12 May, 2015

Cuadecuc, Vampir (1971)


Maria Rohm and Soledad Miranda appear ethereal and impossibly sophisticated in Pere Portabella's granulated black-and-white ciné-mirage. Portabella uses the occasion - filming of Jess Franco's Count Dracula - as a launch pad for his own journey towards the fantastic and the supernatural. Possessing at once some features of a documentary and a remarkably dreamlike quality, Cuadecuc is of much interest to Franco scholars and those with a taste for gothic imagery. While many sequences have amazing rhythm and impact, the film does drag as a whole at the relatively short 66 minute running time, partially due to very sparce score and almost total abscence of sound effects. Possible Godardian influence can be traced in the form of extraneous sounds (an aeroplane taking off, roadworks) layed over the images at deliberately inappropriate moments.

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