Moving Pictures

Satirical Delight

A TALE OF SURVIVAL, GREED, CORRUPTION AND CARTOON VAMPIRES FROM THE FATHER OF CUBAN ANIMATION

BY JOE NOLAN, FILM CRITIC

Moving Pictures first introduced readers to the folk behind Write Brain TV when we previewed the 2019 screening of Nightcrawlers at the Defy Film Festival here in Nashville.

Director Stephen McCoy’s impressionistic movie of life on the streets outside of Boston, Mass., is a haunting tone poem of a film, and it’s the movie that helped to launch Nightcrawlers producer, Kevin Ronca’s “underground, anti-imperialist streaming site” filmmaker collective, Write Brain TV. The site also calls itself “a safe space for art to be dangerous,” but a new selection on the platform is as silly as it is scary, as entertaining as it is enlightening.

Vampires in Havana is a 1985 animated short feature with a just-over-one-hour runtime.

Director Juan Padron is known at “the father of Cuban animation,” and this satirical delight is a great introduction to Padron’s knack for wrapping whack and warped animation around broader socialist themes. The film opens with a montage of the history of vampires through the ages — it reminded me of the history lesson Francis Ford Coppola gives audiences at the beginning of his unhinged throwback masterpiece Bram Stoker’s Dracula . We see vampires depicted in ancient cave art, in Egyptian hieroglyphics and on the sides of Grecian urns. A narrator explains that European vampires started forming unions in the 1800s: one faction of European blood-drinkers emigrated to Chicago to establish a criminal mob; another group stayed in Europe to create a system of oligarchic financial institutions.

Count Dracula’s son, Werner Amadeus von Dracula is a mad scientist living in Havana, Cuba. He produces a formula that allows vampires to survive exposure to the sun. When news of the breakthrough leaks, the gangster vampires of Chicago want to suppress the formula before it murders their indoor vampire beach resort racket. The European vampires want to make a killing marketing the serum as Vamprisol. But, Werner dreams of giving the new miracle medicine away, and his hip, trumpet-playing-freedom-fighter nephew, Pepe becomes an unlikely hero when he learns his true identity and vows to protect his uncle’s work to share it with all vampires around the world.

Pepe’s hip attitudes reflect those of the film itself. Padron’s off-beat characters and the lewd and vulgar tone of his film remind me of Ralph Bakshi’s sleaziest productions in the best possible way. Pepe’s nocturnal life as a musician finds him carousing with a sketchy posse, drinking, dancing and romancing the lady admirers who can’t get enough of his hot horn. It’s the decidedly-adult nature of its comedy and violence that won Vampires in Havana a cult following among international audiences. And Nashville music freaks will want to stream this one with the volume turned up to hear Pepe’s blazing brass stylings recorded by the inimitable Cuban-American trumpet maestro Arturo Sandoval.

Write Brain TV is also currently streaming Embargoed Films of Cuba which includes seven movies that were forbidden to be shown in America because of the cultural/travel/ trade blockades the U.S. imposed on the island nation after Fidel Castro’s communist government came to power in 1959. The selection includes the indelible hybrid film masterpiece I Am Cuba and most of the movies are accompanied by illuminating introductions from Cuban film historian Victor Fowler. Viewers can support the site via very affordable monthly and annual subscriptions or they can get a one-time movie pass for just $3.50. Go to writebrainstudios.tv and create an account to enjoy the site’s rotating free movie selections every Classic Movie Monday. Write Brain TV also includes several series of radical shorts, books, music and Marc Rubenall’s fascinating The Origins of Cinema podcast.

Vampires in Havana is streaming at writebrainstudios.tv

Joe Nolan is a critic, columnist and performing singer/songwriter based in East Nashville. Find out more about his projects at www.joenolan.com.