\n\tThe talkies\u2019 arrival was a major hardship in many respects for the movie industry, as theater owners had to install expensive new equipment, and studios could no longer easily export fresh product to lucrative foreign markets. One solution weighed to the latter dilemma was making alternative versions of features in different languages. Universal took that idea farther than most in late 1930 by shooting \u201cDracula\u201d twice on the same sets, with entirely different casts and directors. One was, of course, the legendary Tod Browning film with Bela Lugosi. The other, directed by George Melford (who\u2019d guided Rudolph Valentino in his most famous role as \u201cThe Sheik\u201d), had Spanish emigre Carlos Villarias as the caped bloodsucker. It was forgotten for decades until a 1990s restoration and revival led some latter-day viewers to pronounce it the better of the two.<\/p>\n
\n\tThat curious footnote to cinematic history has now inspired \u201cLos Vampires<\/a>,\u201d the first directorial feature in decades from scenarist Craig Mitchell<\/a>. Like the 2000 Willem Dafoe vehicle \u201cShadow of the Vampire,\u201d this is a fiction spun from the reality of a fabled production shoot. Henry Ian Cusick and Thomas Kretschmann play fictionalized stand-ins for Villarias and Lugosi, as immigrant actors touchy about \u201csharing\u201d a starring role that could be a huge break for both. <\/p>\n \n\tIn the somewhat convoluted progress of Mitchell\u2019s script, their ego war is eventually eclipsed by fears there\u2019s a genuine murderer on the loose \u2014 perhaps even an actual vampire. Not always very precisely balanced between horror, homage and mystery, this intriguing if unevenly realized construct will nonetheless lure genre fans and nostalgists alike with its imagined back chapter of golden-age Hollywood.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tIt starts with nervous Luis de Ossario (Cusik) arriving on the Universal soundstage, where he\u2019s dismayed by a front-office representative\u2019s command that he watch the dailies of English-language scenes shot during the day, then precisely mimic them in Spanish each night. Pride insists he ignore that directive \u2014 after all, he too has been a star, called the \u201cSpanish Sheik\u201d by fan mags. But it\u2019s additionally irritating when he\u2019s approached by Romanian thespian Kurt Orlov (Kretschmann), who\u2019s essayed the Count to great success onstage, and likewise advised to imitate his every gesture and intonation. Refusing to do so, Luis stirs a rivalry and potentially endangers his own employment.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tStill, the dual production goes on as planned. Anxiety heightened by the exhausting nocturnal schedule, Ossario is further rattled by glimpsing sexually explicit footage presumably shot as blackmail fodder. It involves Vianca Sugura (Daniela Couso), the beauteous albeit wholly inexperienced young woman hired as ingenue. Other unsettling revelations include word that the actress originally hired for that part was killed \u2014 a fate that later befalls others, including convent-raised Vianca\u2019s protectress Sister Aubrey (Carol Abney).\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tThere are additional, underdeveloped subplots. The intended enigmatic blurring between illusion, reality, the supernatural and sordid here too often just feels unfocused, with occasional detours into humor contributing to a wobbly tone. The best sequences seize upon the atmospheric potential of recreated studio-Gothic sets, though there\u2019s surprisingly scant use of B&W film-within-the-film bits. Itself shot entirely on a soundstage, \u201cLos Vampires\u201d occasionally betrays budgetary limits in unconvincing period flavor, despite good work from production designer Ricardo Jattan and costumer Petra Larsen.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tThe lead actors do well enough on this slippery slope. Cusick and Kretschmann offer complementary chords of variable petulance and insecurity, as newcomer Cuoso ably negotiates her character\u2019s shifting ambiguities. The supporting cast turns are competent if sometimes broad. If Mitchell\u2019s resolution to his script\u2019s dangling questions feels somewhat rote, a graceful epilogue leaps several decades forward to end matters on an interesting, unexpected note.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tWhile the Lugosi \u201cDracula\u201d was a huge hit, the Spanish version\u2019s disappointing box office helped curtail future such endeavors in Hollywood, particularly since fast-evolving dubbing technology soon provided a cheaper alternative. Far from a mere copy of its English-language equivalent, however, Melford\u2019s movie is considerably longer, with marked differences of dialogue, narrative sequence and costuming. Those who found Browning\u2019s take too stagey have judged its doppelg\u00e4nger more fluidly cinematic. Still, only one person became a celluloid legend from Universal\u2019s gambit \u2014 and that person wasn\u2019t Carlos Villarias, who outlived Lugosi by two decades yet never achieved anything like the same renown.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The talkies\u2019 arrival was a major hardship in many respects for the movie industry, as theater owners had…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":795323,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[52],"tags":[337711,88,332728,337712,206],"class_list":["post-795322","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-craig-mitchell","tag-entertainment","tag-fantasia-festival","tag-los-vampires","tag-movies"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/795322","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=795322"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/795322\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/795323"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=795322"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=795322"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=795322"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}