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The joke is that it's Visconti by way of Hammer, the aristocracy is a wizened parasite whose mythical costume must be applied delicately. (The lips are rouged and the widow's peak is painted before a reflectionless mirror, giving the elegant pitch of Udo Kier's deadpan.) A drought of pure blood states the crisis in Transylvania, the Count and his assistant (Arno Juerging) travel to Italy because pious repression means plenty of virgins, surely. "Don't forget to mention about my special diet." The ruined villa is contemplated with reference to The Garden of the Finzi-Continis, and there's Vittorio De Sica himself as the addled nobleman, enchanted by his guest's name: "So intriguing. Three syllables. Dra-cu-la." Four maidens (Milena Vukotic, Dominique Darel, Stefania Casini, Silvia Dionisio), the vampire needs at least one to remain untouched, the Bolshevik handyman (Joe Dallesandro) humps to the rescue. "A change in the order of things," staged by Paul Morrissey as sanguinary burlesque and joust of accents. After Flesh for Frankenstein, the two Teutonic pervs have become a polished comic duo—Juerging leads with jutted jaw and arched eyebrow while Kier delivers a committed tour de force of snipping, writhing, retching. Sapphic incest in between truculent romps, the proletarian lout takes a gander and shrugs. "It's a new age now. Don't you read the magazines?" Subtlety and gore in continuous play, thwarted seduction as food poisoning. The Count is reduced to slurping ruptured-hymen fluid off the floor before getting his limbs hacked off, the old maid emulates the Bride of Frankenstein shriek for the close. "In this house, one can say the most intelligent, the most poetic things and nobody takes notice." With Maxine McKendry, Eleonora Zani, and Roman Polanski.
--- Fernando F. Croce |