Desperately in need of virgin blood, Count Dracula (Udo Kier) travels to Italy in hopes that the country's Catholicism will provide him with the purity that he so craves.
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I think what I like most about film is the ways in which it can show you the world from someone else's point of view. Films coming out of the middle-east and the third world can give us a glimpse at how others see the world. It can be quite surprising to discover that you share a worldview with someone you feel so geographically separated from. Potentially even more illuminating is the discovery that someone you share a homeland with, sees things in quite a different way than you. This is what draws me to the cinema of Paul Morrissey.
With how closely affiliated Morrissey is with Andy Warhol's Factory of the 60's, you'd think that he would be some sort of super-permissive, amoral, hedonist. Yet you couldn't be further from the truth. The real Paul Morrissey is a devout Catholic who served in the Army and self-identifies as a right-winger. The first time I watched this film I found it to be a semi-amusing horror-comedy. On this viewing I was able to see it as what the author intended.
In a film that prominently features greedy, promiscuous aristocrats and an abusive, Marxist, rapist, Dracula himself seems practically harmless. He is not the the thing to dread, the coming of the modern world is. That is horror to Paul Morrissey.
Oh, that's a very good point. I love this film but, not knowing anything about Paul Morrissey, hadn't thought of it that way before!
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