Sunday, October 16, 2011

The Land of Nodding Off

Vampyros Lesbos (1971)
directed by Jesus Franco
rating: 2 out of 5 cravats
on DVD from Netflix

Ah Istanbul, dreaming, industrious Bosphorus wonder! Vampyros Lesbos is barely more than its title, and although Franco gives himself plenty of opportunities to escape his softcore set-up, he seems perfectly content in the Quaaludes and cocaine rut that starts with the striptease in the opening scene. Quentin Tarantino used the movie's score in Jackie Brown, but I can't do a lot with that piece of trivia.

I kept returning to the image of a cargo ship at anchorage in the Golden Horn, a fat orange sun in the sky behind it. No rickety sailing ship to convey a Count in, but a filthy hold of steel, its crew a Babel of a dozen languages. Elsewhere, water taxis ferry passengers through the fog. The sun is a constant presence, giving shadows in sunlit houses more effect. The screenplay suggests that Dracula himself is dead, and the antagonist - a surviving Bride - inherited his holdings. Only she isn't a "Bride," per say, just a girl who Dracula rescued from rapists in a Turkish castle.

I like wondering what happens to the ladies back in Transylvania when Dracula is staked, and I like that the now-Countess enslaves men at random for revenge against her long-dead attackers. Vampire mythology deserves a female seat of power; here, vampirism is a kind of cult with specific rituals for longevity, which connects it to secret societies and, more to Franco's uses, allows its practitioners to cavort without clothes in the sun. These ideas appear in passing, and although they hardly seem revelatory, Franco allows them to sail right by, entirely unheeded. Give them purchase, dear reader; let them grow.