From Oui (July 1974). I was able to make my dislike of Blood for Dracula more apparent here than I could when I interviewed Paul Morrissey around the same time in Paris (and for the same magazine), for what proved to be the March 1975 issue. -– J.R.
Blood for Dracula. A Dracula movie by the director
of Flesh, Trash, and Heat (all of which, incidentally,
are currently playing in Paris)? That’s what the credits
say. Blood for Dracula, a grisly number shot in Italy
by Paul Morrissey and coproduced by Andy Warhol,
combines Factory superstar Joe Dallesandro with a
host of authentic European weirdos, including a Count
Dracula (Udo Kier) who puts a lot of greasy stuff in his
hair and sets off for Italy in search of virgin blood.
Unfortunately, the first two damsels he samples aren’t
exactly chaste, leading to a couple of spectacular
vomiting fits. Dallesandro plays a revolutionary peasant
with a a Brooklyn accent who filches most of the available
feminine goodies before the count can get to them, and
then turns hatchet man for the Grand Guignol finale.
Directors Vittorio De Sica and Roman Polanski are also on
The Slightly Pregnant Man is the English title of Jacques Demy’s latest film, although a literal translation of the French would be more appropriate — The Most Important Event Since Man Walked on the Moon. The event is pregnancy, and what makes it so important is that its baby’s carrier is not Catherine Deneuve, who plays the mother, but Marcello Mastroianni, who plays Poppa.
The first question you or I might ask is how Mastroianni manages to get pregnant in the first place, which is something Demy declines to answer. Instead, he tries to coast along on a jaunty score by Michel Legrand (who composed the music for Demy’s Umbrellas of Cherbourg). Without the basic question answered, The Slightly Pregnant Man doesn’t really work, but it is a weird kind of fun. We get to watch Mastroianni get sick in a movie theater, rush to the doctor and receive the wonderful-terrible news. He gets exhibited to a medical convention, marries Deneuve (in order to save the child embarrassment) and –as you can see — begins to model male pregnancy clothes for a maternity firm. The clothing manufacturers are overjoyed — they’ve just discovered a great new market for their products.
Mastroianni gives up his job as a driving instructor, since he’s forced to model full time. Read more
Sara Driver’s first feature — a luminous, oddball comic fantasy about ancient Chinese curses and Xerox machines, set in Manhattan’s Chinatown and its immediate environs — may well be the most visually ravishing American independent film of its year (1986). Set in an irrational, poetic universe that bears a certain relationship to Jacques Rivette’s Duelle, this dreamy intrigue breaks a cardinal rule of fantasy by striking off in a number of directions: an executive barks in the street, a young Frenchwoman (Ann Magnuson) loses her hair, and machines in a copy shop start to purr and wheeze on their own initiative. The moods that are established are delicate, and not everyone will be able to go with them, but Driver, the producer of Stranger Than Paradise, sustains them with beauty and eccentric charm. Suzanne Fletcher, who also starred in Driver’s previous 50-minute You Are Not I, makes a compelling (if unconventional) heroine, and Lorenzo Mans’s screwball dialogue develops some engaging hallucinatory riffs. (JR)
