"Dracula père et fils"(1979)d/Edouard Molinaro

Though I'd often read about about tonight's review in reference books and vintage horror mags, I'd never gotten the opportunity to actually see it for myself until excitedly stumbling upon a tattered 1982 Columbia Home Video vhs copy for sale at an outlet in Delaware, setting me back a couple of bucks back in the nineties.That something like eighteen minutes had been excised from the pan n' scan print and it having been excruciatingly dubbed for laughs didn't really have any bearing against my desire to see the film, the last big screen portrayal of Dracula(referred to only as "The Count" here) by iconic cult legend, Christopher Lee, nor did my unfamiliarity with the movie's other star, Bernard Menez, who, it turns out, had an earlier go at blending horror and comedy with a Hammer co-star, in 1974's obscure Tendre Dracula, alongside Peter Cushing playing the Count himself for the only time in his long career.Appearing alongside Lee and Menez here are the Breillat sisters, Marie-Hélène and Catherine, the former being the wife of director Molinaro, while the latter was a controversial writer/director in her own right, helming the sex-charged Une Vraie Jeune Fille(reviewed here) among others.To say whatever it was they set out to accomplish with the film was thoroughly depredated with an embarrassingly unfunny-as-fuck dub by nose candy-fiends from Dekaub Ave, failing miserably at recreating dated celebrity voices(The multilingual Lee, for example, delivered his lines in English, then provided his unmistakable booming voice for the French and English dubs, which the video version avoids altogether somehow) oblique storyline, and extensive incoherent guillotine cuts, might just be the understatement of the fucking year.The result is a horror-comedy that's painful to sit through and flatter than Audrey Hepburn's A cups, unaugmented by a fistful of Kleenex.Until I finally see an uncut French print of the film, I'm forced to say this: Dracula and Son, tu débites que des conneries sale éspece de grosse je-sais-pas-quoi.If that's not very funny to you French-tongued Woprophiles, then it's a perfect description, really.Onwards.

It stands to reason that Dracula's French offspring(Bernard Menez) might indeed sound like Tennessee Tuxedo...
After a cartoon intro that wouldn't look out of place as a Schoolhouse Rock episode, we turn to the year 1784 in eastern Romania, where a lady of breeding(Marie-Hélène Breillat) travelling by coach as driven by two cossack-types with Brooklyn yiddish accents(all together now, ha...ha...ha...)is whisked away from her stranded ride by the emissary to the Prince of Darkness, Juan Miguel Roberto Jose Fidel Martinez del Morto(aka/"Jim"), to the Count(Christopher Lee)'s castle, where she marvels at his organ(the musical instrument)while screwing in his coffin and becomes his bride, bearing him a male heir who gets rocked to sleep in a mini-coffin by his vampiric nanny, Brunhilda.Dracula's bride is transformed into smoldering cinders by the rays of daylight when she overdoes her first night out breaking in her new fangs, leaving the Count to deal with his mischievous son(he bowls a human skull into his mother's urn and drinks blood between transfusions while locking his nanny out of the castle as the sun rises) on his own.One hundred and twenty years go by without Victor(Bernard Menez) claiming a victim, obviously due to his lesser stature, false moustache, or perhaps its because he sounds exactly like Maxwell Smart.Over time, Dracula's castle is turned into the People's House of Pleasure and Proletariat Dancehall.With their parlour crawling with dancing Romanian pinkos, Dracula and Son make for Paris on a ship in the coffins of two French sailors, unaware the men are to be buried at sea.On the shores of a beach near Paris, Victor gets kicked in the face after a particularly humorless exchange with a gaggle of ruffians beating the piss out of each other, while his father turns up in a fishing net aboard the Cucaracha, and after hearing the Mexican fisherman exclaiming, "Mira! Mira!" wonders,"Fools!Don't they know vampires can't be seen in mirrors?".I'm gonna give you a minute to change yer piss-pants now...

I don't know about its effect on vampires, but I sure find it repugnant enough.
After a whole laughless bit with Victor trying to find shelter from the sun while avoiding the swishy advances of a French homo who ends up about to get fag bashed by two old Jaques-types, we see the Count bite the neck of a blow up doll.Victor gets a job in a hospital morgue and robs blood banks for sustainance(yaaawn), then his father gets mistaken for Christopher Lee(!) while stalking a victim earning himself the lead role in a low budget horror movie called 'Blood of the Vampire'.He bites a chatty co-star and fools her into opening the door during daylight hours to stop her incessant yapping.He and Victor are reunited at the airport among a small group of paparazzi who goad over the Count's Gucci coffin-bag.The duo go coffin-shopping for Victor and he dreams of being his father on the movie set, repeating takes of the same sequence over and over doing dated celebrity voice impressions like W.C. Fields and Jimmy Cagney.Meanwhile his father spots the reincarnation of his lost love in the beautiful young Nicole(also Marie-Hélène Breillat), who's seemingly only interested in using his likeness for a toothpaste advertisement(yaaaaaaaawn), but after the lame gag-laden game spit by young Victor, she runs to the Count to prove her love to him.A jealous Victor continually cock blocks his old man until the Count throws his alarm clock out the window and goes to Nicole's pad.Victor chucks his old man's designer coffin-bag out the window and when he agrees to do the toothpaste commercial, he's shamed on set by the Count, causing Victor to pack up and split.Young Dracula manages to bed Nicole while posing as his father and discovers he can travel during sunlight hours and has regained his reflection.Nicole draws open an early morning curtain while Victor and the Count argue about his new humanity and the old vampire is reduced to ashes.Five years later, we see young Dracula and Nicole have raised a pair of children as they discover their young son has some pretty sharp eye teeth.Yeah, it's finally over.Roll credits.

