Cuadecuc, Vampir: 1970 Spanish Underground Dracula Film Shot as Attack on General Franco

Here's an extremely rare underground Halloween treat for anyone who loves film. Ah, but only the very fewest of you will actually watch this all the way through! Give it a try. Not only is this film underground... it's underhanded. Pere Portabella made 'Cuadecuc, Vampir' in 1970 by filming on the set of a Christopher Lee film called 'Count Dracula' that was being directed by Jesus Franco. Portabella's underground classic is on its surface a silent horror film. But it's also a documentary about the making of the Dracula film. It tells its story by stealing scenes from the feature being shot around it, almost as if the film were a mashup of existing footage! The high-contrast black and white photography evokes such cinema greats as Carl Theodor Dreyer's 'Vampyr' and F.W. Murnau's 'Nosferatu.' We see typical horror scenes like a stagecoach racing through the wilderness, or a dusty crypt, interrupted by the arm of a prop person using a fan to blow fake spiderwebs or a cameraman shooting from behind furniture. These slippages from horror into documentary actually produce a weird terror when you realize that the film was being shot under the watchful eyes of Spain's dictator, General Francisco Franco. What the film really is underneath all the fantastic and disturbing imagery is a vicious attack on Franco and the false media manipulation that keeps all dictators in power. The portrait it paints of Franco himself is one of a sad, disturbed and largely ineffective vampire who lives inside a mental construction based on the past. The other characters in the film seem to be wandering through this psychotic realm, trying to find a way out.

The soundtrack incorporates jet engines, muzak, electronic music, opera singing, jackhammers, stuck records and various other electronic sounds. Don't let this throw you because the soundtrack is one of the most eerie and unsettling that you will ever hear.

And I'm thinking that Criterion needs to jump on this and make a nice blu-ray release out of it.

Pere Portabella has a web site.

Detective City Angel: A Film by Alessandro Cima

Want to follow a secret identity artist through a dangerous Los Angeles as he escapes and hits like a criminal? Hang on and watch carefully. You may need to watch it 14 times to catch the drift. But you've probably got that kind of time anyway.

This is a Los Angeles crime film. But it's as if several films on celluloid fused together and what you end up with is an art film that gets overwhelmed by urban documentary and then collapses into a narrative thriller. It's filled with hints, clues, evidence and misdirection. Images, ideas and sounds bounce off each other, mirror each other. There are secrets in this film. You have to watch carefully, through layers to catch things. I've tried to make a film that moves like disjointed thoughts toward the preordained ending.

During part of the shooting we found ourselves quite amusingly right smack in the middle of what was obviously a criminal lair. We had to leave quickly. But we returned with a very rapid coordinated sneak attack to film at the place several hours later. You'll never guess which scene in the film I'm talking about.

Underneath everything is the city of Los Angeles and its power over the imagination. The grimy and false facade of the city distracts observers and its inhabitants from the deep power of its mythology. If there is any American city where the ancient gods play, it is Los Angeles.

In my film, the increasing association of the artist with criminality is central. The artist as a secret identity is a perfect and unexplored area for film noir. This is probably the overriding concern of the film. The artist constantly under threat but using that threat to drive the creative impulse, even in the face of death.

The dark, gritty elements of film noir, especially that of the Los Angeles brand, inform everything in this piece. Various personas or aspects of the personality fight for identification even while running for cover. One part of the mind kills off or suppresses another, wants to be dominant and unknown at the same time. Unconscious forces create images that reflect one another, contradict, and foreshadow.

Secrecy, identity, escape, art as crime, artist as troublemaker, the anonymous creator who controls events, the protection of the delicate and easily destroyed creative impulse, the conflict between experimental and narrative film, the inescapable instinct toward narrative, the mask worn as both expression and protection. These are some of the themes I am at least touching upon.

It's a sort of psychotic noir film. The noir of dreams.

With a couple of brief exceptions, everything in color was shot in Los Angeles over the past 11 months. The music is by Kevin MacLeod who offers his incredible compositions through http://incompetech.com. The actors in the narrative portion are Joshua Fardon, Renato Biribin, and Laral Cima.

This is a Screen Actors Guild (SAG) production.

Filmed in Los Angeles December 2010 - September 2011
Canon DSLR and HDV cameras
Produced by Candlelight Stories, Inc.

Music by Kevin MacLeod at incompetech.com
Music is licensed as Creative Commons non-commercial - no derivs - attribution

Digital B&W archival footage from the Prelinger Archives at the Internet Archive - archive.org/?details/?prelinger and from the public domain feature collection at archive.org. However, some B&W footage was projected from 16mm directly into certain scenes as they were filmed.

RETINABALL! : A Bang Wash Film

Have you seen any of the films from Bang Wash Productions? I hadn't until today. Fantastic. I'm always utterly confused by underground things and how they operate but I enjoy them nevertheless. This film is from its two stars, Becky Lawn-Darte and Dang Steele. They also made the music. The film is an intensely fluorescent trip through sensory experimentation. The video is the message. The color hurts when experience is focused. The lo-fi approach is beautiful, concerning itself only with the creation of absolute image. In other words, it is not possible to work as a painter if you are worried about your camera. It starts off like a caper movie and then gets into secret device territory where it veers off into a volcano movie and then brings us into an analog 3D viewing glasses world of portable television, puppet shows and well-spoken pop music.