Milena Vukotic | Through the Shattered Lens

Count Dracula (played by Udo Kier) has a problem. In order to stay strong and healthy, he needs a constant supply of virgin blood. (Or, as Kier puts in, “weergen blood.”) Unfortunately, he lives in 1920s Romania and apparently, there just aren’t many virgins left in Eastern Europe.

However, Dracula’s assistant, Anton (Arno Juerging) has a solution. Dracula just needs to move to Italy! After all, Italy is the home of the Vatican and it’s just been taken over by Mussolini and the fascists. Surely, no one in Italy is having sex! Dracula should be able to find all the virgins that he needs in Italy!

So, Dracula climbs into his coffin and Anton drives him to Italy. Once they arrive, they meet an Italian land owner, Il Marchese di Fiore (played by Italian neorealist director Vittorio De Sica). The Marchese is convinced that Dracula is a wealthy nobleman and he says that Dracula can marry any of his four daughters. He assures Dracula that they’re all virgins but Dracula soon discovers that two of them are not. It turns out that, thanks to the estate’s Marxist handyman, Mario (Joe Dallesandro), it’s getting as difficult to find a virgin in Italy as it was in Romania!

After completing work on Flesh For Frankenstein, director Paul Morrissey and actors Udo Kier, Joe Dallesandro, and Arno Juerging immediately started work on Blood for Dracula. Though Blood for Dracula never quite matches the excesses of Flesh for Frankenstein, it still taps into the same satiric vein that provided the lifeblood that gave life to Flesh for Frankenstein. Once again, the sets and costumes are ornate. Once again, the frequently ludicrous dialogue is delivered with the straightest of faces. Once again, Udo Kier goes over-the-top as a famous monster. And, once again, Joe Dallesandro plays his role with a thick and anachronistic New York accent and he looks damn good doing it.

Ironically, one of the differences between Flesh for Frankenstein and Blood for Dracula is that there’s quite a bit less blood in the Dracula film. Then again, that’s also kind of the point. Dracula literally can’t find any blood to drink and, as a result, he’s become weak and anemic. Udo Kier is perhaps the sickliest-looking Dracula in the history of Dracula movies. By the time that he meets the Marchese’s four daughters, he’s so sick that he literally seems like he might fade away at any second. As ludicrous as the film sometimes is, you can’t help but sympathize with Dracula. All he wants is some virgin blood and the communists aren’t even willing to let him have that. Blood for Dracula is, in its own twisted way, a much more melancholy film than Flesh For Frankenstein. Or, at least it is until the finale, at which point one character gets violently dismembered but still continues to rant and rave even after losing the majority of their limbs.

When Blood for Dracula was released in 1974, it was originally called Andy Warhol’s Dracula, though Warhol had little to do with the movie beyond allowing his name to be used. As with Flesh for Frankenstein, Antonio Margheriti was credited in some prints as a co-director, largely so the film could receive financial support from the Italian government.

Sadly, there would be no Andy Warhol’s The Mummy or Andy Warhol’s Wolfman. One can only imagine what wonders Kier, Dallesandro, and Morrissey could have worked with those.

(Lisa is currently in the process of cleaning out her DVR! It’s taking her longer than it took Saint Malachy to transcribe The Prophecy of the Popes! She recorded the 1982 film, Monsignor, off of Retroplex on March 8th!)

Maybe it’s because I’m a fourth Italian and I was raised Catholic but Monsignor amused the Hell out of me.

See, Monsignor is a big, sprawling epic about the Church and the Mafia. I don’t know much about the production of this film but, having watched it, I’m going to guess that it was made by people who were neither Catholic nor Italian. This is one of those films that is so full of clichés and inaccuracies and yet so self-important that it becomes oddly fascinating to watch.

It tells the story of Father John Flaherty (Christopher Reeve, an Episcopalian who gives a performance so wooden that one worries about getting splinters just from watching it). When we first meet Father Flaherty, he’s just taken his orders. He’s a good Irish kid from Brooklyn. The neighborhood’s proud of him, because he has volunteered to serve as a chaplain in the army. (The film opens during World War II.) The neighborhood is even prouder when he performs a Mafia wedding. Don Appolini (Jason Miller), who may be a mobster but who still loves the Church, is especially impressed. He expects big things from Father Flaherty.

(The father of the bride, incidentally, is played by Joe Spinell, who played Willy Chicci in Godfathers One and Two and who achieved a certain infamy when he starred in Maniac.)

Father Flaherty goes to war and discovers that it’s not easy to be a man of God in a war zone. Everywhere around him, soldiers are either dying or losing their faith. (Perhaps it would help if Father Flaherty knew how to properly conduct a Requiem Mass but the movie screws that up, with Flaherty saying, “”Requiescat in pace” when he clearly should have said, “Requiescant in pace.”) After trying, in vain, to comfort a mortally wounded man, Flaherty snaps, picks up a machine gun, and starts blowing away Germans.

Having broken the Thou Shalt Not Kill Commandment and indulged in one of the seven deadly sins, Father Flaherty apparently decides to commit every other sin as well. Or, at least, it seems like that’s his plan. The thing is, Christopher Reeve’s performance is bland that it’s difficult to guess what could possibly be going on inside of Flaherty’s head. Is he disillusioned with the church or does he still have faith? When he says that he feels guilty over his transgressions, is he being sincere or is he lying? It’s impossible to tell because, when it comes to Father Flaherty, there’s no there there. He’s literally an empty vessel.

That, of course, doesn’t stop him from becoming a powerful man in the Church. Through his Mafia connections, he makes a fortune on the black market and launders money for the church. He also has sex with a cynical, nymphomaniac postulant nun, who is something of a stock figure in films like this. In this case, the role is played by Genevieve Bujold. Despite the stereotypical nature of her character, Bujold comes the closest of anyone in the cast to giving a nuanced performance but her character abruptly vanishes from the film. One can literally hear the producers in the background saying, “Okay, we’ve indulged in the sexy nun thing. Send her home now.”

Towards the end of the film, there’s a flash forward that is so abrupt that I didn’t even realize it had happened until I noticed that Christopher Reeve and Jason Miller now had a little gray in their hair. The flash forward doesn’t really accomplish much. Father Flaherty has lost a lot of the Mafia’s family and the Mafia’s not happy about it. It’s kinda like the Vatican subplot in The Godfather Part III, just with less interesting actors.

Anyway, Monsignor obviously thinks that it has something to say about both the Church and the Mafia but it’s actually remarkably empty-headed. Strangely enough, for an epic film that cost 10 million dollars to make (that’s in 1982 money), the whole film looks remarkably cheap. If a community theater decided to put on a production of Otto Preminger’s The Cardinal, the end result would probably end up looking a lot like Monsignor.

And yet, I really can’t hate Monsignor. It’s so bad that, as I said earlier, it’s also oddly fascinating. You watch and you ask yourself, How many details can one film about Catholicism get wrong? How many Italian stereotypes can be forced into a movie with a Mafia subplot? Now, I should point out that, at no point, does Don Appolini say, “Mama mia!” but, if he had, I wouldn’t have been surprised. It’s just that type of film.

Anyway, Monsignor is so sordid and stupid that it becomes entertaining for all the wrong reasons. If you’re into that, you’ll enjoy Monsignor.