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We cold open on a dying woman giving birth to a daughter in a barn. The movie is not clear who this woman is but I can tell you: this is Lucy Westenra. Yeah, that Lucy, sometimes named after the Peanuts character, the ever-doomed best friend of Mina Harker. She's just as doomed here in this film, dying before the opening credits start. Her daughter is Alucarda, the bastard child of Count Dracula. That girl is going to grow to be part vampire, part demon, part Stephen King & Brian de Palma's Carrie. Classic gothic horror, demon horror, and modern SciFi telekinetic horror all merge together in Alucarda, our first queer genre film of the month.
Alucarda is one many nunsploitation movies released in the Seventies in the wake of The Devils. There were plenty to choose from, including other Mexican options. Satánico Pandemonium from 1975 had a very good title. Alucarda felt the most in conversation with the films we've been working with so far. This is still a filthy exploitation film full of nudity and kink; base pleasures for male gaze are the primary goals. Yet Alucarda is also a very interesting movie. This is our first film a majority-Catholic country, and despite that, is bitterly anti-clerical. This is a movie where Satan is not causing any trouble, just having harmless orgies, and in response, the forces of order have a violent terrifying response. A loving lesbian relationship between two nuns is torn apart by barbarous authorities, whose exorcism practices are backwards nonsense.
A lot of our movies have vacillated between being pro and anti-devil, Alucarda is maybe the most ambiguous. It sure does not like the Church, but is anybody that much better? Yeah, the awful priest (David Silva) struck first, but when it comes time for darkness to strike back, a lot of people end up screaming and on fire. In the end, good "triumphs", only with most of the cast in ashes. The local doctor, Dr. Oszek (Claudio Brook), at first demands that the exorcism rituals stop, declaring "this is not the fifteenth century!" (Not that you can tell in Alucarda, every set is made to look medieval.) But by the end, Oszek is tossing holy water with everybody else, following Father Karras' footsteps in The Exorcist down towards the irrational and mystical. Science loses, Satan loses, the big statue of Jesus is on fire, did anybody win?
There's some interesting double-casting happening here. I'm not sure this is symbolic or simply a result of Alucarda being a cheap movie. Claudio Brook also plays a character credited as "Hunchbacked [slur word for Romani people]", who may in fact be Satan himself. He is a mysterious stranger living in the forest who leads the main couple into darkness. The title character, Alucarda has to share her actress Tina Romero with Lucy. Alucarda is libertine nun that falls in love with Justine (Susana Kamini), a new initiate, who is easily seduced into queerer worlds than the convent. The Hunchback directs the first lesbian contact as both girls slice their breasts to drink the blood.
Again, vampirism is a metaphor for homosexuality. We saw this so often last year when we did 31 vampire movies.
This would probably be more liberatory if not for the man in the room, sort of confirming the movie's target audience. "Don't worry, fellas, this is for you." Also I should note these characters are supposed to be fifteen (the actresses were in their twenties), which apparently was less disgusting in the Seventies. Or maybe Alucarda wanted it that way, this is gross movie for perverts after all, and it is proud of it.
There seems to be very true holy power at work in Alucarda. Most of god's work is shown as sadistic fetishes: whipping, hanging naked girls up on crosses, very realistically drawing blood from their abdomens. (For perverts, I said.) The exorcism in this film is so unsuccessful it actually kills Justine. Meanwhile, evil is very alive. We see everybody's favorite goat-faced demon, Baphomet at the Satanic orgy. If God is helpless, Alucarda meanwhile can turn corpses into vampires and can combust the living by reciting the names of classic demons. Holy water does work, maybe only because the movie starts operating on the genre rules of vampire films.
Alucarda is cheap but not artless. It cannot compete with the scale and feverishly artistry that Ken Russell employed in 1971. However, this movie has plenty of energy. Most of the convent is screaming through most of the film, either from demons, whips, or flames. It is the kind of movie that will make your roommates concerned about you and the noises they're hearing from the living room. Some of the art design is interesting: the church is set in a cave full of candles. Catholicism is made into an ancient superstition outside civilization. I also really like Vampire Justine when she emerges out of a coffin filled to the brim with blood. That's a fantastic image. Hokey acting and sleazy goals cannot destroy what is a decent horror movie in Alucarda.
Next Time! Lance Henriksen is given the Atlanta Hawks in exchange for siring the Antichrist in The Visitor.
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