|
The Film |
Counts/Dates
ldh's rating What ldh has recently... Visit ldh's... You can... |
ldh's review .front.jpg)
This follows the original Stoker's plot fairly faithfully, but adds a few elements that are not there. For example, Dracula in here is a professor who thinks he has discovered the elixir of eternal life. He drinks it, and...
The movie is interesting culturally, but far from a great film. The music is really strange, with passages from Figaro and La Cucaracha spliced in at inopportune moments. Being a Pakistani film (often referred to as Lollywood because the center of the industry is in Lahore), like its Bollywood cousins, it is also sprinkled with some song and dance number that seemingly come out of nowhere. This will definitely be off-putting to anyone not familiar with the genre.
Most interesting to me was the camera work around all the taboos, like the infamous child-eating scene in the original novel. You can see how the filmmakers have had to go around the subject matter as to not incur the wrath of the censors. This is of course the case across the entire film as all sexual elements (and there are boatloads) are treated quite tangentially. When it came out, the film was rated-X because of its content, even if mostly suggestive and never explicit.
I wish the movie had a more ethnic point of view on the story, rather than trying so hard to copy the original, and dealing mostly with how to circumvent the cultural limitations of Pakistan in the mid to late 60's. In the end, the movie seems more like an effort in juggling those constraints, rather than a genuine adaptation of the tale of Dracula to that context.
Overall, interesting to watch once from a cultural and historical point of view, but not a movie to keep. Of great interest though was the documentary on the DVD about a history of horror films in Pakistan and India. This was so interesting and informative and absolutely worth watching. - Laurent Hasson |
.front.jpg'); "This movie has an online cover"){kind=small}