{"id":13356,"date":"2016-03-25T14:02:36","date_gmt":"2016-03-25T18:02:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/?p=13356"},"modified":"2016-03-25T14:02:36","modified_gmt":"2016-03-25T18:02:36","slug":"a-christopher-lee-quartet-scream-and-scream-again-count-dracula-cuadecuc-vampir-and-umbracle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/?p=13356","title":{"rendered":"A Christopher Lee Quartet: Scream and Scream Again, Count Dracula, Cuadecuc vampir, and Umbracle"},"content":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s Good Friday, a day of spiritual stuff, so why not counterbalance the somber day of observance with things weird (or weirder)?<\/p>\n

There\u2019s no doubt genre actors like Christopher Lee worked their buns off, sometimes appearing in multiple projects within a single year, and 1970 was a bit unusual for the actor in being tied to two unique horror films plus a pair of experimental works that few outside of ardent fans knew existed.<\/p>\n

\"ScreamAndScreamAgain_BR\"Let\u2019s start off with what fans even in 1970 felt was a cheat: the pairing of horror icons Vincent Price, Lee, and Peter Cushing in Scream and Scream Again<\/a><\/strong>. One actor shares no screen with the others, while two meet in the last reel. Gordon Hessler\u2019s direction pretty much saves this oddity from being wholly written off, and while its coterie of admirers have grown over the years \u2013 I\u2019ve warmed up a bit to what I wrote off as a weird dud \u2013 it\u2019s still a flawed horror-sci-fi hybrid that\u2019s uncharacteristic for Hammer & its brethren and AIP. Twilight Time\u2019s Blu-ray is packed with substantive extras, making this a must-have for genre fans.<\/p>\n

\"CountDracula1970_BR\"Lee also starred in Jess Franco\u2019s Count Dracula<\/a><\/strong>, which the director pitched to the star as a faithful adaptation of Bram Stoker\u2019s novel. It has some merits and a highly unusual cast \u2013 Herbert Lom as Van Helsing, Klaus Kinski as Renfield, Maria Rohm as Lucy, and Soledad Miranda as Mina \u2013 but whenever producer Harry Alan Towers\u2019 name is attached to a film, you know the quality can be questionable.<\/p>\n

Severin\u2019s Blu-ray is superb, packing key extras from the 2007 Dark Sky DVD with new and some rare archival goodies, but the real gem is an experimental documentary by Spain\u2019s Pere Portabello.<\/p>\n

Titled Cuadecuc, vampire<\/a><\/strong> (1971), it\u2019s arguably more interesting than Franco\u2019s feature film, and connoisseurs of experimental cinema should give this 67 mins. gem their attention, as this is apparently the first and only of his works on Blu.<\/p>\n

While not directly tied to Franco\u2019s film, Portabello also directed Lee and bit player Jeannine Mestre in a related feature called Umbracle<\/a><\/strong> (1970) that\u2019s visually and aurally similar, but more overtly political. Lee plays a recurring character whose scenes are intercut between assorted interviews and montages (one quite graphic), and while this and vampir<\/strong> were archived on a region-free 7 disc set released a few years ago, there\u2019s no wide release of Umbracle<\/strong>, hence my sourcing the film from YouTube.<\/p>\n

So that\u2019s four very distinct films with which Lee was involved in one year: a hybrid, a classic, and two experimental pieces unlike anything he\u2019d ever done before or since.<\/p>\n

He also sings in German and French in one of them with much vigor.<\/p>\n

Cheers,<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Mark R. Hasan<\/strong>, Editor
\nKQEK.com<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Here’s a quartet of films starring Christopher Lee: Gordon Hessler’s Scream and Scream Again (Twilight Time), Jess Franco’s Count Dracula (Severin), and two rare experimental films by Pere Portabello – Cuadecucu, vampir (1971) + Umbracle (1970).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":13370,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[6],"tags":[270,4342,4355,2562,2563,2459,4339,4341,4356],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/ChristopherLee_featured.jpg","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8nuyW-3tq","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13356"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13356"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13356\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13373,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13356\/revisions\/13373"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/13370"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13356"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13356"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13356"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}