Sir Chris's grill says it all here, doesn't it?
I shouldn't like to think about how many times I've actually sat all the way through this fetid sac du merde, due to the many copies I've ripped for buddies in years passed, but whatever the number is, it's too fucking many.In fact, any individuals hurt by my penchant for occasional meanspiritedness and cruelty can point to my viewing this movie as the starting line for my antisocial behavior, no doubt.I can only recommend this to Christopher Lee completists and those few champions of unfunny comedies(I'm usually among their number, just not here.), and even those will be visibly disappointed by their viewing experience, I'd wager.Until a definitive uncut French language print turns up in a Vichy bunker-turned-coffee shop someday, it's just one wop on the scale for Dracula, and his son, considerably less.Avoid like a Yes album.

Can't blame him, I'd be biting that neck myself.

"Une Vraie Jeune Fille"(1976)d/Catherine Breillat

More often than not,when a cinephile turns to the arthouse for entertainment,he or she is surprised to find a plethora of exploitative imagery and transgressive subject matter,often handled in less than discreet fashion.Such is the case with author and first time director,Catherine Breillat's 1976 entry about the sexual coming of age of an over-developed fourteen year old girl on summer holiday with her parents.The controversial artist deals with the material in ultra-realistic portrayals,often crossing over into the realm of Georges Bataille's literary pornography with abstract sexual images emblazoned into the viewer's subconscious.The critics were mixed about the graphic production,which was banned in many places for nearly a quarter century.Most audiences weren't ready to stare directly at a vulva displayed on the big screen,methinks.Fille,translated to "A Real Young Girl" in English,achieves cinematic weirdness fairly easily,but fails to evoke any substantial emotion,really.It's too weird to succeed as a drama,lacking of enough eroticism to work as sex film,and not funny enough to be labelled a comedy.If you go in with hopes of being weirded out(slightly)and little else,you might revel in the film's odd streak.Young vixen Charlotte Alexandra's ample wares are always at least partially on display within,but never free of the awkwardness that comes with going through puberty in the public's watchful eye.Yeah,that sounds about right.For Crispin Glover-esque odd birds and the most discerning of cerebral perverts only.

You're just sayin' such things to impress me,baby...
Alice(Charlotte Alexandra) is an introverted,derisive fourteen year old girl returning home via train from a French boarding school for the summer.Becoming bored almost instaneously and curious about her newly pendulous hamurabbies and nether regions,she shows an affinity for yanking down her drawers and sitting spreadeagle in a field and remembers that magical time at school she locked herself in a bathroom stall after hours and pissed all over the floor,playing with her feet in it.Alice also rides around town on her bicycle,flashing her knickers at anybody half interested in a peek.The quirky,moody teen keeps a journal,when she isn't out introducing her nubile young body to tactile sensations with some broken eggs,hot dripped candle wax,freshly picked ear wax,her own vomit,urine,and blood,or simply buggering her own asshole with a sun tan oil bottle.She also spends inordinate amounts of time staring at pop stars on television,and at her father's new hire at the sawmill,Jim(Hiram Keller),who's got enough of a steady flow of quim on a silver platter at the local carnival to pay much mind to the foolish young girl,who fantasizes about being bound spreadeagle to the ground by barbed wire while her male obsession tries to force a live earthworm into her pussy.When he can't achieve penetration with the segmented megadrile,he breaks it into writhing pieces and places them on her pubic mound instead.Gee,I hope it doesn't turn weird at all...

Nothing symbolizes a growing girl's aching loins like a decaying dog corpse washed up on the beach.
With Jim uninterested,Alice flirts with a gang of rockers at a local bar,only to have the leader later chase her down on his motorcycle to pull her dress up so that he can get a glimpse of that which all men constantly strive for.Eager to do some more flirting,she rides a tilt a whirl with a businessman who breaks out his custard cannon to show her as they spin at high speeds.When she gets home,she goes over to kiss her father who's been watching television,only to find he's got his fly down and his little French cazzo out.She flashes her goodies at Jim,who accompanies her to the beach where they masturbate in unison in front of one another.Jim unloads his salty suzie in his mitt,then wipes it on Alice's dress,with the girl bitter that conventional coitus wasn't happening next.She verbally spars with her mother after discovering her father's infidelity to his wife,and while both parents scrap it out,she's heavily pressured by a suddenly very interested Jim to give her virginity to him.Before he can take the girl's virginity though,he is shot by one of her father's shotgun traps rigged to keep interlopers out of his garden,and dies.Alice is unfazed by Jim's death,and more concerned for her impending return to boarding school,instead.That's it.

If squirmin' earthworm sections placed on your mons pubis turn you on,get yourself evaluated,for real.
Breillat's entire film catalogue that followed tonight's entry all showcase explicit sex and violence,so it's no wonder the best-selling novelist scored herself a position as cinema professor at the Euro Grad School? Just wow.The gorgeous Alexandra worked with cult director Walerian Borowczyk on his Immoral Tales two years earlier,her final film work coming the following year opposite Sylvia Kristel in Goodbye Emmanuelle(1977).The soundtrack was provided by the late Mort Shuman,who wrote the melodies for American rock n' roll hits like Viva Las Vegas and Marie's the Name(of His Latest Flame)for Elvis,Turn Me Loose for Fabian,and A Teenager in Love for Dion prior to his score work in France.If strange high brow pornography is your bag,you'll probably want to get your hands on Fille,which was finally made available in an unexpurgated version in 1999.Rest assured though,it's a weird ninety-three minutes.On the ratings scale,Fille flashes its panties to the Emperor,who holds up two wops in return.

Now that's an English subtitle if I've ever seen one.