Vampire

A vampire is a being from folklore who subsists by feeding on the life essence (generally in the form of blood) of living creatures. Undead beings, vampires often visited loved ones and caused mischief or deaths in the neighbourhoods they inhabited when they were alive. They wore shrouds and were often described as bloated and of ruddy or dark countenance, markedly different from today's gaunt, pale vampire which dates from the early 19th century. Although vampiric entities have been recorded in most cultures, the term vampire was not popularized in the west until the early 18th century, after an influx of vampire superstition into Western Europe from areas where vampire legends were frequent, such as the Balkans and Eastern Europe, although local variants were also known by different names, such as shtriga in Albania, vrykolakas in Greece and strigoi in Romania. This increased level of vampire superstition in Europe led to what can only be called mass hysteria and in some cases resulted in corpses actually being staked and people being accused of vampirism.

Cuadecuc, vampir

Vampir-Cuadecuc is a 1970 experimental feature film by Spanish filmmaker Pere Portabella.

The entire film is photographed on high contrast black & white film stock, which gives it the appearance of a degraded film print, evoking early Expressionist horror films such as F. W. Murnau's Nosferatu or Carl Theodor Dreyer's Vampyr. It was shot on the set of Jesus Franco's Count Dracula, starring Christopher Lee and Herbert Lom. The sound track is by frequent Portabella collaborator Carles Santos, and the only spoken dialogue in the film appears only in the last scene, which features Lee reading from Bram Stoker's original novel.

Lee would appear in another Portabella film the same year--Umbracle.

The word "cuadecuc" is the Catalan word for "worm's tail." The term also refers to the unexposed footage at the end of a roll of film.

Jonathan Rosenbaum, a critic for the Chicago Reader, listed this film as the fourth best in 2006.

Concept and themes

The film tells an abbreviated version of the Dracula story using behind-the-scenes footage from Count Dracula. Thus, we see crew members and lights in dramatic scenes; often, these scenes are preceded by sequences where we see the set and actors being prepared. For example, before Dracula is shown rising from his coffin, Christopher Lee is seen getting made up and climbing into the coffin as a crew member covers him in fake spiderwebs. This gives the film a humorous tone: scenes meant to shock in Jesus Franco's original film are intercut with the actors making faces between takes and fooling around with the crew.