(A favourite) zombie movie*

 

Now, settima. Of all the zombie movies in the world you had to pick a vampire story? Why yes. Yes I did.

“Again he shook his head. The world's gone mad, he thought. The dead walk about and I think nothing of it. The return of corpses has become trivial in import. How quickly one accepts the incredible if only one sees it enough!”

– Richard Matheson, I Am Legend (1954)

Just like my actual favourite zombie film, that one from 1968, Soy leyenda is based on Richard Matheson's post-apocalyptic horror novel I Am Legend (1954). The story describes a world where the living have become undead vampire-like creatures. A lone man tries to rationalise that new world through reason and science, and legend.

 

In the man's mind, the undead become the familiar, the vampire. In our mind, watching this, we believe to see the foreshadowing of the popculture zombie. The abandoned well-known landscapes, the ceaseless repetition of what the old life had instilled, the normalcy of the grotesque. Oh how familiar they have become.

 

* the Bales 2025 Film Challenge for October is horror-themed as opposed to date-based, and is all about favourites. Expect non-horror and films I believe to be relevant instead.

A favourite Dracula movie. As my very most favourite Dracula movie has been claimed, I go with its nearest competitor that somehow also features my favourite Jesus*

 

Linda (Ewa Strömberg) has been summoned by Countess Nadine Carody (Soledad Miranda) to handle a real estate inheritance from a certain Count Dracula. Spellbound, she finds herself on a small island, and helpless in the Countess' embrace.

“You are one of us now. The Queen of the Night will bear you up on her black wings.”

– Countess Nadine Carody

A film that can easily hold up against Jean Rollins' dreamy vampire erotica, this love letter to Soledad Miranda's brooding torment is a delight to watch and a pinnacle in Jess Franco's filmography. Its influence on neo-Giallo Amer and Dario Argento – particularly his Suspiria – is evident, and that in itself should give you enough clues of how much of an essential chapter Vampyros Lesbos is in adult European filmmaking.

 

* the Bales 2025 Film Challenge for October is horror-themed as opposed to date-based, and is all about favourites. Expect non-horror and films I believe to be relevant instead.

Someone surfing or skateboarding for either International Surfing Day or Go Skateboarding Day

 

José Mojica Marins' protégé Ivan Cardoso dabbled in short form horror movies. This one features a young hippie vampire who, after being defeated in beachy black-and-white Prague, hikes a ride to Super 8 Brazil. Can't help but notice a bit of (Charlie) Mansonsploitation going on, but that may be just me.

A vampire for World Dracula Day

 

This deeply political, unpleasant interpretation of Stoker's Dracula can not not be seen against the backdrop of political movements like the #RAF and West-Germany's youth revolting against the failed #Denazification that the country underwent under supervision of the Allied occupying forces.

 

Note the usage of colour and grouping of people; Klaus Mann's Mephisto (1981) borrowed quite a few visuals from Jonathan.

Imaginary animals or food for Theodor “Dr.” Seuss Geisel's birthday (1904).

“I like the settings where the lights and desire cross path. The desire to communicate with the invisibles in the darkness, or in memory, or in the future. It's always related to cinema and we as insects that are drawn to lights.”

– Apichatpong Weerasethakul, via

Villagers in the north of Thailand reported a rare sighting of a male and female Nok Phii, an elusive species of bird that feeds on animals' blood. It is unknown if the sighting was reliable, and if this vampire does, or ever did, exist.

“This is the tale of the strange adventures of the young Allan Gray, who immersed himself in the study of devil worship and vampires. Preoccupied with superstitions of centuries past, he became a dreamer for whom the line between the real and the supernatural became blurred. His aimless wanderings led him late one evening to a secluded inn by the river in a village called Courtempierre.”

– title card

“Wouldn't you rather I did it out of love, than have one of those wood things do it out of their own animal hungers?”

– Lemora

A black forest. A man walks through, holding a smoke machine. Then a carriage with a familiar coachman. Dracula! Where are we? No, not 19th century #Transylvania. The film stock reveals bullet holes in ancient walls, and beyond these walls a ladder, maybe scaffolding. A pneumatic drill, more crew members, lights, a clapperboard. Are the characters aware of that? Them seem to interact with the disturbance yet oblige to the interruptions of the movie set. In a state of hypnopompia, guided by kuroko, maybe?

“cut”

Pere Portabella created a hyper-reality with his Cuadecuc, vampir. A director dismantles the man-behind-the-curtain, Franco, the other #Franco while setting up scaffolding for the next Spain. Everything's a reality, or an illusion, then nothing is.