Join us for a cult-classic double feature: Blood for Dracula and Flesh for Frankenstein (3D), with legendary Udo Kier in attendance for a special in-person Q&A.
Blood for Dracula
Immediately after completing Flesh for Frankenstein, filmmaker Paul Morrissey and star Udo Kier created Blood for Dracula, a sumptuously depraved Euroshocker that tows the line between art and bad taste. Desperate for virgin blood, Count Dracula (Kier) journeys to an Italian villa only to discover the family’s three young daughters are also coveted by the estate’s Marxist stud (Joe Dallesandro of Morrissey’s Flesh, Trash, and Heat). Stefania Casini (Suspiria) and Bicycle Thieves director Vittorio De Sica co-star in one of the most unique and outrageous vampire films in history, now scanned uncut in 4K from the original negative for the first time ever.
Flesh for Frankenstein 3D
A delectably gory and cynical social satire from acclaimed filmmaker Paul Morrissey (Blood for Dracula), Flesh for Frankenstein (also known as Andy Warhol's Frankenstein) is among the most original and transgressive interpretations of Mary Shelley’s classic novel. Baron von Frankenstein (Udo Kier, Suspiria), with the help of his bizarre assistant Otto, is determined to create a new master race. To achieve his objective, he constructs two perfect “zombies” from an assemblage of body parts, intending them to mate. Meanwhile, complications ensue as Nicholas, a farm hand, begins an affair with the Baron’s sexually frustrated wife all while searching for his missing friend Nicholas (Joe Dallesandro, Cry Baby), whose head and brain have been used for Frankenstein’s male "zombie.”
This series was developed in collaboration with Daniel Marino and David Del Valle.
While the arthouse and the grindhouse are not the same, it is my firm belief that they reside on the same street. One reason I would argue this is they use much of the same raw material: the things that go bump in the dark on the edge of town, the things you don’t see while window shopping on main street. The things that live outside of what might be considered conventional or normal: the obsessive, sexual, perverse, violent, the fatalistic and the existential. Outside the city gates, after the sun goes down, this is the raw material that certain kinds of phosphene dreams are made of.
Occasionally, arthouse can feel like grindhouse. Less occasionally, grindhouse can feel like arthouse. On rare occasions, films come along that so thoroughly break down the walls between the two that the differences become nearly imperceptible. Paul Morrissey’s Flesh for Frankenstein and Blood for Dracula are two such rare occasions. Where two houses, alike in indignity, become one.
Udo Kier's performance is the fulcrum and centerpiece of both films, and he became a star because of them. His Frankenstein is a masterclass in how repressed perversity is the funnel to unholy desires, having the deft touch to perceive in the infamous and oft played character a sexual bent towards the autoerotic and the necrophilic. He plays the black comedy at a fever pitch that, no doubt, inspired The Rocky Horror Picture Show just a few years later.
>Kier brings a similarly special touch to his portrayal of Dracula, turning in what must be the most sympathetic portrayal of Dracula ever committed to celluloid. He is a wilting flower of a forgotten era, one that is drawing to a close, as an era far less beautiful succeeds it. In his tragicomic wafery he is, if not the hero, some kind of immortal and eternal victim. He is not unlike a demimonde out of a Jean Rhys novel, or Tess in Hardy’s Tess of d’Urbervilles: a weak-willed succubae - spurned from indifferent lover to indifferent lover until the endless rejection destroys him. With him die the demons and angels of old Europe. His Dracula is a swan song to a brighter, more innocent time - and even if it wasn't, it always seemed that way in the movies.
Important: This program is rated NC-17. No one under 17 will be admitted.