme. Dracula is Jude’s most ambitious work yet, a cinematic mammoth lasting almost three hours and an exemplary labyrinth of narrative complexity.

    WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

    “Jude combines A.I., dark humor, tongue-in-cheek humor and unhinged zaniness that creates a surreal experience that might be enjoyed more while drunk or high.”–Avi Offer, The NYC Movie Guru (contemporaneous)

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